Can an AI Chatbot Help Kids’ Mental Health?
13:04 Share

Welcome to Tech News Briefing. It's Friday, January 17th.

I'm Belle Lynn for The Wall Street Journal. We're tracking Elon Musk's first 100 days in the new Trump White House as co-lead of the Department of Government Efficiency, also known as DOGE. Our columnist Tim Higgins tells us what's on Musk's agenda as he brings his experience slashing costs to the government.

And then, the makers of a smartphone for kids have developed a mental health chatbot. It's part counselor and part friend. We'll find out what some parents, kids, and therapists are saying about the tech.

But first, we are days away from President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration. And as our colleagues in the newsroom prepare to report on Trump's first 100 days in office, the Tech News Briefing podcast will be following Elon Musk's first 100 days as co-lead of the newly created Doge.

Trump tapped Musk, along with the biotech founder Vivek Ramaswamy, to lead the department that's tasked with cutting spending, eliminating regulation, and restructuring federal agencies. Musk has said there's a good shot of cutting at least $1 trillion from federal expenditures. How will he do that? Over the next few months, we'll check in with our columnist Tim Higgins as we track Musk's agenda in the new Trump White House.

Tim, how much influence could Musk actually have on Capitol Hill? That is the question. Lots of talk on Capitol Hill and in Washington, D.C., about just what kind of sway Elon Musk is going to really have.

Congress has a lot of power and they generally see this as their role. And so where Elon plays in the mix is yet to be determined, though he has kind of given some indication of his strategies. There are perhaps ways outside of Congress that would allow him to play, perhaps through

legal means, perhaps through interpretations of administrative rules, perhaps also just using his bully pulpit with his more than 200 million followers on X to generate the kind of attention on government regulations and spending that maybe others wouldn't be able to generate. And that has proven powerful in the past for him.

So the Department of Government Efficiency, that will sit outside of the federal government. And so Musk isn't expected to become an official government employee, right? Right. Which is important because he is not expected to give up any of his roles in private business. He remember among his many jobs, he runs Tesla, he runs SpaceX, he owns SpaceX.

X, the social media platform, we would say in the past that these kinds of positions might be in government and there would be conflicts of interest that would be created. And some people have questioned his conflicts of interest having a role in government. But by being outside of the government, he essentially can have kind of a quasi role. Now, how close and how powerful that is seems to be determined upon his relationship with

with the incoming president. Clearly, in the last few months, we've seen the two almost attached at the hip at a number of public events. It's been said that Elon Musk is spending a lot of time at Mar-a-Lago, the Florida club owned by the president-elect.

And the two have been talking a lot. One of the questions that hangs over this is how long does that relationship remain close? Without that close relationship, it's not clear that Elon would have this kind of influence going forward. So that is one of the things we'll be watching closely.

What do you expect Musk will look to do on day one? Let's focus on the first day to start. We expect him to be at the inauguration, which is symbolically very important. Once again, illustrates how close he is with

the incoming president. Elon has already talked about some of the ways in which he is kind of thinking about changes that he'd like to see. He has talked about his personal experiences with certain regulations, whether it's environmental, getting in the way of what he sees as innovation and his ability to launch rockets with SpaceX. So it would seem that

Those personal experiences might help guide him. He has also talked about allocating resources within the government. He has talked about how he's kind of in agreement with those folks out there who don't understand why so many resources are given to the IRS for audits and that sort of thing, whereas they feel like more resources should be put towards funding.

securing the U.S. border with Mexico. So that could be part of the conversation. But, you know, what day one is beyond the inauguration, we'll be watching closely. That was our columnist, Tim Higgins. Coming up, AI chatbots can already do a lot of things, but can and should they help treat mental health, especially for kids? We'll get into it after the break.

ADP imagines a world of work where smart machines become too smart. Copier, I need 15 copies of this. Printing. By the way, irregardless, not a word, Janet. Yeah, I know. Page six should be regardless of or irrespective of. Just print them, please. If it were a word, Janet, it would mean without irregard, which is... Copier! Switch to silent mode. Let's put a pin in it. Anything can change the world of work. From HR to payroll, ADP helps businesses take on the next anything.

We hope our kids will come to us when they're feeling anxious or depressed. But what if they turn to a chatbot instead? Trudy is a new mental health chatbot built into a child-focused smartphone called Trumi.

The phone is designed with tight parental controls. And in November, the company gave parents the option to activate Trudy on their kids' phones. And so far, several thousand have done so. Trumi's CEO Bill Brady says that the goal with Trudy is to help kids work through any negative mental health issues they're having before they fester.

WSJ family and tech columnist Julie Jargon joins us now with more on what both parents and kids think of these chatbots. Julie, a key part of Trudy is that the parents have access to what their kids are telling the chatbot and what the chatbot's saying in response. How exactly does that work?

Yes, absolutely. They can monitor all of the conversations and they can also, through like a parent dashboard that they have on their own computer or phone, they can see some real-time updates on their kid's emotional state. The AI summarizes some of the nature of conversations and conversations.

The emotions that their kids are expressing through these conversations. So they don't have to go in and look at every single text message, but they get summary level view. And then they can go in and see if there's anything that they need to monitor more closely. And also on by default are notifications to parents if their kids make any mention of self-harm or suicidal ideations.

And what's the underlying challenge that these chatbots are really trying to solve for? This one in particular that was designed for kids is really meant to help flag any issues that kids might be having before they become big issues. And because this is a phone that's intended to help be sort of a stepping stone into wider Internet access for kids...

The idea is if kids are struggling with something to do with their mental health and their parents get wind of it early on, that can help keep them safe online. Because what we've learned from this youth mental health crisis and the role that social media has played in it is that it tends to be the teenagers who are more susceptible to depression or anxiety that have a particularly bad time with certain aspects of social media use.

And so if you can solve for the mental health issues before kids go down some sort of dangerous rabbit hole on social media, that maybe they can remediate some of those issues before they get out of control. Right. And Julie, you mentioned you spoke with some parents whose kids were using these apps, especially two mothers who gave the chatbot to their daughters to use. What was the impact of the technology for them?

What the parents noticed was that the chatbot was often giving the same type of advice they, the moms, would give their kids in situations of dealing with conflicts with friends or feeling anxious about things. But they found that when the advice came from the chatbot being a neutral party, free of judgment or baggage, that the kids took that advice to heart more than if it was coming from their mom.

And the kids that I spoke to for this said that they feel like it helped alleviate some of their anxious thinking, especially at night when they're having trouble sleeping, they're worrying about a test or issues with friends.

and they don't have anyone else to turn to. And sometimes they said their friends don't always give them good advice, or there's things that they don't want to share with their friends, but they can share with a chatbot. So far, the folks that I talk to say that it's been helpful. So, Trumi's CEO, Bill Brady, told you it's not a diagnostic tool, and it's not a therapist. Trudi is an AI companion that enables kids to talk and ask questions.

So, Julie, what are some of the risks or potential downsides that you hear about? The risk always with any type of generative AI is that it can hallucinate. It can say something it shouldn't say. It can give bad advice. And there was a precedent for this with the chatbot that the National Eating Disorders Association had used. People were testing it out and discovered that that chatbot was providing some dieting advice to people who were, you know, seeking out the chatbot for food.

information and counsel on eating disorders. And so that went in a direction that was not good for that group of people, and that chatbot was taken offline. So there's always the potential that a chatbot just says something that doesn't make sense for the population of people using it. And

The risk is if it gives bad advice and no one kind of notices that, and especially a teenager maybe takes that to heart, that it could have harmful effect on their mental health or could lead them to suicide.

taking some sort of action that could be potentially harmful to them. So there should be some sort of trusted adult in the mix, someone that kids can turn to, and that the chatbot potentially could be a good supplement, but not the replacement for humans. That was our family and tech columnist, Julie Jargon.

And that's it for Tech News Briefing. Today's show was produced by Julie Chang. Logging off, I'm Belle Lin for The Wall Street Journal. We had additional support this week from James Rundle and Charlotte Gartenberg. Jessica Fenton and Michael Lavelle wrote our theme music. Our supervising producer is Catherine Milsop. Our development producer is Aisha Al-Muslim.

Scott Salloway and Chris Sinsley are the deputy editors. And Falana Patterson is the Wall Street Journal's head of news audio. We'll be back this afternoon with TNB Tech Minute. Thanks for listening. ADP knows any big thing, any small thing, any trendy thing. Even a trendy thing that everyone knows isn't a great idea, but management just wants us to give it a try for a bit can change the world of work. From HR to payroll, ADP designs forward-thinking solutions to take on the next anything.