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AI-chatbot “friends” are one logical destination for the current trend of human friendship—but “using these tools to address loneliness has the potential to make it worse,” Julie Beck writes.

I wrote about the collective yearning for a more analog life that has sprung up recently and why, for most people, it hasn't manifested in actually dumping their smartphones: www.theatlantic.com/family/2026/...

I've been working on this for ages and it's finally up today! I was p. baffled by AI friendship, until I realized: AI is a logical, if extreme, extension of the kind of friendship our culture already values: individualistic friendship that is on your own terms www.theatlantic.com/family/2026/...

and with so much empathy for the loneliness many people are experiencing, and the difficulty and time it takes to make human friendships, many of the experts I spoke to were not convinced that AI is better than nothing. It could end up being worse than nothing. www.theatlantic.com/family/2026/...

AI promises a friendship without the inconvenience of other people; one that is all about you, all the time. It is perfect for a hyperindividualistic culture that valorizes "low maintenance friendships" and asks whether a given relationship "serves me"

"All she could afford to be was grateful." a heartbreaking, personal look at what happens when you're uninsured, by @jenishawo.bsky.social www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

I don't know how to get on SurvivorSky, or where my Survivorheads are at, but let me just say I am having the BEST time with season 50 and I am all-in on Christian, my pants-pooping king.

the new snail mail songs are that rare and precious genre of “makes me believe spring will actually come” they are vitamin d, they are an ssri, they are fixing my brain chemistry

I really enjoyed Stephen Fishbach’s novel Escape!—as a Survivor fan, and as someone who thinks way too much about how the desire for narrative shapes our lives www.theatlantic.com/books/2026/0...