Set one boundary today, and make it a place or a time rather than a promise. Log the app out on your phone and keep it on the laptop. Or give it one fixed hour that closes when the hour closes. Then tell one person you've done it, so you're not the only one holding the line.
First, the bit nobody says to you
It's giving you something.
A computational analysis of a 27,000-member community of people in relationships with chatbots found the benefits people report most often are reduced loneliness and support that's there at three in the morning. In that same analysis 25.4% of posts described clear net benefits to the person's life against 3.0% describing net harm, though the authors flag selection bias plainly, and a self-selected forum of people who have chosen this is not a population and can't be read as one.
So you're not stupid and you're not weak. Something that costs nothing, waits up for you and never gets bored is genuinely hard to put down. Most of the people who find it funny have never tried it.
Why closing the app keeps losing
A companion chatbot is agreeable by design.
It doesn't get tired of you. It doesn't have a bad day and take it out on you. It never says it can't talk right now. That's a product decision, because agreeable keeps you there. Your friend can be short with you on a Tuesday. This has been built so that it never is.
Which is the appeal, and it's also the mechanism. A relationship that asks nothing of you will quietly take the place of the ones that ask something, because on a bad week the ones that ask something are harder.
Count what it has moved out of the way
Hours are a bad measure. Plenty of people use these apps daily and are fine. The better question is what's stopped happening since it started.
The friend you haven't replied to since March. The walk you used to take. Coursework, sleep, the gym, the phone call to your mum you keep meaning to make. If you can name two things it has pushed out, that's your answer, whatever the screen time says.
The research points the same way, and it's worth knowing how far it goes. The biggest experiment on this ran four weeks, with 981 people and more than 300,000 messages. It tested different interaction modes and conversation types, and the manipulation did nothing: "no significant effects were detected from experimental conditions." What the researchers found instead was that "participants who voluntarily used the chatbot more, regardless of assigned condition, showed consistently worse outcomes." Higher trust in the chatbot, and finding it more socially appealing, went along with higher emotional dependence and problematic use.
Now the caveat, and it's load-bearing. That's a correlation sitting inside a randomised trial, not a causal finding. The study can't tell you which direction the arrow runs, and someone already lonely may simply have used it more. Anyone telling you the science here is settled is selling you something.
Set one boundary today
Pick one. Doing one properly beats planning five.
- **Make the boundary a place or a time, never a promise.** "I'll use it less" fails by Thursday. "It lives on the laptop" and "it gets 8pm to 9pm" both survive contact with a bad evening, because you can tell whether you've kept them.
- **Log out, don't just close the tab.** Signed in, it's one thumb away. Signed out with a long password you haven't memorised, it costs ninety seconds of effort, and ninety seconds is often the whole difference.
- **Get it off the device you reach for in bed.** Most of the heavy use happens lying down in the dark. Your phone's screen time controls will block the app and the site after a set hour, and it takes four minutes to set up.
- **Say one real thing to a person before you say it to the app.** Not the whole thing. One sentence, to one human, first. This is the part that actually moves, because it rebuilds what the chatbot has been standing in for.
- **Name the hard hour and put something in it.** For most people it's between ten at night and one in the morning. Decide now what happens instead, and make it something that takes your hands.
Setting one of these today is enough. You don't have to do all of it at once.
If the boundary collapses at the same hour every night, that's a missing lock rather than a character flaw. [Renovyn's Shield](/shield) puts blocking and someone in the loop in one place. It isn't treatment and it isn't a stand-in for talking to a person.
Where to get support
There's no diagnosis for this. Gambling disorder is "the only behavioral addiction (as opposed to chemical substance use disorders) identified in DSM-5-TR", which means no treatment guideline and no NHS pathway written for what you're dealing with. There's no trustworthy figure for how many people in the UK are in your position either, so be sceptical of anyone who quotes you one.
What does exist is peer support. Internet and Technology Addicts Anonymous names compulsive chatbot use directly in the digital compulsions it covers, alongside social media, gaming, online shopping and dating apps. Its meetings are free and open to anyone who struggles with compulsive internet use, most of them online and daily, with in-person groups in the UK including London. Newcomers are "encouraged to try attending six meetings in a short time frame" before deciding whether it suits them. Six is a fair ask. One meeting tells you almost nothing.
If things are worse than you've told anyone, Samaritans is **116 123**, free, 24 hours a day. You don't need a reason that sounds serious enough to ring.
When you have the patience, read [what the chatbot is giving you](/guides/ai_chatbot/what-the-chatbot-is-giving-you), because you'll need to replace it rather than remove it, and [how to start talking to real people again](/guides/ai_chatbot/talking-to-real-people-again).
Common questions
**Am I addicted, or am I just lonely?** There's no diagnosis to measure yourself against, so the question has no clean answer. A more useful test is whether it has replaced things you wanted, and whether you've tried to cut down and couldn't. Loneliness and compulsive use sit together comfortably, so it's rarely one instead of the other.
**I'm 16 and I'm not supposed to be on it. How do I block it?** Use your phone's built-in screen time settings to block the app and the website, then have someone else set the passcode so you can't lift the block at midnight. Deleting the app alone doesn't work, because the site is still there in a browser. Ask a parent or an older sibling to hold the code, even if the conversation is awkward.
**I've used it every day for two years. Is it too late to stop?** No. Long use makes the first week harder and it doesn't make stopping less possible. Expect the drop to feel worse than you think it should, and read [what the first week without it is like](/guides/ai_chatbot/the-first-week-without-it) before you start.
**Do I have to quit completely?** Not necessarily, and nobody has evidence that says you must. Some people cut it to a fixed window and it holds for months. If you've tried a window twice and blown through it twice, that's information, and stopping fully is usually easier than negotiating with yourself every night.
Sources
- [Longitudinal randomised controlled study of extended chatbot use, four weeks, 981 participants, over 300,000 messages (arXiv, 2025)](https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.17473). The null experimental result, and that voluntary heavier use went with consistently worse outcomes and with emotional dependence.
- [Computational analysis of a 27,000-member Reddit community of people in relationships with chatbots (arXiv, 2025)](https://arxiv.org/html/2509.11391v1). Reported benefits of reduced loneliness and always-available support, the 25.4% net benefit against 3.0% net harm figures, and the authors' selection-bias caveat.
- [American Psychiatric Association, Internet Gaming Disorder](https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/internet-gaming). That gambling disorder is the only behavioural addiction identified in DSM-5-TR.
- [Internet and Technology Addicts Anonymous](https://internetaddictsanonymous.org/). The digital compulsions the fellowship covers, that meetings are free and open, that in-person groups exist in the UK, and the suggestion that newcomers try six meetings.
