A researcher who spent a decade studying student relationships found schools don't budget for human connection or measure it. As loneliness grows unaddressed, AI bots move in to fill the gap. Without institutional change, we're outsourcing friendship to machines.
And inside of schools. It's emerging against the backdrop of what I have observed over the past decade of my research, of a lot of sentiment about relationship, but very little strategy, very few metrics guiding whether students are actually connected, very little budget dedicated to human connection, again, as a value proposition in its own right. And so it's really and Michael taught me this, right? Michael taught me disruptive innovation theory. It is a classic disruption story in that loneliness is per providing a foothold in the market for these bots to take hold. And there is very little stopping their upward march in in the market. There is very little to hinder their growth. Because we as a society have basically said, go get less lonely on your own. Like, go solve this loneliness thing by yourself. Which is ironic at best and really dangerous at wor.
