We’re Using AI More Than Ever—But At What Cost To Our Mental Health?

Researchers are starting to unpack how generative AI may be affecting mental health, and the results aren’t what you’d expect.

By Andrea Bossi
Essence
https://www.essence.com/

Generative artificial intelligence might be the next big push, especially in professional settings, as a tool to improve productivity and skills more quickly. But what effect is this having on our brains?

This is exactly what a group of researchers set out to find in a study investigating how AI use might be associated with adverse mental health outcomes, namely depressive symptoms. To the authors, the current moment feels reminiscent of when social media became explosively popular. Today, people have started using AI at breakneck speed, but on a broad level, little is known about how that might affect our mental health down the line.

“Are greater levels of generative artificial intelligence use by U.S. adults associated with greater levels of depressive symptoms?” the multi-institution research team, including Harvard-affiliated members, asked in their study, published late January 2026. The short answer is, yes, to some degree.

After studying the results of their survey of over 20,000 participants, researchers found that higher levels of AI usage were associated with “modest increases” in depressive symptoms. This mostly includes those who use AI for personal use. In their findings, researchers found that those using AI for work and school,  where AI is being pushed as a productivity booster, did not show significant ties with depressive symptoms.

While they didn’t find any significant ties between AI use and mood by gender, they did find some flags when it came to age. According to the researchers behind the study, “AI use was significantly associated with greater depressive symptoms among individuals aged 25 to 44 years and 45 to 64 years,” but not other age groups. In other words, AI use was correlated with higher levels of depressive symptoms overall, but the association was stronger in those aforementioned age groups

What does this mean for the workplace and schools? Even if the study found significant ties in personal AI use, it’s still important to be vigilant about how any kind of AI usage may affect mental health. The same way social media was exponentially adopted without understanding the effects it would have on mental health and brain function, AI has caught on quickly with little known about long-term effects, though emerging research is flagging potential issues tied to personal use. This is why researchers across universities right now are trying to catch up and break down what’s going on in the brain.

It is key to note that these researchers did have some limits in their study, including not being able to account for preexisting mental health diagnoses and not being able to test for causation, versus just correlation. Still, they wrote, “the ability to capture other online behavior… does allow us to begin to determine the specificity of the outcomes we observed.” The team behind the paper includes Roy H. Perlis, MD, MSc; Faith M. Gunning, PhD; Ata A. Uslu, MSc; Mauricio Santillana, PhD; Matthew A. Baum, PhD; James N. Druckman, PhD; Katherine Ognyanova, PhD; and David Lazer, PhD. Based on their findings, the team suggests a need to better understand a potential causal relationship and if some individuals may be more prone to experiencing depressive symptoms after AI use than others. For now, early research is showing there is a link between the two, and more needs to be understood to inform actions and preventative measures to be taken ahead.