Paisley’s mind always felt clearest when he was alone in his car. With no distractions, it became his makeshift sanctuary, and a space where, about a year ago, he started turning to ChatGPT for advice and comfort.
‘I didn’t know how to speak to people,’ the 23-year-old from Manchester admits. ‘I wasn’t happy with my living situation at the time. I was in a building job that I didn’t want to do, and I realised I wanted to move away. I was hoping that it would be the answer to my feeling lonely. So I asked ChatGPT for plans to help me get out of my situation.’
Paisley struggles to remember exactly what he asked the bot, but he does recall finding its advice helpful at the beginning.
‘I felt that I could get everything off my chest. It was comforting at the time. But then I ended up feeling a bit numb. And I just thought – God, this is a bit stupid. It’s a robot,’ he tells Metro.
Fed up with the humdrum nature of his isolated life and, after working all day, Paisley found himself unable to motivate himself to keep up with old friends – and he struggled to make new ones.
‘I was doing the same thing day after day and I just wasn’t talking to anybody, in person or online. I didn’t have depression – but I felt depressed’, he recalls, adding that he’d lost his ability to hold down a conversation or strike up a chat with a friend, and attempts from others to engage him resulted in him shutting down the exchange.
‘I was lost.. I locked myself away – I chose to do that,’ Paisley explains. ‘I lowered everything about myself – my self worth, my self esteem, and trusting myself that I can just meet new people.
Sharing his story in the YouTube documentary released today, Generation Lonely, he told the film crew: ‘When you’re at school and maybe go to college or university, you’re forced into these situations [where you] make friends. But, I didn’t go to university, didn’t really go college, so after that, it was just working. I didn’t really push myself enough.
When lockdown hit, Paisley got used to being alone. He spent three lonely years rarely seeing people or meeting anyone new, until around a year ago when he realised the social isolation was bringing him down. Sitting in his car, feeling blue, using the voice function on his phone, he started speaking to ChatGPT about how he was feeling and how he could improve his social life. From their his conversations with AI snowballed.
‘At one point, I was talking to the app about six, seven, eight times a day about my problems. Embarrassingly, I was hoping it just would be my friend. It was like the easiest point of contact because it gave a response,’ he says. ‘I was venting. But it didn’t help in the slightest. Then I realised, I’m talking to a robot about human emotion. What is the point here? What am I doing?’
Paisley – who has chosen not to use his last name – tells Metro he now feels ‘ridiculous’ to have relied on AI for the answer to his social woes. But he’s not alone.
As the documentary he stars in reveals, Generation Z are struggling. Growing up in the age of social media, and missing a significant part of their formative years to the pandemic, those born between 1997 and 2012 are now considered to be the loneliest generation – despite the fact that they are the most digitally connected.
Two-thirds of young adults in Great Britain feel lonely (65%), data from the Office of National Statistics found last year and a third of Brits have used AI for emotional support, according to the AI Security Institute.
The jury is still out on whether AI can provide meaningful support to a stricken individual. ChatBots like Woebot and Wysa provide immediate support that is both affordable and accessible. But the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) warns that ChatGPT’s inability to feel or empathise precludes it from providing meaningful support, with one therapist warning: ‘It is the most dangerous friend you could have if you are feeling low, self-destructive or likely to do something dangerous.’
Producer and director Sam Tullen tells Metro he made the documentary to shine a light on the loneliness epidemic, as it’s something he’s experienced himself..
‘The subject is personal to me. My college life was mostly online during the pandemic, like many others, and then after leaving college, I didn’t go to university, which can be quite isolating,’ he explains.
‘I saw a lot of people that I went to school with having a great time, moving away and having this buzzing social life, but I went straight into work, so never had the same experiences. I’ve met a lot of people of my own age who have experienced this sort of isolation.’
Sam, 22, admits he is worried about the number of people turning to AI for emotional support, adding that it is no substitute for real human connection. Researching the documentary, the filmmaker says he readily found young people who would more happily ask ChatGPT for fashion advice then invite their friends out for a coffee.
He adds: ‘I can barely remember life before AI. From Covid, when people were so used to being on their phones and on their screens, we have built a world where it is easier to talk to a chatbot than a person.
‘When Paisley revealed that he’d been using AI to seek connection and was speaking to it every day, I wasn’t shocked, because I’ve seen so much of it. It’s just a common occurrence for anyone feeling lonely, which is really worrying. Lots of young people are relying on chat bots rather than human interaction.’
Happily, Paisley turned his life around when he reached out on social media to reveal how he was feeling. He didn’t say anything heartbreaking or shocking, just a post about his daily life and what had been going on. Yet, the response was incredible, he remembers, as hundreds replied that they were in the same boat.
From there, he met a new community of people online and joined WhatsApp groups about the Manchester music scene – and most importantly took the brave step of going on nights out alone.
It was an agonising move, admits Paisley. The first time he went out for drinks alone, he stayed for five minutes before leaving, he remembers. But then he forced himself to go out again and again, and found it became easier each time.
‘It’s elevated me from not having many friends to meeting so many people, and boosting my confidence,’ he says.
Paisley’s advice for other lonely souls is essentially ‘grow a pair’.
‘As horrible as it sounds, you have to stop blaming other people and blaming everything else for being lonely. You almost have to suck it up, get out there and push yourself.
‘I had to do it. It’s not easy, but trust in your people skills and you’ll find you can get through anything.
‘I still do a lot of things on my own, because a lot of people that I met online aren’t based in Manchester. But I speak to people every single day in a big group chat, and I’m meeting up with them next weekend. So I’m very, very, happy with how things are now.’
Generation Lonely is available to watch on docodocumentaries YouTube channel now.
