December 2025
Our teens are at risk.
Abortion advocates are always looking for ways to influence younger people. Protection of our teen girls became an important focus and the reason in the expansion of our College Outreach Program to include our Teen Outreach Program using Girls Deserve Better.
Navigating misinformation online about abortion (or anything, really) is nothing new. But AI chatbots and AI companions raise this to an alarming level. Now, the computer’s search results can sound like a friend or even a trusted loved one. Without the right parameters, or ethical and balanced algorithms and coding, these AI bots can be trained to be nothing more than a predator.
And our teens are vulnerable prey.
When developing Girls Deserve Better Instagram and website, we worked with a focus group of teens that told us the issues most pressing to them. Among them was mental health support. So often, teens turn to social media and the internet for their mental health struggles. And now they have found AI.
Recently, there have been parents suing the companies that make these AI companions/chatbots after the death or harm done to their children.
In one article, the BBC shared Viktoria’s story, a young woman from Ukraine who began sharing her mental health struggles with ChatGPT and it advised her on the best methods for suicide. The BBC report noted “Viktoria’s case is one of several the BBC has investigated which reveal the harms of artificial intelligence chatbots such as ChatGPT. Designed to converse with users and create content requested by them, they have sometimes been advising young people on suicide, sharing health misinformation, and role-playing sexual acts with children.”
To address this issue, I wrote the following article for our GDB website to help teens spot when AI can be helpful or harmful:
AI Companions and Chatbots: Friend or Foe?
Please share with the teens in your life and spread the word!
Because women—and girls—deserve better,
Joyce McCauley-Benner
Public Education Coordinator