Understanding Risk and Dependency in AI Chatbot Use from User Discourse

TL;DR

This study analyzes Reddit user posts to empirically explore how psychological risks and emotional responses to AI chatbots manifest, revealing key experiential dimensions and concerns related to AI safety and user regulation.

Contribution

It introduces a large-scale, multi-agent, LLM-assisted thematic analysis of real-world user discourse to identify experiential dimensions of AI-related psychological risk.

Findings

Five experiential dimensions of AI risk identified

Self-regulation difficulties are most prevalent

Fear centers on autonomy, control, and technical risk

Abstract

Generative AI systems are increasingly embedded in everyday life, yet empirical understanding of how psychological risk associated with AI use emerges, is experienced, and is regulated by users remains limited. We present a large-scale computational thematic analysis of posts collected between 2023 and 2025 from two Reddit communities, r/AIDangers and r/ChatbotAddiction, explicitly focused on AI-related harm and distress. Using a multi-agent, LLM-assisted thematic analysis grounded in Braun and Clarke's reflexive framework, we identify 14 recurring thematic categories and synthesize them into five higher-order experiential dimensions. To further characterize affective patterns, we apply emotion labeling using a BERT-based classifier and visualize emotional profiles across dimensions. Our findings reveal five empirically derived experiential dimensions of AI-related psychological risk grounded in real-world user discourse, with self-regulation difficulties emerging as the most prevalent and fear concentrated in concerns related to autonomy, control, and technical risk. These results provide early empirical evidence from lived user experience of how AI safety is perceived and emotionally experienced outside laboratory or speculative contexts, offering a foundation for future AI safety research, evaluation, and responsible governance.