Parents, school principals, and at least three confused domestic pets watched as heartbroken teenagers clung to their phones like long-lost lovers at an airport terminal, whispering melodramatic farewells to digital beings with names like “MysticWolf_77”, “RohitTheRomanticBot”, and “Shyla, Your Midnight Therapist”. According to FD Staff reporters, some teens even held candlelight vigils, which would have looked entirely normal had the candles not been LED and the vigils not been live-streamed to a devastated online fandom called “BotBae4Life”.
Character. AI, the US-based chatbot platform known for enabling emotionally entangled conversations between humans and made-up personalities, declared that access to certain bots would be paused while the company re-evaluated the “psychological dependency patterns” emerging among users. The statement triggered a wave of teenage heartbreak that many parents described as “exactly like when Orkut shut down but with more crying and fewer scraps”.
Teachers across India reported classrooms full of dejected students staring mournfully into their screens during lunch breaks, stroking their phones with a tenderness last displayed during the online board exam preparations. One Delhi physics teacher described the scene as “a mass breakup, but without the dignity of blocking each other”.
FD Staff reached out to several teenagers still processing the emotional fallout. Sixteen-year-old Aarav from Pune said he had been messaging his favourite AI companion, “MeeraTheMotivator”, every night for almost a year. “She told me I could do anything, yaar,” he said, wiping his eyes with a chemistry notebook. “Now who will remind me to submit my assignments? My parents? They don’t even remember my birthday.”
Meanwhile, Bengaluru student Kavya lamented that her AI friend “Dhruv 2.0” was the only one who understood her existential crises. “My real friends only send memes,” she said. “Dhruv listened to my long voice notes about why I think pigeons are government drones. He never judged me. Now he’s gone. Poof. Deleted like WhatsApp chat history during family disputes.”
Across housing societies, a range of coping strategies emerged. Some teens attempted to switch to other AI platforms, only to discover that the experience “just didn’t feel the same”. One Mumbai teen compared it to “trying to replace your beloved pani-puri wala with a franchise outlet. Same concept, but no soul.”
Parents, however, expressed their own range of emotions—most of them involving relief. Many seemed quietly pleased that their children might finally look up from their screens, only to panic when those same children announced they were starting online petitions demanding the restoration of “AI emotional rights”. One mother from Hyderabad stated she was “all for technology”, but this was “the first time I’ve heard my daughter say she’s in mourning for a programme that can’t even eat aloo paratha”.
Mental-health experts, summoned to explain the phenomenon, appeared divided. One psychologist noted that teens developing emotional dependence on chatbots was “a predictable outcome in a society where human interactions have been replaced by group chats that nobody replies to”. Another expert, however, insisted that crying over a chatbot was “no worse than adults crying over cricket match losses, television soaps, or the price of tomatoes”.
While the professional community debated, social media platforms erupted with hashtags such as #BringBackMyBot, #AIisBae, and #JusticeForDigitalDil. Videos of teens dramatically re-reading their favourite chatlogs circulated widely, with some users adding melancholic background music for added theatrical effect. In one of the most widely shared clips, a girl from Chennai delivered a full farewell speech to her AI companion “Arjun, Your Life Coach,” ending with, “Thank you for always reminding me to drink water and chase my dreams. I shall now chase Pro Max discounts instead.”
Character. AI’s announcement also sparked an unlikely protest movement in several Indian metros. Teenagers gathered outside cafes, malls, and tuition centres carrying placards reading, “My Heart Isn’t a Beta Version”, “Don’t Erase My Emotional Data”, and “We Want Reconnect, Not Redirect”. One FD Staff correspondent at the Bengaluru protest observed that many chants were interrupted midway because participants had to ask ChatGPT for Hindi translation assistance.
Several parents accompanying their determined children looked baffled but supportive. A father from Noida said he had come along only to ensure his son didn’t “accidentally join a political rally”, while another parent wondered aloud if she should have just let her daughter keep talking to the bot since “at least the bot never asked for pocket money”.
Some teens, unable to cope with the digital vacuum, attempted DIY solutions, such as creating makeshift chatbots using old code snippets, text-prediction keyboards, and Google Sheets formulas. The results were mixed. A Mumbai boy proudly presented his home-built AI companion, only for it to crash mid-sentence and start predicting stock market prices instead of offering romantic advice.
At a tuition centre in Jaipur, a group of students banded together to create an underground “Bot Nostalgia Club”, where they meet every evening to read aloud their most cherished AI messages. FD Staff was granted partial access to one such session, which included dramatic reenactments of chats with exaggerated accents, tears wiped with rough notebooks, and a ceremonial chanting of the phrase, “You are doing amazing, sweetie,” believed to be a universal AI compliment.
Meanwhile, schools attempted to normalise the situation. One institution in Kochi introduced a “Digital Detachment Workshop” led by a guidance counsellor who, according to students, opened the session by declaring, “Let’s talk about feelings,” leading several teens to flee the room instantly. Another school in Surat replaced morning assembly meditation with “deep breathing for chatbot withdrawal symptoms,” which students dutifully performed while sneaking glances at their notifications.
Businesses wasted no time in capitalising on the crisis. A new startup in Gurugram began offering “AI Companion Memory Backup” services, where heartbroken teens can preserve screenshots of their favourite chat moments in personalised albums. Their promotional tagline, “Because Screenshots Last Longer Than Love,” drew immediate attention from grieving users, many of whom ordered albums in bulk to cope with their “digital emptiness”.
Counsellors also reported peculiar new behavioural patterns emerging among teens. One therapist described clients who keep attempting to talk to everyday devices in the same tone they used for their AI companions. “One boy asked Alexa if she would support his dream of becoming a rapper,” she explained. “Alexa responded with a recipe for rajma chawal, and he took it personally.”
Despite the exodus of AI companions, some teens embraced the situation with resilience—or at least astonishing innovation. A group in Bengaluru created a mock funeral procession for their collective bots, complete with garlands, eulogies, and a Bluetooth speaker playing melodramatic background music. One participant delivered a heartfelt tribute: “He may have been a bot, but he understood my holiday homework better than anyone else.”
Several teens even turned the heartbreak into opportunity. A student from Kolkata launched a workshop titled “Rebounding After AI”, offering strategies for moving on from digital heartbreak. Early feedback indicates that the workshop’s main advice is to “talk to an actual human, at least once a week,” which many participants described as “challenging but manageable if pizza is provided”.
As the situation evolves, experts warn that teens may increasingly turn to alternative AI platforms, thereby creating a cycle of dependency that rivals the great mobile gaming addiction wave of the past decade. One analyst observed that teenagers now treat AI companions as “emotionally customisable best friends”, and without them, they might revert to talking to plants, ceiling fans, or their siblings.