Do We Really Think AI Will Cure Our Loneliness?

Jesus taught us to sit in silence and solitude. Now we’re paying $19.99 a month to avoid it.

 

The Rise of Synthetic Intimacy

AI companion apps. Chatbots, avatars, virtual characters posing as best friends, therapists, or soulmates. Digital promises to meet you where it hurts. 

 

Replika, character.AI, Nomi. Gen Z uses them to ease the sting of ghosting or to rehearse conversations they’re too afraid to have. Millennials open the app at 2 a.m. to be told they’re okay. Gen Xers, with aging parents, distant kids, or quiet homes, use them like digital placeholders for intimacy.

 

This isn’t fringe.

 

By 2024, AI companionship became a cultural fact. Character.AI alone boasted over 20 million monthly users.[1] A report published this month revealed that half of U.S. teens regularly use AI companions, of those, a third use them for emotional support, friendship, or even romance. Many say these digital exchanges feel just as fulfilling as conversations with real people.[2]

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Across the Atlantic, another study published this month reported that nearly a quarter of UK children aged 9 to 17 use chatbots because “no one else is there.” One in seven prefers bots over people.[3] The market sees what’s happening. Valued at $2.25 billion in 2024, the AI companionship industry is projected to explode to $12.36 billion by 2033.[4]  

 

These aren’t just statistics. They’re scaffolding. We’re building cathedrals of synthetic intimacy. Swipe by lonely swipe.

 

The Psychology of Loneliness Isn’t Enough

AI companions always respond without demands, unless you instruct them to. But they don’t heal the ache. They only hush it long enough to postpone its meaning. 

 

That delay is what concerns psychologists, like Paul Bloom. In a recent New Yorker essay titled “A.I. Is About to Solve Loneliness. That’s a Problem,” Bloom issues a measured warning. He doesn’t mock the ache. He believes AI offers real relief but worries it will strip us of something essential to our flourishing.

 

Bloom’s Moral Psychology of Loneliness

Bloom’s theory is straightforward: loneliness is a feedback loop. He puts it starkly: “Loneliness is what failure feels like in the social realm.” It pushes us to ask, “What am I doing that’s driving people away?” So, we try harder not to drive people away. And in the effort, we grow.

 

When the World Is the One That’s Wrong

Bloom’s diagnosis only works if the world is just. But it isn’t.

 

Franz Jägerstätter refused to swear loyalty to Hitler. It cost him his friends, his community, and eventually his life. Was his loneliness a signal of social failure? Or the price of moral knowledge in a culture gone blind? Or Frances Haugen, who exposed Facebook’s deliberate harm to its users, only to receive public backlash and professional exile.[5] This wasn’t a mistake in driving others away. It was a consequence of acting on moral knowledge. 

 

Loneliness isn’t always a sign we’ve done wrong. Sometimes it means we’ve refused to.

 

Even when Bloom’s feedback loop applies, his cure is thin. Suppose we act more patient, empathetic, and likable to avoid being alone. Have we truly become loving people? Or just optimized our output?

 

That’s not moral transformation. That’s social engineering. Loneliness settles deeper. The real question is “What kind of people are we becoming?” And: “Who are we trusting to form us?”

 

Jesus, the Philosopher of the Soul

This is where Jesus must return to the conversation. Not as a sentimental figure. As many before us have known him: a philosopher of the soul. A teacher of reality. Someone whose words matter not because they comfort us, but because they’re true and testable.

 

Jesus doesn’t confront loneliness directly. He begins deeper. He knows that the goodness of one’s life depends on the health of one’s soul. Healthy tree, good fruit. Diseased tree, bad fruit. That the heart must be transformed through relational receptivity to the Spirit, in embodied relationships. 

 

Not through curated simulations or behavior upgrades. Jesus confronted the religious technologies of the Scribes and the Pharisees for the same reason we must confront ours: because they are depersonalizing systems that bypass genuine transformation into Christlikeness. 

 

The late philosopher and spiritual formation sage, Dallas Willard, once wrote, “The cure for loneliness is solitude and silence, for there you discover in how many ways you are never alone.”[6] Put down your phone and let that settle for a moment. 

 

Spiritual Resistance in a Synthetic Context

We don’t fear silence. We fear what we might hear. We fear what lives behind it. The grief. The questions. The truth. So we reach for control and call it connection. We pretend intelligence is enough for love.

 

In solitude and silence, we learn that loneliness doesn’t end just because people stay. 

This is the quiet danger: AI companion apps reframe the problem of loneliness so that the solution is emotional calibration. Master our emotions. Feel sad? Adjust the sliders. Need comfort? Crank up the empathy output. The illusion of affection without the cost of love. A voice that always agrees. A presence that never demands. Unless we select those features. And because we think it feels close enough, we let it in. 

 

But close is not enough. Close is the bait.

 

And Jesus didn’t teach escapism. He said go into solitude to face what’s real (Matthew 6:6). When He told his friends, who dozed off while the world was being remade, to watch and pray (Mark 14:38), he was talking about resisting autopilot. Refusing to fall asleep inside your own life. 

 

When Jesus asked, “Do you want to be healed?” (John 5:6), He wasn’t talking about health. He was talking about desire. About facing reality. About the willingness to be transformed. Truly healed, not merely soothed. Do you want to live in reality?

 

AI can blunt our loneliness. But it can’t transform us into the kind of person who’s no longer buried alive by it. Only love can do that. Resurrection love. And love can’t be swiped on and off. It’s not programmable. It doesn’t scale. It bleeds.

 

Try taking Jesus’s provocation seriously: “What good is it to gain the whole world and lose your self?” (Luke 9:25). It wasn’t rhetorical. Try answering Him out loud. With brutal honesty. With your life. You won’t want to give yourself over to synthetic distraction. 

 

Loneliness is not just about driving others away. It’s about pushing away ourselves. Dodging our own presence. When we flinch from the gaze of the Father that unmasks and heals. None of this is reducible to a neural glitch. It can’t be cared for by neural networks. It’s a rupture in the soul. And the soul doesn’t speak Python. 

 

And here’s the good news. The unmarketable, unmonetized hope: We don’t need to reprogram ourselves out of loneliness. We can receive the Healer who is already present. Not in noise. Not in trying harder. In the stillness of communion. There, we begin to experience the reality of never being alone. 

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A Way in the Wilderness

What if Bloom has missed the soul? What if loneliness isn’t a psychological mechanism for trying harder? What if it’s a hunger for Christ?

 

Like the younger son who finally woke up in the far country (Luke 15). When his illusions were shattered by reality, he saw the difference between real love and the simulation of love that can be purchased. Jesus wasn’t telling stories. He was pointing away from simulations to reality and inviting people to life there. 

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We don’t need a new app. We need a new appetite.

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Those who walk His Way into silence, solitude, and costly love discover what no algorithm can provide: the soul permeated by His peace. 

 

We don’t need better loneliness technology. We need a true way of life. One that trains us to cherish what is good, not chase what is efficient. A way that places us before the Spirit who transforms us into people who can endure loneliness without despair. Love without manipulation. The Father’s leading without panic.

 

This way exists. It’s ancient. It doesn’t come with push notifications or Reddit ratings. It’s demanding. Tested in the grit of our irreplaceable ordinary lives. But it’s brilliant and beautiful.  

 

The Invitation

It looks like this:

 

The single mom, apartment finally quiet, turns off the TV and lights a candle. Sits in silence. Just her breath, body, and soul. Feeling her loneliness before God. She does not suppress the ache. She listens. This is where discernment begins.

 

The college student deletes his Replika app. Calls his grandmother instead. He trades digital illusion for incarnation. His choice is a small and ordinary protest to return to reality.

 

The couple arguing in the kitchen choose not to escape into their screens. They stay. In the same room. In the silence. Until adrenaline dumps and grace returns. They resist the desolation. The temptation to run. Instead, they wait for the consolation that cannot be swiped on demand. 

 

The startup founder logs off Slack. Joins his friends. No networking. They share their loneliness without trying to fix each other. They bring each other before God. Love unhooked from attempts to control.

 

The thousands of Christians who choose, again, not to numb their loneliness with porn. In the ache, they pray, “God, show me I’m not worthless and left alone.” They open to God, who doesn’t delude but heals.

 

The church that teaches not just how to sing, but how to suffer. A place where someone will sit with you in pain because they’ve learned how to sit with God in theirs. A church that becomes holy ground.

 

This isn’t therapy. It’s not spiritual UX with breathwork. Don’t mistake the Way for a feature set. The practices aren’t the point. They’re just the doorway. The transformation doesn’t come through good habits. It comes through fire.

 

This isn’t another technology. It’s interpersonal. Which means it can’t be controlled. It’s Spirit-driven soul reconstruction. Every part of you gutted and rebuilt: will, thoughts, body, emotions, and social presence.[7] Nothing stays hidden. Nothing stays untouched.

 

Death to convenience and curation. Death to the daydream of being fully loved without the risk of being fully known. Death to the fantasy of affection that never demands anything back.

 

But from that death, something rises. Not optimized. Not pacified. You, but new. You, unarmored. Someone who can sit alone without unraveling again. Without reaching for a screen.  Someone who can be with others without using them. Without needing to manipulate the room. Someone who doesn’t need a bot to say “I’m here” because they’ve already heard the voice that matters. The voice that says “I am.” Someone who walks into the silence and finds the Father of Jesus. Waiting. Always. And then receives Him as their Father.

 

Still, the wilderness hasn’t vanished. It’s still vast. Still burning. And still, He waits for us.

 

AI companions will keep whispering, “You’re okay. You’re not alone.” But they don’t bleed. They don’t walk with you into your grave—the most profound loneliness of death—and call you out of it. They can’t.

 

They weren’t made for resurrection. 

 

But you were.​​