Half of Gen Z open to an AI partner: the uncomfortable figure among five stats about young people

By The Up and Up (Rachel Janfaza) · October 20, 2026.

Rachel Janfaza's newsletter The Up and Up brings together five figures on Gen Z in the US. The one that interests us most: half of this generation says it is open to a romantic relationship with an artificial intelligence, according to Harris Poll data.

The other four, attributed to their sources. Donald Trump's approval rating among young men under 30 stands at 28%, according to the latest NBC News Decision Desk poll. In 2024, that group backed him by a one-point margin, according to the NBC exit polls cited in the article. Barack Obama has a 64% approval rating among young men, according to Speaking with American Men data published by Puck. Some 48% of Gen Z belong to an online community, according to a new Pew report. And 41% say that “texting and emailing is exhausting,” compared with 26% of Americans overall, according to Quad, from The Harris Poll.

A methodological note: these are figures cited by a third party, with no detail on sample or question wording. Being “open to” a relationship with an AI is a stated disposition, not a behavior. Half saying it does not mean half doing it.

Our take: what matters is not the figure in isolation, but how it fits with the one on fatigue. If 41% experience text as a burden, a companion that always responds, without friction and without judgment, is tempting. AI is not competing against the ideal human bond, but against the exhausting human bond. That is its real appeal, and that is where the risk lies.

The article itself points to a nuance we share: for work and study the usefulness is obvious, but outsourcing personal relationships to chatbots could have serious consequences for a generation whose social skills were already affected by the pandemic. More broadly, research on artificial companionship is still young, and it is wise not to draw firm conclusions in either direction.

We would not fall into doom-mongering. A conversational companion can ease the loneliness of someone who today has no one, and that is a real good. But in the short term the challenge is one of design and responsibility: ensuring these products strengthen people's ability to connect rather than replace it, and that they are not optimized to maximize dependence. In the long term, a society with abundance and free time will have more room for human connection, not less; whether AI becomes a bridge toward it, rather than a substitute, will depend on the decisions made now.

One figure that should not go unnoticed: the 48% in online communities shows that this generation is still seeking connection. The question is not whether it wants to connect, but with what tools and at what cost.