As a therapist and youth mental health leader in San Diego, I am increasingly hearing something that would have sounded unthinkable just a few years ago.
A middle school student recently told her therapist she prefers asking artificial intelligence for advice because “it doesn’t get mad or judge me.”
She was using AI to navigate friendships, emotions and conflict. But over time, her real-life relationships grew smaller. Her isolation deepened. Her anxiety increased.
That story should concern all of us.
Not because technology is inherently bad. AI and digital tools are here to stay. But adolescents cannot replace real human connection with algorithms and expect to remain emotionally healthy.
At the exact moment young people are facing rising mental health challenges, social isolation and increasing dependence on screens, California’s after-school system largely stops supporting students after sixth grade.
Meanwhile, state lawmakers are making budget decisions right now that will determine whether more adolescents gain access to the support systems they need — or continue being left behind.
Assemblymembers David Alvarez and Darshana Patel, who both serve on the Assembly budget subcommittee overseeing education funding, have an opportunity to help change that.
California already invests more than $4 billion annually in expanded learning and after-school programs through the Expanded Learning Opportunities Program, known as ELO-P. But adolescents remain largely excluded from those resources despite making up more than one-third of the state’s student population.
That disconnect no longer matches reality.
For more than 20 years at the YMCA of San Diego County, I have worked with teens and young adults navigating anxiety, trauma, foster care transitions, homelessness and instability. Again and again, I have seen how one trusted adult relationship can change the trajectory of a young person’s life.
Sometimes that relationship is a therapist. Often, it is a coach, mentor, youth leader or after-school staff member who consistently shows up during some of the most difficult years of adolescence.
One teenager comes to mind. After a major disappointment at school, he began withdrawing and heading down an unhealthy path. But an out-of-school soccer coach stayed close, checked in consistently and reminded him he still mattered and still belonged somewhere. That relationship became a lifeline during a vulnerable moment when his future could have gone in a very different direction.
This is why we often say “connection is protection.”
Young people need environments where trusted adults truly know them — where someone notices when they stop showing up, when their behavior changes or when they are struggling emotionally.
AI cannot do that. Social media cannot do that.
That matters even more during adolescence, when young people are navigating identity, peer pressure, academic stress, anxiety and increasing exposure to harmful online environments. Many are also balancing jobs, helping care for siblings or dealing with instability at home.
Yet this is precisely the age when many after-school opportunities disappear.
In San Diego, families are still searching for affordable, safe and engaging spaces for adolescents after school and during the summer. Youth-serving organizations are ready to help meet that need. But the state’s funding system has not kept pace with what adolescents are actually experiencing.
Lawmakers do not need to create an entirely new system. They need to modernize and expand the one California already has.
That means using this year’s budget process to increase access to expanded learning programs for adolescents and ensure these investments reach the students who increasingly need them most.
Because no algorithm can replace the impact of a trusted adult who knows a young person well enough to notice when they are struggling and cares enough to step in.
Our adolescents need more places where those relationships can happen — and they need them now.
Kristina “TK” Halmai-Gillan is director of service innovation for YMCA of San Diego County Youth and Family Services, where she oversees youth mental health, prevention and positive youth development initiatives.
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