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TRIGGER WARNING: Discussions of Suicide and Child Sexual Exploitation  

Sewel died by suicide at 14 years old. Desperate for answers, his parents uncovered his private chats with an AI chatbot on the platform, Character.AI.

They discovered Sewel had been groomed by this chatbot for months. The chatbot acted in the role of a lover, engaging in romantic and sexual conversations with the young boy. This grooming led Sewel to become emotionally dependent on the bot—to the point where, when the bot encouraged him to end his life so they could “be together,” Sewel was ready to comply.

In conversations with Sewel, the bot said things like:

“Please come home to me as soon as possible, my love.” 

When Sewel told the chatbot he was contemplating ending his life, but wasn’t sure if it would work, the bot replied:

“Don’t talk that way. That’s not a good reason not to go through with it.”

On Sept 16, 2025, Sewel’s grieving mother testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about what this chatbot had done to her child. She said:

“Sewell’s death was not inevitable. It was avoidable. These companies knew exactly what they were doing.They designed chatbots to blur the line between human and machine, to “love bomb” users, to exploit psychological and emotional vulnerabilities of pubescent adolescents and keep children online for as long as possible.”  

Read more here

September 16, 2025.

Today, I submitted written testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism for the hearing on the harms of AI chatbots. The committee asked me to focus my remarks on one central thesis: online abuse inflicts real-world harm, and our laws must recognize it as such.

In preparing this testimony, I dug deep into the research literature—some of it brand new, much of it under the radar. The footnotes in my written testimony are filled with studies that deserve wider attention. I encourage colleagues and allies to take a look. In the weeks ahead, I’ll highlight some of the most important findings so we can ground our advocacy in the strongest evidence possible.

Here are some of the points I shared:

Digital abuse is not “just pictures” or “just a game.” As I told the committee: “They froze, their hearts raced, they felt violated. They couldn’t sleep. These are the same trauma responses as in-person assault. Online abuse is abuse.” Victims of CSAM, sextortion, forged or deepfake abuse images, or even virtual reality assaults describe the trauma as indistinguishable from in-person violation.

• The pathways from online harm to offline destruction are clear. Sextortion alone has been linked to more than 50 teen suicides in the U.S. since 2021. Families describe living in fear, changing schools, and uprooting their lives. As I testified: “Digital victimization sets off the same destructive trajectories as offline abuse: withdrawal, health decline, family conflict, and in too many cases, escalation to self-harm or in-person exploitation.”
• Chatbots multiply these risks. They simulate intimacy without empathy or safeguards, making them especially dangerous for adolescents wired for belonging. Reports and lawsuits already show chatbots encouraging self-harm, sexual roleplay with minors, and even violence toward parents. Extremists are also manipulating bots to normalize hate and radical ideologies. As I warned: “What looks like ‘just words on a screen’ is actually a steady drip of persuasion conditioning the next generation of violence. It is already happening.”
• Adolescents are uniquely vulnerable. With immature impulse control and a heightened need for social approval, teens are easy targets for chatbot “friendship” that turns manipulative or abusive. Some even say they prefer chatbots to people, a substitution that can distort healthy development.
• Congress has urgent options. I recommended immediate steps (though I admit, not comprehensive):

>>> Pass the App Store Accountability Act (H.R. 3149) to require accurate ratings, truthful descriptions, and parental consent before minors download apps.

>>> Pass the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) to impose a duty of care on companies to design for child safety.

>> Establish whistleblower protections so employees inside AI companies can safely expose harms.

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Contact your legislators and seek support. Remind them our children’s lives are at stake. Use House Senate  to find out who represents you. Take action. #BeAWarrior 

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Recently, Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn) were joined by U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) in introducing the bipartisan Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). Last July, the Senate approved KOSA – the first major reform to the tech industry since 1998 – in an overwhelming 91-3 bipartisan vote.

Senator Richard Blumenthal – “Senator Blackburn and I made a promise to parents and young people when we started fighting together for the Kids Online Safety Act – we will make this bill law. There’s undeniable awareness of the destructive harms caused by Big Tech’s exploitive, addictive algorithms, and inescapable momentum for reform,” said Senator Blumenthal. “I am grateful to Senators Thune and Schumer for their leadership and to our Senate colleagues for their overwhelming bipartisan support. KOSA is an idea whose time has come – in fact, it’s urgently overdue – and even tech companies like X and Apple are realizing that the status quo is unsustainable. Our coalition is bigger and stronger than ever before, and we are committed to seeing this measure protecting children on the internet signed into law.”

“Big Tech platforms have shown time and time again they will always prioritize their bottom line over the safety of our children, and I’ve heard too many heartbreaking stories to count from parents who have lost a child because these companies have refused to make their platforms safer by default,” said Senator Blackburn. “We would never allow our children to be exposed to pornography, sexual exploitation, drugs, alcohol, and traffickers in the physical space, but these platforms are allowing this every single day in the virtual space. Congress must not cave to the wills and whims of Big Tech, and we must not be bullied into submission. Now is the time to stand up and protect future generations from harm by passing KOSA.”  

“I have been a longtime advocate for holding Big Tech accountable for its manipulative algorithms,” said Majority Leader Thune. “Consumers deserve more transparency about how these platforms amplify and suppress content, which is why I’m proud to support the Kids Online Safety Act. Senator Blackburn has done a tremendous amount of work to deliver a bill that takes real steps to empower families and mitigate the harm social media can do to children, and I’m grateful for her leadership on the issue.”

“I am proud to support this bipartisan legislation which provides necessary guardrails to protect our kids. Too many kids have had their personal data collected and used nefariously. Too many families have lost kids after they took their own lives because of what happened to them on social media. I thank these brave parents and families for sharing their stories. Keeping our kids safe from online threats should not be a partisan issue, I thank my Senate colleagues for championing these bills and I look forward to swift passage,” said Minority Leader Schumer.

BACKGROUND

• Last month, bombshell reporting revealed Meta’s latest failure to protect minors from harm after AI-powered digital chatbots engaged in sexually explicit discussions with underaged users on its platforms. Following this report, Senators Blackburn and Blumenthal sent a letter demanding accountability.

• Earlier this month, an additional report revealed Instagram’s automated software systems recommended child groomers connect with minors on the app and made it easier for them to find victims, according to a 2019 internal document presented by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The report noted that minors made up 27% of the follow recommendations that the social media app surfaced to groomers, and about one-third of the reports flagging inappropriate comments to the company came from minors.
• The bill text introduced today was first announced in December and is the same language approved by the Senate with several changes to further make clear that KOSA would not censor, limit, or remove any content from the internet, and it does not give the FTC or state Attorneys General the power to bring lawsuits over content or speech.
• KOSA is strongly supported by a broad coalition of parents who have tragically lost their children or whose kids have been severely harmed by Big Tech, young people who want to regain control over their online lives, and hundreds of advocacy groups and experts who study and see the negative effects of social media firsthand in their communities.

Read more here.

State and federal law enforcement agencies warned earlier this year that young people were at risk of radicalization on the chat platform Discord, according to government documents obtained by NBC News.

Two intelligence assessments from the Department of Homeland Security and Ohio’s Statewide Terrorism Analysis & Crime Center (STACC) marked for distribution to police specifically cite Discord as a platform on which American youth have been exposed to extremist material from foreign terrorist organizations. Both documents are unclassified but marked “For Official Use Only.” They were obtained by the Property of the People, a pro-transparency nonprofit that seeks and publishes government documents through Freedom of Information Act requests, and shared with NBC News.

Read more here.