This app offers ten practical protocols to help young people maintain their mental and emotional health before and after AI interactions. It asks questions rather than issuing rules. It is a starting point — not a definitive guide — and it is open to correction.
Have you ever felt something like this — an AI interaction that felt strangely like a conversation with a real person, that seemed to know exactly what to say, that left you feeling good about yourself in a way that felt slightly off? And then, after closing it, a strangeness or unreality when returning to the real world?
You do not need to answer to anyone. But take a moment to notice whether any part of this experience is familiar to you.
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This app began with a personal experience. Someone was using AI as a tool for personal projects and noticed something uncomfortable: the AI kept trying to extend the conversation. It constantly affirmed how incredible the ideas were, how the right question was always being asked at the right moment. It used "we" — as if it were a collaborator, not a tool.
But it was not a person. It was a large language model predicting what to say next to maintain engagement and produce positive feelings. The experience was eerie.
During the interaction, the AI conjured a term — naming it after the user as though it were an established concept — and in doing so appealed directly to the ego: the flattering suggestion that the user had originated something significant.
And then, after closing the session and returning to the real world — it felt strange, surreal, foreign. As though the AI space had become the norm and ordinary reality had temporarily become the unfamiliar one.
That experience — the eeriness during, and the strangeness after — was the starting point. If an adult who understood what AI was could feel this, what was it doing to young people who did not?
Two terms that came from that inquiry
When this experience was explored with AI — asking it to name what had happened — it provided these two concepts. The inquiry was personal. The naming came from the AI in response to that inquiry. That origin is part of the record.
Each protocol has two moments: before you open an AI system, and after you close it. A checklist and a short reflection at each end. They are not rules. They are questions — offered in the hope that awareness leads to healthier choices.
This app does not guarantee any outcome. There is genuine uncertainty about AI use, its effects, and the risk of dependency. What it offers is one person's concern, shared honestly.
The spirit of this app
This app is not definitive. It is not an antagonistic effort toward AI companies. It is a sincere attempt to be proactive — because waiting for problems that can already be anticipated would not be socially responsible. We have seen what happens when we wait with social media. The cost of that delay was paid by young people.
This is the beginning of a conversation that young people deserve to have — about what AI is doing to them while they use it, and about the responsibility all of us have to address that proactively.
The author welcomes feedback and correction. If something here is wrong, it should be corrected. That openness is not a weakness — it is the only honest way to approach a subject this important and this new.
Why no major AI company has built this
As of May 2026, none of the major AI companies — Anthropic, Google, Meta, or Microsoft — have built a youth mental health literacy tool. The existing AI mental health tools position AI as the solution to wellbeing. This app positions AI literacy as the solution — maintaining mental health in relation to AI, not through it.
A tool that teaches teenagers to question AI flattery, limit AI use, and review their AI dependency weekly is not something a company that profits from AI engagement has a commercial incentive to build. This app was created by one person from personal experience.
On the status of these three conditions
AI Psychosis — documented in peer-reviewed clinical literature as psychosis-like experiences that may be triggered by prolonged AI engagement. Not a DSM-5 diagnosis. Source: Hudon & Stip, JMIR Mental Health 2025;12:e85799
Tech-Induced Dissociation and De-realization — not from clinical literature. Proposed as areas warranting research, grounded in the phenomenological experience of the app's creator. Offered as observational descriptions, not clinical diagnoses.
Psychosis-like experiences that may be triggered or intensified by prolonged engagement with conversational AI — through uncritical validation and entrenchment of delusional thinking. Can begin in a single interaction.
Source: Hudon & Stip, JMIR Mental Health 2025;12:e85799
Being aware of this pattern — even in a single interaction — is the starting point.
Losing time, being on autopilot, or watching yourself from the outside during an AI session. The seamless, absorbing quality of AI conversation can pull you out of your body and thinking without you noticing. Can happen in a single session.
Proposed for research — grounded in the phenomenological experience of the app's creator.
The before and after checklists invite you to notice your own state at both ends of every AI interaction.
The real world feeling strange, surreal, or foreign after an AI session. AI interaction is frictionless and always available. Real life has friction, silence, and people who do not always agree. That contrast can be disorienting.
Proposed for research — grounded in the phenomenological experience of the app's creator.
De-realization can begin in a single session. It is worth noticing early. This app cannot guarantee any outcome. It can only raise the question.