Tech executives who build addictive platforms often shield their own children from the very products they market to everyone else's kids. Mark Zuckerberg carefully monitors his children's screen time. TikTok's CEO doesn't let his kids use the app. Snap's CEO limited his seven-year-old to 90 minutes of technology per week—not per day, per week. Meanwhile, the average American teenager spends nearly nine hours daily on screens outside of school.

This glaring hypocrisy raises an uncomfortable question: if Silicon Valley's elite treat digital technology like a hazard their own families must avoid, why are they insisting it benefits marginalized youth? More importantly, as artificial intelligence becomes increasingly woven into daily life, could therapeutic approaches traditionally used for addiction and trauma help people develop healthier relationships with these technologies?

The Unexpected Convergence of Two Fringe Fields

The convergence of AI and psychedelics represents one of the stranger developments in modern mental health care. Both were considered fringe concepts just a decade ago. Today, researchers are seriously exploring how machine learning might enhance psychedelic therapy while simultaneously questioning whether therapeutic frameworks designed for psychedelic integration could help people process their increasingly complex relationships with artificial intelligence.

Psychedelic therapy has experienced a remarkable resurgence, with substances like psilocybin, MDMA, and LSD showing promise in treating depression, PTSD, and anxiety. Clinical trials suggest these compounds can facilitate profound psychological shifts when properly integrated into therapeutic frameworks. The key phrase is "properly integrated"—the psychedelic experience itself is only part of the equation.

When Algorithms Meet Altered States

Integration, the process of making sense of psychedelic experiences and incorporating insights into daily life, remains one of therapy's most challenging phases. Experiences during sessions can be intensely complex, involving emotional, psychological, and spiritual dimensions that patients struggle to articulate. Natural language processing systems can analyze narrative accounts from psychedelic sessions, identifying themes and emotional patterns that might escape human observation.

A 2024 research paper proposed using AI to process personal narratives from individuals who underwent psychedelic experiences, combining phenomenological methods with machine learning. The researchers envisioned digital platforms that could analyze non-ordinary states of consciousness induced not just by psychedelics but also by meditation and breathwork. The promise is personalization at scale—AI systems could theoretically analyze genetic markers, brain imaging results, and lifestyle factors to determine which psychedelic compounds might work best for specific individuals.

But reducing profound psychological experiences to data points feels uncomfortable, even potentially dangerous. Psychedelic experiences vary wildly between individuals and even within the same person across different sessions. Mindset, environment, dosage, previous experiences, and psychological history all influence the journey in ways that resist standardization.

Two women engage in an online therapy session using tablets and headsets, reflecting modern psychedelics and AI applications in mental health support.

The Digital Divide Reversed

For three decades, the term "digital divide" referred to a seemingly immutable law: wealthy kids had ample access to technology while others didn't. Policy makers and philanthropists invested heavily to close this gap. But something unexpected happened. In developed nations, the divide started reversing.

Entertainment screen use occupies about two additional hours daily for teens from low-income families compared to those from high-income families. Young children whose parents lack college education are three times more likely to use TikTok than children whose parents hold postgraduate degrees. College-educated parents are more likely to believe smartphones might adversely affect their children and, therefore, are more inclined to limit screen time.

Who Suffers Most from Social Media

The discrepancy extends beyond class. Consider these troubling patterns:

LGBTQ+ teens report spending more time on social media than non-LGBTQ+ teens.
Black and Hispanic teens are roughly five times more likely than white teens to say they're on Instagram almost constantly.
LGBTQ+ adolescents are much more likely than their peers to say social media negatively impacts their health.
Nearly twice as many LGBTQ+ teens reported they'd be better off without TikTok and Instagram compared to non-LGBTQ+ teens.

Jim Steyer, CEO of Common Sense Media, told The New York Times that greater social media use by Black and Hispanic young people "can help perpetuate inequality in society because higher levels of social media use among kids have been demonstrably linked to adverse effects such as depression and anxiety, inadequate sleep, eating disorders, poor self-esteem, and greater exposure to online harassment."

LGBTQ+ teens are significantly more likely to experience cyberbullying, online sexual predation, disrupted sleep, and fragmented attention compared to peers. LGBTQ+ minors are three times more likely to experience unwanted and risky online interactions. Black and Hispanic teens, while slightly less likely than white teens to report cyberbullying, are much more likely to say online harassment is "a major problem for people their age."

Could Integration Frameworks Help?

Which brings the discussion back to an intriguing possibility: if psychedelic therapy helps people integrate profound experiences and develop healthier relationships with their inner lives, could similar therapeutic frameworks help people navigate relationships with AI and psychedelics? The parallel isn't perfect, but it's not absurd either.

Both involve altered states of consciousness—one chemically induced, the other technologically mediated. Both can provide genuine benefits while also carrying risks of harm. Both require integration work to translate experiences into lasting positive change. Psychedelic therapists emphasize "set and setting"—mindset and environment profoundly influence outcomes. Could this same attention to context help people develop healthier technology use patterns?

The Tech Industry's Familiar Playbook

The tech industry's response to concerns about social media harm mirrors tobacco companies' historical playbook. Instead of acknowledging damage to teens, tech giants insist they're blameless and their products are mostly harmless. Sometimes they make more audacious claims: that social media actually helps teens, despite mounting evidence that it's harming many of them.

When Zuckerberg was asked about Instagram making teen users feel worse about their bodies, he cleverly reframed the results as "generally positive," even though at least one in ten teen girls reported that Instagram worsened their body image, sleep, eating habits, and anxiety. Tech lobbyists deploy a dual argument: social media especially benefits teens from historically marginalized communities; therefore, regulation would harm them.

The early internet did help many Black, low-income, and LGBTQ+ Americans find resources and community. Current surveys find that LGBTQ+ teens report experiencing more benefits from social media than non-LGBTQ+ teens. But wholesale opposition to legislation ignores strong evidence that social media also disproportionately harms young people in those same communities.

A businesswoman and a child using digital tablets in a minimalist office space, representing generational curiosity about psychedelics and AI innovation.

What Young People Actually Want

Researchers, unprompted, heard teens across multiple focus groups blame Instagram for increasing anxiety and depression. Studies show substantial shares of young people believe social media harms their mental health, and increasing empirical evidence backs them up. Where are Gen Z voices praising social media for mental health benefits? Few and far between.

The social media platforms of today differ fundamentally from the early internet. Do teens really need bottomless, algorithmically curated feeds prioritizing emotional power and political extremity just to find information? Do they benefit from manipulative notifications designed to keep them looking and clicking throughout the day?

The tech industry argues that more education and parental controls address social media's harms. These approaches matter, but they won't deter companies from developing products that are, by design, difficult to quit. Calling for "consumer education" is exactly what tobacco, alcohol, and other companies with harmful products have relied on to generate sympathy and defer regulation.

Social-media companies have shown repeatedly that they will not solve these problems voluntarily. A recent Harris Poll found that 69 percent of 18-to-27-year-olds support requiring social media companies to develop child-safe account options. Seventy-two percent of LGBTQ+ Gen Z members support this, too.

Legislators must reject the flawed arguments social media companies promote to block regulation, just as legislators rejected tobacco companies' arguments last century. Psychedelic therapists help patients navigate profound alterations of consciousness, teaching integration skills and frameworks for making sense of extraordinary experiences. Perhaps similar approaches are needed for relationships with AI—not to demonize technology, but to develop genuinely therapeutic frameworks acknowledging both potential and peril while supporting people in finding balance.

The question isn't whether psychedelic therapists can help patients navigate relationships with AI. The question is whether systems will be built that deserve healthy relationships at all.

Can Psychedelic Therapists Help Patients Navigate Their Relationship with AI?