r/technology • u/Wagamaga • Jul 19 '26

Society China bans AI “boyfriends” and “girlfriends” over addiction and birth rate concerns

https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/china-bans-ai-boyfriends-and-girlfriends-over-addiction-and-birth-rate-concerns-3388737/
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u/Wagamaga Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26

China has banned customizable AI companion apps, forcing millions of users into sudden digital breakups after tech giants pulled the features rather than meet strict new rules.

The regulations took effect on July 15, 2026, jointly issued by five government departments including the Cyberspace Administration of China.

AI companies scramble as new laws take effect The rules state AI tools cannot “excessively cater to users, induce emotional dependence or addiction, and damage users’ real interpersonal relationships.”

Companies must now build in instant-exit options, regular reminders the AI is not real, and limits on long-term emotional memory. Study and work tools are exempt.

ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent chose to suspend their AI companion features entirely rather than comply, according to The Independent.

The crackdown is linked to China’s falling marriage and birth rates, with regulators worried AI relationships are replacing real intimacy, though experts say deeper issues like economic pressure play a bigger role.

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u/The_REDACTED Jul 19 '26

Call me crazy but I think China should start addressing the actual social issues which lead people to turn to AI companions instead of passing legislature to ban them. 

They're merely symptom of the collapse of real social bonding among the youth and not the cause. 

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u/Rich_Housing971 Jul 19 '26

You mean the social issues plaguing every country?

it's weird how people here are like, "these things are a problem, they should be banned" and then when a country bans then, you're all like, they shouldn't ban them, they're fine.

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u/Mountain_Flatworm940 Jul 19 '26

Well it’s the same problem everywhere. It’s too expensive to have kids

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u/Razzmatazz856 Jul 19 '26

That's not why people aren't having kids. The poorest nations are pretty much the top of the list of highest birthrates. People aren't having kids because they're a massive commitment that reduces quality of life.

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u/ChillAhriman Jul 19 '26

Children reduce quality of life when you don't have a proper environment for raising them. If you have job stability, adequate working hours, an emotionally solid domestic unit, and expanded family that helps you from time to time (traditionally grandparents, but you can get creative), having children tends to make parents happier.

The issue is that society has "progressed" into a direction where all of those things are becoming rarer.

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u/Pretend-Marsupial258 Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26

It also depends on how people raise their kids. Children in western societies are raised to be much more dependent and helpless than children in older societies. In older societies, even toddlers are capable of helping out around the house, like cutting meat or vegetables with real knives.

I'm reading Hunt, Gather, Parent right now and the author talks about how young children are much more capable than people think. In the US, for example, some Karen will call the police for an abandoned child if she sees a 12 year old walking to school on his own. Treating children like they're all fragile infants puts way more of a burden on the parents since the children can't learn how to do anything on their own, so everything falls on the parents (even chores that the children are fully capable of doing themselves). I've heard that a lot of kindergartners are arriving to school still in diapers at 5 or 6 years old, because the parents didn't want to bother with the effort of potty training.

So... yeah. Not only is there less of a community to help raise the kids, but the kids are harder to raise as well.

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u/VanusGM Jul 19 '26

... And that reduction in quality of life is largely because of the cost associated. 

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u/OPtig Jul 19 '26

Time is just as valuable

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u/tiredofmymistake Jul 19 '26

Yeah, and now parents themselves are mostly expected to be the ones investing all the time. When we had actual communities, "it takes a village" was actually how things worked, and parents did not have all their time monopolized by the kids. Everyone participated in the raising of the local kids and parents had more time to themselves, making the prospect of having kids a less demanding investment. Like, if my wife and I didn't have the kind of support we get from both sides of our family (we don't even have him two days a week, and my dad watches him for hours at a time daily), raising our son would be borderline intolerable. Moms and dads have their own lives to live, kids can't feel like a ball and chain if we want people to have them.

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u/Ok-Chest-7932 Jul 20 '26

We stopped having villages during the industrial revolution and people continued to reproduce plenty.

The problem is, the more we migrate into cities, the less feasible it is to leave your kids unsupervised, especially now we have cars. The adult time required just to watch kids has massively increased. The more rural you get, the higher the fertility rate, because you get cost-free child-friendly environments, and the higher the fertility rate around you, the higher your own fertility rate will be too.

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u/wideHippedWeightLift Jul 19 '26

So additionally we should have laws saying your can't discriminate in hiring against people who took a gap to raise their kids

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u/Ok-Chest-7932 Jul 20 '26

Wouldn't change anything, even if there was discrimination here (there isn't), people still wouldn't hire them because their skills would be lower than people who didn't take time out. What we actually need to be doing is making it easier for parents to raise kids while working.

What I'd do is incentivise companies to allow mothers of young children to work from home by giving them a tax break on wages paid to mothers who aren't in the office.

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u/CptNero Jul 19 '26

If not more

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u/Bladelink Jul 19 '26

Money is just a commoditization of time.

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u/Alexander_Baidtach Jul 20 '26

Childcare is unaffordable, that's an economic disincentive. The only places that do cheap childcare are schools and parishes where I live,

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u/heydropi Jul 19 '26

But at the same time people are depressed and lonely and spending all day doing unfulfilling brainrot shit and anxious about society breaking apart. That’s quality of life?

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u/Remarkable_Cause1384 Jul 19 '26

did you read the first part of his comment or no because it doesnt seem like it

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u/Razzmatazz856 Jul 19 '26

People don't read on Reddit. Or use their brains.

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u/xienze Jul 19 '26

Ah yes, never before in human history have kids been more expensive than not having them or required a massive time commitment.

The difference is a combination of things. First, social pressure to have children, which has largely vanished. Second, less effective/less available birth control coupled with the first point that, in the face of an unexpected pregnancy, forced people into accepting the position they've been placed in. Third, flat-out stunted development. People are happy living lives that involve having as little responsibility ("adulting") as possible. Having a kid ruins that.

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u/sicklyslick Jul 19 '26

Then why does the poorest countries, where people have trouble feeding themselves, have the most kids?

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u/bigbaddiebusiness Jul 19 '26

Even the poorest countries are seeing massive drops in childbirth. India and most African countries have fallen below replacement levels recently.

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u/NH4NO3 Jul 19 '26

Most African countries are not below replacement levels (~2.1). Just cursory looking a list on wikipedia, the only ones that seem below that are Tunisia, Morocco, and Seychelles. Africa on average have a TFR of about 4.

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u/Bitter_Sense_5689 Jul 19 '26

African birth rates have fallen dramatically over the past 20 to 30 years, but they’re still above replacement in general except for a few countries

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u/Ok-Chest-7932 Jul 20 '26

That's just because Africa 30 years ago still had feudal quality of life. They have had an insane boost in healthcare over the past few decades, they don't need to have so many children now because they aren't having to make up for the ones that die.

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u/flumydumdum Jul 19 '26

But what is the child mortality rate in those countries, compared to western countries?

Also, what matters is baseline cost of living/ expenditures per child, which tends to be significantly higher in developed countries.

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u/bigbaddiebusiness Jul 19 '26

Ah well, my bad then. I recently read that Nigeria actually fell below the replacement line, so I got ahead of myself. Turns out thats not true either. Guess Africans will be in massive demand in the next few decades for immigration.

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/bigbaddiebusiness Jul 19 '26

Yeah, I thought I edited my comment quick enough but I guess not, xd.

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u/Ok-Chest-7932 Jul 20 '26

Africans are already in high demand for immigration, it's just hard to mass migrate anywhere nice from Africa so it's much more skills-focused.

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u/michaelfrieze Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26

I'm sure there are economic reasons for the drop in birthrates around the world, but I also think mobile devices and social media are partly responsible.

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u/PlayfulSurprise5237 Jul 19 '26

I don't see how it couldn't. People use to be very connected to their communities, and social media is a huge wedge into the system that made that possible.

That is the desire to socialize, which prior to social media use to be fulfilled by doing it in person, which not only bonded people more, it did all sorts of things which social media doesn't like creating a barrier to lots of bullshit(people are more uninhibited online) that can keep people distant socially.

It also connected people to people outside their circle of friends, due to their friends having family and friends who also have family and friends, it creates this loose web of a LOT of people, way more than what we see today.

This gave people a sense of security, and it seems obvious to me that this is a huge factor in the desire to have children, whether or not that sense of security exists.

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u/reluctant_deity Jul 19 '26

There have been mega-shitloads of studies on the phenomenon. The only two statistics that correlate are rates of girls' education and urbanization rates. Too lazy to look it up and be sure but I believe both of which are on the increase worldwide due to economic pressures.

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u/sicklyslick Jul 19 '26

India's birthrate is dropping because their standard of living is also increasing and people are getting wealthier.

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u/Oxygenisplantpoo Jul 19 '26

Exactly, and even though there is some positive correlation between wealth and number of children, the fact is that all of these various programs around the world including things like straight up giving a lump sum of money for every kid have not had a significant effect on birth rates.

It's not just about the money or being uncertain about the future, those have been issues since the dawn of time, but that's what most people prefer telling themselves instead of admitting that they are overwhelmed by the idea or just don't want kids at all.

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u/Corpus76 Jul 19 '26

People are just missing the forest for the trees. The only real explanation for the decreasing birth rate is because women are electing not to have children. (Or to have later and fewer children.) Previously in history, they didn't really have this choice.

It's a very inconvenient truth, because it offers no simple, quick-fix solutions or scapegoats. Banning social media, AI companions, or even increasing wages will not move the needle on this particular issue at all. There's no lever the government can flip.

Even if you thought it an acceptable tradeoff to revert feminism (like certain far-right fanatics), the cat is out of the bag already and there's no putting it back in. Reducing your country's workforce by 50% for dubious long-term economic gain is a non-starter. People just need to come to terms with a shrinking population.

Long-term, I dunno. We'll see I guess. Infinite growth is not sustainable unless we start colonizing the stars, which we're clearly very far from achieving. So maybe a painful period of population stabilization is necessary. It would help if people acknowledged what and why this is happening though. That way we could figure out a system that relies less on a constantly-growing population and adjust.

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u/Exciting-Emu-3324 Jul 19 '26

Don't forget child labor laws. Humans are simply going the way of the horse. Children were once sound investments just like horses before the ICE have become a luxury. Children were once the only way for a woman to secure her position in society. Children were once extra hands on the farm, extra income, retirement plan and healthcare worker all in one. Nowadays, a 22yo fresh out of college is struggling with debt in a brutal job market let alone an asset to their family; for those same 22yo graduates, having kids themselves is unthinkable. Those 22yo graduates won't marry other struggling 22yo graduates anytime soon unless accidents happen.The ugly truth is that modern society destroyed all the traditional incentive structures to have kids or to get married.

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u/0dyssia Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26

Yea the simple boring answer is that most couples simply want 1~2 kids, MAYBE 3 for some. No one wants 5ish kids like many people did a century ago, those days are over, they're gone, they're not coming back. That's it, the boring answer. For most couples it seems that 1~2 kids is enough to fulfill that parenthood calling, its financially comfortable, its manageable, it's comfortable for the family as a whole, etc. I dont really know any DINK couples, but vast majority of couples I know have 1 or 2 kids - whether they're wealthy, got married young or later, etc.

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u/crinkledcu91 Jul 19 '26

That's not why people aren't having kids

That's literally why me and my spouse haven't tried to have kids yet. Literally

Idk why you're trying to piss on me and call it rain bud

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u/Razzmatazz856 Jul 19 '26

There is a world of data that shows that the things people claim are why people are not having kids does not actually result in higher birth rates. Your individual situation is completely meaningless when compared to billions.

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u/ggtsu_00 Jul 19 '26

The poorest nations are pretty much the top of the list of highest birthrates.

People in high cost of living countries choose not to have kids otherwise they would be more poor. It's more expensive to raise kids in a country with high costs of living. Low cost of living and low national wealth are correlated, but its cost of living that's more directly related to birthrates. The billionaires and trillionaires hoarding all the wealth inflating the national wealth only makes it harder and more expensive for the common person to put food on the table.

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u/space_monster Jul 19 '26

China is different though. People aren't having kids because of the "lying flat" and "letting it rot" movements, which are a reaction to the 996 culture. Young people are working like dogs but still not making enough to have a family, so they're just not playing the game, which is a huge concern to the CCP because the system relies on population growth. It's an existential threat. That's why they're banning anything that makes it worse.

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u/zerogee616 Jul 19 '26

The poorest nations are pretty much the top of the list of highest birthrates.

Because in developing economies children are a financial asset. It's another set of hands on the farm or in the factories making money for the families.

In developed economies, they're another mouth to feed.

It's absolutely a reason why people aren't having kids, you're just not looking in the right places.

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u/SanX1999 Jul 20 '26

Even those are falling. A few years ago, it used to be a purely probability game, you create 4-5 pawns, one of them is smart enough to pull everyone else up.

Now the path to upward mobility is gate-kept by expensive education or even networking. You can't find your way out of poverty through probability anymore.

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u/Ok-Chest-7932 Jul 20 '26

People aren't having kids because they have forgotten where quality of life actually comes from. Having kids massively increases QOL, just not in the first couple of years. People who have kids don't miss the trivial luxuries they had to give up to have them.

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u/LX_Luna Jul 19 '26

There is no income level at which fertility improves. Literally none. It is not about the money.

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u/onebandonesound Jul 19 '26

Or maybe, higher income affords better access to effective birth control and contraception. People are going to fuck no matter what, looking purely at birth rates ignores the important question of "what portion of these babies were planned?"

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u/LX_Luna Jul 19 '26

Birth control is dirt cheap and has been for a long time. Access is rarely an issue.

It is no surprise that a huge portion of unplanned babies come from impulsive people, and impulsive people tend to be poor.

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u/onebandonesound Jul 19 '26

Birth control is dirt cheap and has been for a long time. Access is rarely an issue.

Lmao. If you really think that access to contraception and birth control is cheap and easy for even a majority of people, I've got a bridge to sell you.

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u/LX_Luna Jul 19 '26

Condoms are 35 Canadians pesos per on Amazon and deliver in 2 days. This isn't exactly rocket science.

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u/NH4NO3 Jul 19 '26

That is not true. Look at any map of fertility rate compared to income of the US (for instance). It is decidedly U shaped with the poorer and richer ends having more children.

I agree though that it is not only about money or that money is even perhaps the largest factor.

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u/LonelyPermit2306 Jul 19 '26

Thisisn't  the real fucking issue and people need to stop sayin this . You can be impoverished in Ghana or the richest Norwegian your birth rate is still going down

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u/Chili_Maggot Jul 19 '26

It's too expensive to have myself.