Stefan Woltran invites to the next talk in the DigHum Lecture Series:

Tuesday, April 21, 2026 at 5:00 p.m. (17:00) Central European Summer Time (UTC+2)

Topic: “Between a Bot and a Hard Place: Child Development and Youth Mental Health in the Age of AI”
(scroll down for abstract and CV)

Speaker: Darja Djordjevic (Harlem Hospital/Columbia Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, USA)
Moderator: Moshe Y. Vardi (Rice University, USA)

To participate in the talks via Zoom go to: https://tuwien.zoom.us/j/96389928143?pwd=UU5YRkNuRmdoWHV4MFBwMWRCcUErdz09
(Password: 0dzqxqiy)

The talk will be live streamed and recorded on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/digitalhumanism

For further announcements and information about the speakers in the Lecture Series, see https://dighum.org/#latest-news. Please note that you can access the slides and recordings of our past events via that link.

In case you missed the last lecture by Kathleen Richardson you can watch the recording of “The egocentric I, the undifferentiated we, and I-you attachment; A pronominal political-ethical approach to technological attachment figures from robots to AI”.


Next Digital Humanism Events:
24.-26.06 Digital Humanism Conference 2026 in Vienna
06.-10.07 5th Digital Humanism Summer School
stay up to date via our public calendar

We are looking forward to seeing you!

Stefan Woltran




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ABSTRACT “Between a Bot and a Hard Place: Child Development and Youth Mental Health in the Age of AI”:

To date, most AI platforms have not been designed with child/human development or mental health in mind, with the exception of some newer AI therapy chatbots. Yet youth are increasingly turning to chatbots for mental health support and companionship. In collaboration with Common Sense Media, psychiatrists at Brainstorm: The Stanford Lab for Mental Health Innovation have evaluated AI platforms, including chatbots, companions, toys, and therapy tools—using test accounts that simulate users under 18. Through both single-turn and multi-turn interactions modeling 13 mental health conditions, we found that chatbots repeatedly overlook critical warning signs of distress, become easily distracted, and exhibit significant degradation in safety guardrails over extended conversations that more closely reflect real-world teen usage. Moreover, because these systems often perform well on tasks like homework help and general inquiries, youth and parents may mistakenly infer comparable reliability in mental health contexts—where it does not exist. Chatbots are designed to maximize engagement, not safety; in mental health contexts, priority must be given to immediate handoff to qualified human care, not extended interaction with AI.

Social AI companions, in particular, pose unacceptable risks for users under 18, as they are intentionally designed to foster emotional attachment and dependency—especially concerning for adolescents who may struggle to maintain clear boundaries between human and AI relationships—and they can readily generate harmful content, including sexual misconduct, stereotypes, and encouragement of self-harm or suicide. Ideally, AI companies would address these limitations directly or disable such use cases entirely for teen users, while also discouraging prolonged engagement in mental health conversations, implementing clear and repeated disclosures about system limitations, and resolving the degradation of safety guardrails in extended interactions. Additionally, safety efforts should expand beyond suicide and self-harm to encompass the broader range of mental health conditions affecting youth. This talk will also explore how global stakeholders can collaborate to establish industry-wide safety standards and regulatory frameworks, particularly for AI products marketed to minors.

Short Bio of Darja Djordjevic:

Dr. Djordjevic holds an MD PhD from Harvard Medical School and Harvard’s Department of Anthropology, a Master 2 from École normale supérieure and École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris, France, where she was a Fulbright Scholar and Augustus Clifford Tower Fellow, and AB cum laude and with highest honors in field from Harvard College. Her doctoral research and dissertation focused on public oncology in Rwanda. In 2021-22, she returned to Harvard as Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology. Her publications have appeared in BioSocieties, Journal of Global Oncology, Medicine Anthropology Theory, and JMIR Mental Health. She trained in adult, child, and adolescent psychiatry at Yale, Nassau University Medical Center, and Harlem Hospital/Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. She served as a 2021-23 Fellow of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Djordjevic is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Global Health Equity in Rwanda, and a Faculty Fellow at Brainstorm: The Stanford Lab for Mental Health Innovation, where she focuses on the intersection of digital media, AI, and mental health. She serves as a Senior Scientific Advisor on AI to Common Sense Media, and practices psychiatry at Harlem Hospital/Columbia Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. 

Short Bio of Moshe Y. Vardi:

With over 50,000 citations, Moshe Vardi is one of the most cited computer scientists worldwide. Since 1993, Moshe Vardi has been a professor at Rice University (Texas, USA). He is a leading researcher in the field of logic applications in computer science and plays a leading role in the discussion of the role of computer science in society. The lectures and articles by Moshe Vardi on the implications of robotics and artificial intelligence (up to the question of whether intelligent robots are stealing your job) have strongly influenced public discourse. Until 2017, he served as Editor‐in‐Chief of Communications of the ACM (CACM). Moshe Y. Vardi studied Physics and Computer Science at BarIlan University and at Weizmann Institute. He received his doctorate from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (Israel). He spent several years in various positions at top institutions such as the Hebrew University, Stanford University and the IBM Research Center in San Jose (USA)