The delete button is lying to you — and the reason you trust it is the same reason it knows so much.

A man is lying beside his wife, phone tilted away from her at that particular angle we have all mastered. Sixty-seven per cent of those same teenagers still found AI conversations less satisfying than human ones — forty-seven per cent said much less. Eighty per cent of AI companion users spent more time with real friends than with the machine. And now the delete buttonHere is where I see the most confident misunderstanding, and where I need to be careful. Until then, I can only tell you the room is worth reaching for, and worth demanding where it does not exist.