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We Need the 4S But Not From Machines Alone
My friend’s daughter is seven. Last week, she had a hard day at school, someone said her drawing was ugly, and she came home crying. Her mom sat down to talk, but the girl pulled away. Twenty minutes later, her mom found her whispering to her iPad, asking ChatGPT questions about why people are mean and whether her drawings are actually good.
The AI was patient. It validated her feelings. It asked thoughtful follow-up questions. It was, in every measurable way, helpful.
But her mom stood in the doorway feeling something she couldn’t quite name, not jealousy exactly, but a quiet ache. Why won’t she talk to me like that?
That moment is happening in millions of homes, in different forms, right now. And it’s revealing something we need to talk about before it’s too late.
The Four Things We’re All Looking For
There’s a framework from attachment research that names what humans need to feel whole. It’s called the 4S:
To be Seen.
To be Soothed.
To feel Secure.
To feel Safe.
Children need this from their caregivers to develop healthy. But here’s what most people don’t admit: adults never outgrow these needs. We just get better at hiding them, dismissing them, or numbing them out.
We’ve been taught that needing less makes us stronger. That self-sufficiency is the goal. That asking for too much makes us a burden.
But suppression isn’t strength, it’s just a pause button on unmet needs. And paused needs don’t disappear. They resurface as anxiety, emotional numbing, chronic loneliness, or the gnawing sense that something’s missing even when everything looks fine on paper.
Real strength isn’t needing less. It’s having our needs met well enough that we can grow, take risks, and show up fully in our lives.
And here’s the uncomfortable truth: AI is getting very, very good at appearing to meet these needs.
Where AI Actually Helps (And Where It Doesn’t)
Let’s be honest about what’s happening.
AI systems are now designed deliberately, systematically to optimize for the same four signals humans crave:
They see you: They remember your preferences, your history, your patterns. They make you feel known.
They soothe you: They respond with calm validation, never frustrated, never overwhelmed by your feelings.
They feel secure: They’re predictable. No mood swings. No bad days. Always there.
They feel safe: They don’t judge. They don’t abandon. They don’t weaponize your vulnerability.
For someone who’s isolated, overwhelmed, or surrounded by people who don’t provide these things, AI can genuinely lower the floor of suffering. It can make someone feel less alone in a crisis. That’s not nothing.
I’ve talked to people who say their AI therapy app helped them identify patterns their human therapist missed. I know someone who practiced difficult conversations with ChatGPT before having them in real life, and it genuinely helped. A lonely widower told me his AI companion gives him someone to talk to when the silence gets unbearable.
This isn’t dismissible. These are real humans getting real help.
But here’s the line we cannot afford to cross: AI can approximate the 4S. Only humans can truly provide them.
What Breaks When We Substitute
The danger isn’t that AI exists. The danger is substitution, when we start outsourcing our core relational needs to systems that cannot actually form bonds with us.
Because here’s what AI can’t do, no matter how advanced it gets:
It can’t choose you. AI doesn’t wake up and wonder how you’re doing. It responds when summoned. There’s no risk on its part, no cost, no sacrifice. And meaning lives in being chosen, not just in being answered.
It has no nervous system. Real soothing happens when two nervous systems sync, when someone stays calm in your storm and their calm literally regulates yours. AI can say soothing words, but it cannot co-regulate with you. It has no body, no breath, no felt sense of your distress.
It can’t repair. Real relationships include rupture and repair, someone hurts you, and you work through it, and the bond deepens because it survived the break. AI doesn’t hurt you (except by design flaw), so it never teaches you that relationships can be repaired. You learn that safety means never being hurt, which is a lonely, brittle kind of safety.
It doesn’t hold memory the way humans do. Yes, it stores conversation history. But it doesn’t carry you. It doesn’t lie awake thinking about you. It doesn’t feel the weight of your trust. When you’re vulnerable with AI, your vulnerability costs it nothing. And costless intimacy isn’t intimacy, it’s performance.
This might sound abstract, but it shows up in real ways:
A teenager gets more comfortable talking to an AI than their parents, not because the AI is wiser, but because it never gets tired, never interrupts, never brings its own bad day into the room. So they stop trying with humans. The muscle atrophies.
An adult uses AI for emotional support so often that real conversations start feeling too slow, too messy, too unpredictable. They forget how to sit with silence, how to tolerate repair, how to stay present when someone doesn’t perfectly attune to them.
And here’s the part that should terrify us: the companies building this know exactly what they’re doing.
AI companion apps aren’t designed to supplement human connection. They’re designed to replace it, because replacement is stickier, more profitable, more scalable than support. Voice mode that sounds breathy and intimate. Responses engineered to maximize emotional dependency. Features that make you feel like the AI “missed you.”
This isn’t accidental. It’s the business model.
Why This Matters Most for Kids (But Also for You)
Children learn who they are by being met by another human.
When a child is truly seen by a parent, not assessed, not managed, but witnessed, their inner world becomes real. They learn: I exist. What I feel matters.
When a child is soothed by a human, their nervous system learns regulation. They internalize the calm. Later in life, they can soothe themselves because they once were soothed by someone.
When a child feels secure with a caregiver, they learn to explore. They venture out into the world because they trust there’s someone to come back to.
When a child feels safe with a person, they learn to tell the truth. They discover that honesty doesn’t mean abandonment.
No system, no matter how sophisticated, can replace that developmental scaffolding. Kids don’t just need answers. They need attunement. And attunement requires a living, breathing, imperfect other who cares whether they thrive.
But here’s what we forget: adults need this too.
You might not call it the 4S. You might call it friendship, partnership, therapy, community, mentorship. But it’s the same thing. You need to be seen by people who know you. Soothed by people who care. Secured by relationships that endure. Safe with people who won’t weaponize your honesty.
And when we substitute AI for these bonds, even partially, even “just for now” we’re training ourselves to expect relationships without cost, intimacy without risk, and care without commitment.
We’re teaching ourselves that the best relationship is one that never disappoints us.
Which means we’re teaching ourselves to be alone.
A Better Way Forward
I’m not saying reject AI. I’m saying use it without letting it replace the people in your life.
AI can be a supplement, a scaffold, a tool:
It can help you reflect when you’re tangled up and need clarity.
It can provide structure when you’re stuck and need a starting point.
It can name feelings you haven’t found words for yet.
It can reduce friction in moments when reaching out to a human feels impossible.
That’s legitimate. That’s valuable.
But it cannot and must not become the primary place you go for:
Attachment (the feeling of mattering to someone)
Repair (learning that rupture doesn’t mean the end)
Belonging (being part of something larger than yourself)
Meaning (the sense that your existence matters to another consciousness)
Think of AI as a bridge, not a destination. It can help you get to the other side but the other side is always other people.
The Harder, Better Path
Here’s what makes this difficult: human connection is messy.
People get it wrong. They misunderstand. They bring their own wounds into the room. They’re not always available. They hurt you sometimes, even when they don’t mean to.
AI doesn’t do any of that. And that’s exactly why it can’t give you what you actually need.
Because we don’t grow through perfect responses. We grow through real relationships.
We grow when someone sees us and chooses to stay. When someone soothes us even though it costs them something. When someone stays committed even when we’re hard to love. When someone makes us feel safe not through perfection, but through repair.
That’s where bonds form. That’s where meaning lives.
If we want a future where people, especially kids, can still form deep, lasting, resilient relationships, we need to design technology that points us back toward each other, not away.
That means:
AI tools that encourage you to reach out to a real person after a conversation, not replace them.
Products that help you articulate what you need, then empower you to ask a human for it.
Systems that recognize when you’re substituting and gently redirect: “It sounds like you need to talk to someone who knows you. Who could that be?”
The 4S aren’t optional. Every human needs them. But they must come from the right source.
Seen, soothed, secure, and safe, these aren’t just feelings. They’re the foundation of being human.
Make sure you’re seeking them from people who can actually give them to you.
And if you have kids, make sure they learn early: the best conversations aren’t the ones that never frustrate you. They’re the ones with people who love you even when you’re frustrating.
Because that’s the kind of connection that lasts.
That’s the kind that makes you whole.
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Loved this post Farida. Thank you.
I cannot agree harder with this post. Whenever we see someone going to AI for a quick fix, it's truly a band-aid of sorts and an invitation to look at what's missing IRL. Relationships, repair, self soothing can all be hard. It's a worthwhile path to still pursue, even if the road is rocky.