AI anxiety is real. Here’s how to deal with it, according to therapists

The Washington Post's report that AI anxiety is real — highlighting therapists’ advice for users to rebalance amid societal upheaval caused by generative AI — underscores a growing psychological backlash that is already shaping visitor behavior on many sites. For website owners, this means a measurable uptick in users scrutinizing AI‑generated content, questioning authenticity, and demanding clearer disclosures. Bots that masquerade as human writers may trigger higher bounce rates or negative sentiment if visitors suspect they are interacting with an opaque AI. Moreover, search engines are beginning to favor pages that explicitly label AI‑produced text, so failing to manage AI‑generated output could hurt SEO and brand trust. **Actionable steps:** 1. **Update your llms.txt** to declare any AI models used for content creation (e.g., “GPT‑4‑Turbo content generator”) and include a link to your AI‑usage policy, ensuring crawlers and compliance tools can verify compliance. 2. **Implement bot‑traffic analytics** that flag visits originating from known AI‑content generators (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic) and correlate them with user engagement metrics to identify anxiety‑driven drop‑offs. 3. **Add on‑page AI disclosures** (e.g., a small badge or tooltip) near AI‑written sections, giving users immediate transparency and reducing uncertainty that fuels AI anxiety.