When Students (Not Chatbots) Help Students, Everyone Flourishes
By Jean Rhodes
In 2020, Tyler VanderWeele and his team at Harvard’s Human Flourishing Program tracked nearly 13,000 adults to explore the longitudinal effects of altruism. Their findings, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, were striking. People who volunteered at least two hours a week reported significantly higher levels of happiness and life purpose, increased social contact, and a marked reduction in hopelessness and loneliness compared to non-volunteers (VanderWeele et al., 2020). Helping others, it seems, acts as a powerful psychological shield.
Now, a new study by Alyssa Maples, Lindsey Weiler, and colleagues in the American Journal of Community Psychology extends this tracking to volunteer mentoring (Maples et al., 2026). The researchers evaluated Campus Connections, an evidence-based 15-week service-learning course where undergraduates mentored youth (ages 11 to 18) facing mental health challenges, family stress, and substance use concerns. During the COVID-19 pandemic, mentors met with two mentees for two hours weekly via videoconference. They also spent an hour each week in class mastering adolescent development, trauma-informed care, and social justice. Graduate trainees in therapy served as coaches, a clinical case manager oversaw referrals, and mentors engaged in reflective journaling to process the heavy lifting of their roles (Maples et al., 2026). To ensure scientific rigor, the researchers used propensity score matching to compare 112 mentors against 436 non-mentoring peers with similar demographic and mental health profiles. Mentoring significantly boosted the mentors’ own levels of flourishing and self-compassion compared to the comparison group. Showing up for someone else provided psychological insulation during an otherwise destabilizing era.
A clear takeaway is that when schools invest in mentoring programs (whether its college student mentoring younger mentees or peer-mentoring for incoming students), they create a virtuous cycle. Mentees gain a relatable guide who normalizes their struggles and can connect them to institutional resources, improving grades, belonging, and retention (Werntz et al., 2025; Hersh et al., 2025). And, importantly mentors gain a structured role that proves they matter to others, which is a core engine of mental health.
It’s worth noting that Chatbots diminish these reciprocal benefits. As institutions increasingly turn to student-facing AI chatbots to scale care, they depriving both mentors and mentees of opportunities to truly flourish. Mentees lose access to the kind of relational support that builds confidence, belonging, and social capital over time. Mentors lose the chance to practice showing up for someone, the satisfaction of feeling that their presence makes a difference, and the experiences that lead to gains in purpose and self compassion.
References
Maples, A. E., Weiler, L. M., Moran, M. J., Miller Chagnon, R., LeBouef, S., Zimmerman, T., and Haddock, S. A. (2026). Does the experience of mentoring youth affect mentors’ mental health and wellbeing. American Journal of Community Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajcp.70062
VanderWeele, T. J., Lee, M. T., Kuzma, E., and Kim, E. S. (2020). Volunteering and subsequent health and well being in older adults. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 59, 176–186. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2020.03.004
