Almost like people drank coca tea for millennia without problems, but crack cocaine clearly does have problems.

Lots of drugs have been problematic before more modern refinement methods, my problem was the framing of chatbots and the harm from them as a uniquely modern problem, when harm from social activity has existed as long as social activity has existed. People use chatbots as an escape from the intrisnic harm that is possible from social interaction.

If you look at it that way, you have to pick your poison. Is harm from social activity worse than harm of social isolation when scaled up to the general population. Or rather do the benefits of isolation exceed the benefits of social interaction. In the past this has been rather self balancing.

if chatbots provide a perfect escape from any negative outcomes of interaction, then less and less people develop the necessary skills of empathy and social communication.

Skills relating to interpersonal relations become less and less needed as technology improves, labour becomes more and more compartmentalized and you no longer need social cohesion to get any commodity, you need only interact with the market. I agree that most people are better off talking to real people, but it's nigh impossible to force anything on as large a scale as society when it's not the easiest and most profitable choice for the individual(in this case chatbots are easier and more profitable than IRL social contact, at least for the people that use them.)

You still need to be able to play the "real people" social games to have a seat at higher stakes tables.