I read a meme the other day, “Adult friendship is just shooting off texts saying, ‘Let’s catch up’, and then six months go by.”
Unfortunately, it resonated with me, and it may with you too.
The internet allows us to communicate constantly with anyone at any time, but has it diluted our real-life intimacy?
These days, so many aspects of our relational lives have been impacted, for better or worse, by the internet:
- Most Australian romantic relationships now start online
- You can track in real time where any member of our family is with an app
- You can have a medical or psychology appointment from your loungeroom
- People from far-flung locations are only as far away as your device
We are hyper-connected, especially our young people. Why then, are we so lonely and disconnected?
Authentic, heart-drenching connection with others requires consistent contact in real life. If Covid taught us nothing else, it was that human connection via technology is a poor substitute for the real thing.
Unfortunately, we seem to have forgotten that hard-won wisdom. And instead of relishing our authentic contact, we have embraced the other AI… artificial intimacy.
Who feeds the cat?
Esther Perel is a psychotherapist, author, and thought leader around relationships. She describes artificial intimacy as having a thousand friends online but not having anyone to feed your cat when you’re away.
Perel compares online connections with fast food. Fast food provides quick, tasty, low-effort food; however, the compromise is low nutrition. Today, we have digital intimacy; our devices provide low effort and instant connection. The compromise is that it is low-quality, addictive, and numbs us to real life.
Artificial intimacy lowers the quality of ‘in real life’ relationships
Esther Perel asserts that our low-quality online relationships lower our expectations of connection in real life. We put up with, and offer others, a low-grade imitation of the relationships we had in the past.
Don’t just accept what she says, consider your own life. Has the second-rate intimacy of the internet invaded your own real life? Examine your behaviour. Look at it up close and give it a good poke. How does it stand up? Think about:
- Air kisses and half-grasp hugs that are at best lazy and at worst fake
- “Let’s catch up soon.” With no follow-up even though you might genuinely like that person.
- “Love you” as a throw-away line.
- Sending an online meme instead of crafting a personal message.
Now consider our kids who have grown up in the era of artificial intimacy and will:
- sit side by side and message one another instead of talking
- consider the length of a Snapchat streak an indicator of affection
- ghost someone online and consider it a legitimate way to end a relationship
Artificial intimacy is robbing our kids of skills
Life is always unpredictable, especially when dealing with other humans. Artificial intimacy leaves our kids unprepared and unable to tolerate the inevitable ups and downs of friendships, love, and life.
Our kids are not developing the social muscles they require. They deal with less awkwardness. For example, they never have to be vulnerable, ask someone out in person, and risk being rejected. When they have a conflict with friends, it doesn’t need to be resolved face-to-face. They can apologise in a message without looking the other person in the eye and seeing the pain they’ve caused.
Neither are our kids developing the self-soothing skills they need. Kids aren’t learning who they are under pressure or when things go wrong. If our kids feel lonely, hurt, or in any form of discomfort, they will head online. There, they can numb those feelings by scrolling or by connecting superficially with someone out there in the ether.
Perel says there is less friction in life online. But with less friction comes less growth.
How do you learn the skill of sitting with discomfort and allowing it to pass if you are constantly drowning those feelings? Kids stew in a soup of voices and music and hours and hours of content from lighter, brighter people, offering quick emotional hacks and half-baked psychology in 15-second bites. It’s an attractive alternative.
“Attention is an undervalued form of love”
Not only are our online interactions inferior, but the mere presence of a device also detracts from our IRL time. You know the feeling: when someone is with you in the room but not really because they keep glancing at the phone.
Ambiguous loss is when someone is physically there, but they are gone. Traditionally this term is used to describe the grief of someone you love having a disease like Alzheimer’s, where they are physically present, but their mind has gone. Nowadays we use it to describe someone we love simply not being present due to distraction, most obviously in the case of always being on their phone.
Sociologist, Brene Brown says, “Attention is an undervalued form of love”, and she has never been more correct. We feel less alone when with someone who gives us their full attention. That attention affirms our worth. It also invites us to be real and vulnerable, and it is in vulnerability that you build worthwhile relationships.
When you let yourself be vulnerable and take off your masks you attract ‘your people’. Isn’t that the aim, to find our tribe?
So, what now?
It’s holiday season. Many of us will take a break from work and spend some focused time with our family and friends. It is an opportunity to build real intimacy with those we love.
Let’s take the opportunity to:
1. Disconnect from the internet for a while. Plan a family technology detox or put away phones in the car when travelling. Interesting conversation and funny moments happen when there are no distractions, and everyone is ‘trapped’ together and, dare I suggest… bored!
2. Use technology more effectively. Instead of sending memes or texts, Facetime or send a short video of what you’re doing and how you feel. Perhaps have a ‘Check-in Tuesday’ with a group of friends in this way. This is a great thing to do as a family to keep in touch with relatives who are a long way away.
3. Talk to kids about why we want to spend time with them without technology. Explain to them what artificial intimacy and ambiguous loss mean.
4. Exercise some ‘full-body listening’. That’s an expression I heard a Grade 1 teacher use with her class and I love it, because we all know what she means. When we listen with care, we invite the speaker to say more. We show that we care and want to hear them. The listener creates the speaker.
5. With consent, give your family and close friends proper hugs. Let them be full, heart-on-heart, demonstrations of affection.
Final thought…
It may sound as though I hate technology. I don’t. I get to speak to you here… online. Instead, I’m asking you to embrace contradictions. You can love technology but also recognise that you could spend more time and effort on real-life relationships, especially with kids.
I hope that connection helps bring you a happy 2025.
