A friend on social media is not like the real-life person sitting or standing next to us whom we hold dear or otherwise important.

True connections aren’t made at a distance.

As I walk past the floor-to-ceiling windows of restaurants and coffee shops, I see people perusing their phone instead of interacting with the person across from them. Because the phone is easy to become intimate with as it doesn’t take any real work. It is gratification on demand spiked with doses of dopamine to sweeten the experience. This can be good, but it only takes us so far.

Meaningful connection, where you’re seen by someone else, really seen, runs the gamut from approval to disapproval and acceptance to rejection and everything else in between. A potentially frightening prospect.

It’s far easier to default to something more trifling.