I AM well connected with my family from around the world through social media platforms. I know exactly where my cousins are and their daily activities. I know where my nieces are and what they are up to.
I have friends whom I have not met for decades but are superficially close to me as we are friends on social media.
I am also connected with people I don’t know, random people I may have met and associates I may have dealt with.
Yet, when I return home, there is a strange longing for human connection, which I have been accustomed to but is missing now from my life. The younger generation do not feel this as much as I do as they are digital beings who grew up only with gadgets and stuff around them.
What is so grossly wrong with this? Humans are made of flesh and blood, we have emotions and we need to have the human contact to feel alive and kicking. The way the world is heading, talking and listening may become irrelevant and even frowned upon.
I miss the times when I would walk over to my colleague’s desk and have a banter about something and everything. I miss the times when me and my sons would argue over the silliest things and end up with roaring laughter that would go on until we ached in the stomach.
We have traded the living room for news feed, the kitchen-table gossip for group chat. We have become masters of the “like” button and apprentices in the art of listening.
We can send a crying or laughing emoji to express joy but have forgotten how to let a real, belly-aching laugh erupt spontaneously and fill a room. We are the most informed generation in history, yet we are starving for genuine connection.
It is strange and even magical that we can be everywhere at once, yet often, nowhere at all. We know the political views of a high school acquaintance we haven’t seen in 20 years but we don’t know the name of the neighbour who lives two doors down.
We invest emotional energy in the curated holiday photos of a distant colleague while we scroll right past our own family member trying to tell us about their day.
Think of the modern family gathering – it often resembles a library of ghosts. There we sit, in the same room, surrounded by the delicious smell of food and the familiar faces of loved ones but with the chaos missing. It is not the lively chat of stories and debates that we see but the gentle and incessant tapping on glass screens.
A notification from someone across the world gets awkward instant smile and a typed reply. Meanwhile, the person sitting across the table, telling a story about their week, gets a distracted nod and a vacant “mmmhmmm” from someone who is only half there while their other half is commenting on a meme. We are so busy capturing the moment for our digital audience that we have quietly and unapologetically excused ourselves from actually living it.
The meal must be photographed from every angle, filtered to perfection and posted with a witty caption before the first bite is even tasted. The experience is no longer about the taste of the food or the company around it; it is about creating a false sense of happiness for an invisible audience.
We are living our lives on stage but the audience is full of strangers, and the people who should matter are ignored.
Felicitations are easy online but we no longer pat a friend on the back, look them in the eye with genuine pride and drag them out for a celebratory drink where the conversation can meander and breathe. We send a “thinking of you” message when we see a vague, concerning post from an acquaintance but we rarely pick up the phone to hear their voice, let alone show up at their door with a pot of soup and a willingness to just sit with them in their sadness.
And what of our disagreements? Those beautiful, messy, human collisions of opinion that, in person, often end in a stronger understanding or at least an agree-to-disagree respect? They have been flattened into brutal “comment section wars”. From the safe hideout of our screens, we fire text-based missiles at caricatures of people, shielded by miles of fibre-optic cable.
We have lost the nuance of a raised eyebrow and the softening of a voice that shows we are listening, and the hand gesture that says, “I hear you”.
Online, there is only right and wrong, and black and white. In person, there is a million shades of grey, and most of them are found in the eyes of the person you are talking to. We have forgotten how to argue with someone without trying to thrash them.
The younger generation, my sons included, may shrug at this. This digital landscape is their native country, they know no other world. A multiplayer video game played with a friend in another continent is as real and meaningful to them as a game of hide and seek in the backyard was to us.
Their friendships are maintained through a constant stream of snaps and TikToks, a shared language of digital inside jokes. And who is to say this is lesser? It is simply different.
But I wonder, in their quietest moments, don’t they too feel a ghost of that same emptiness? That no number of heart emojis can truly replicate the physiological warmth of a hug, which science tells us releases oxytocin, the bonding hormone? That a string of “I’m here for you” text messages, no matter how heartfelt, lacks the healing power of a friend sitting with you in silence and sharing your burden just by being a physical presence in the room?
We are, at our core, social creatures made of flesh and blood, wired for the sound of a voice, the touch of a hand and the shared silence that speaks volumes.
This dazzling digital world offers us a magnificent and glittering simulation of connection but it runs on “battery life”. It cannot power the human heart.
We are the last generation to remember the “before”, and perhaps that is our burden and our duty to gently remind everyone that a conversation is not a thread; it is a queer celebration.
That presence is not about being online but about being there and that sometimes, the most important notification you’ll get all day is the sound of your own laughter, echoing in a room, shared with someone who has put their phone away to be truly and wonderfully present with you.
Dr Bhavani Krishna Iyer holds a doctorate in English literature. Her professional background encompasses teaching, journalism and public relations. She is currently pursuing a second master’s degree in counselling. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com