If we allow our self-congratulatory adoration of technology to distract us from our own contact with each other, then somehow the original agenda has been lost.
Jaron Lanier 


As I sit here, randomly checking and rechecking my emails and social media posts, I wonder just how connected we are with each other. I mean, yes, we have the means, but do we truly have the desire to do the real work of maintaining interpersonal relationships? Today, when friendships are formed digitally, bullying occurs in a faceless medium, and people hook up and break up without having to look each other in the eye, the human contact element seems to be suffering. One of the unintended and tragic casualties of our hyperconnectedness is a lack of true connection; the anonymity of the Internet, texting, and instant messaging makes human commitment fleeting, or deceptively intense, with little in between. Teenaged dramas are enacted hourly online. Family issues are aired openly in the social media. All of a sudden, private issues are now overtly public, and the audience is not the three best friends crowded into the girls' bathroom or around the coffee table. It is all of us. And I, for one, feel that this is both inappropriate and immensely sad.