Facebook friends. Instagram followers. Discord groups. We are building systems that help us optimize for separation. While claiming to further connectivity, these algorithms and their frameworks teach us to quantify our personal value by audience engagement versus through actual human affinity. They keep us hooked by gamifying social interaction, rewarding performative likability in place of empathy and intimacy. Not only does this help us avoid the effort of face-to-face engagement like active listening, appreciative inquiry or showering, but our sense of self-worth is increasingly tied to social media metrics. We focus our efforts on virtual relationship building, creating a worthy public persona rather than cultivating personal relationships that reward us for who we truly are.
This is where I see the value of organizations like social clubs that foster face-to-face conversation as vital to preserving our humanity. To feel the emotional closeness unique to human relationships requires actual proximity, where touch and eye contact convey understanding and trust in ways that an algorithm cannot. Artificial smartness will never be able to replicate the sense of belonging we get from a caring and supportive local community.
We are facing an epidemic of loneliness. This seems paradoxical given how ‘connected’ we are through our virtual communities. But this feeling of collective alienation, like the digital graveyard of the Metaverse itself, epitomizes the false promises of these platforms and explains how we are very much like our primate ancestors in our need for ‘contact comfort’. In 1959, Harry Harlow conducted experiments on rhesus monkey infants to show that they cared more for a soft surrogate mother than a metal milk-bearing one, and with this finding, the science of touch was born. His experiments, many captured on film, are chilling and underscore the power of proximity in our lives. The ‘contact comfort’ drive does more than just satisfy a need for parental security. From Harlow’s experiments, the fluffy surrogates offered a secure, comforting base from which infants felt confident enough to explore unfamiliar environments.
Social media is the wireframe mother at whose teat we constantly suckle, for the steady drip of dopamine we have learned to crave from the empty value of every “Like”. In doing so, we neglect our proximal relationships and forget how to derive comfort from their physical closeness. I consider face-to-face conversations as the soft blanket we so long for, in that they allow us to feel safe to express our emotions and openly empathize with each other’s experiences. They enable us to connect with each other on a deeper level, and in doing so, we are reminded of the unique qualities that make us human. These conversations also play a critical role in our mental health and wellbeing. When we experience empathy through real human connection, we feel more supported, validated, and understood. This, in turn, can help to reduce feelings of loneliness, anxiety, and depression.
Adolescent suicide rates are up not because life is getting harder, but because social media is taking away time from supportive relationships. According to childmind.org, in several studies, teenage and young adult users who spend the most time on Instagram, Facebook and other platforms were shown to have a substantially (from 13 to 66 percent) higher rate of reported depression than those who spent the least time. I believe the weakening of social bonds due to social media addiction is directly responsible for rising rates of depression. A sense of belonging is at the heart of the well-being derived from local human community, something that an algorithm can not bestow upon us. The best machines can do is replicate language aspects of companionship, which may be a temporary salve to loneliness, but not inspire true affinity or fellowship.
In social psychology, it suggests that people closer together in a physical environment are more likely to form a relationship than those farther away. Think about the people you consider close to you. Even if they are a childhood friend now far away, this feeling of closeness originated with proximity. Originally proposed by Leon Festinger and his colleagues in 1950, the proximity effect is the idea that physical and/or psychological closeness increases interpersonal liking and attraction. When we substitute closeness and intimacy for numbers of followers, we surrender our sense of self-worth to the algorithm.
Not everything that counts can be counted. Not everything that can be counted counts.
Our modern obsession with quantification locks us into a world of measurement that lacks any true expression of our humanity. Social media metrics undeniably affect our self-worth and change our understanding of value, in a negative way. The language of metrics has no vocabulary for feelings. I believe we yearn for the analogue world of possibility, where face-to-face human exchange offers the chance of belonging and inclusion without the judgment of strangers. In this world we are free to be ourselves, secure in the embrace of a supportive group that has something at stake in our well-being.
A 2011 study done at the University of California, Berkeley, found that people determine within seconds if someone is trustworthy, kind or compassionate based on how often he or she makes eye contact, smiles, nods while listening, and displays an open or welcoming body posture. “The listeners who got the highest ratings for empathy, it turned out, possess a particular variation of the oxytocin receptor gene known as the GG genotype.” Face-to-face conversations stimulate the vagus nerve, part of a neural network that regulates the parasympathetic nervous system. The vagus nerve can activate the release of oxytocin, which helps to create trust, empathy, and intimacy between people.
I’m afraid I can’t do that, Dave.
The one thing that humans will always do better than machines is socialize. Human capacity for compassion and empathy are built-in expressly to help us be better at socializing. Belonging to a supportive social group not only staves off feelings of loneliness, but also helps sharpen memory and cognitive skills, increases our sense of happiness and well-being, and may help us live longer. None of this is relevant for machines. They don’t feel lonely, nor is their performance altered by lack of attention by an operator. They don’t lose their memory over time nor do their cognitive skills require refreshing. Machine intelligence can’t expand the circle of empathy, because it cannot experience empathy. Despite the most clever mimicry, a powerful GPT cannot replace the emotional value of local community. Human affiliation is our antidote to alienation and an analog refuge from the inevitable dominance of machine intelligence.
Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. — Ayn Rand