We’ve made it ridiculously easy to reach people.
There’s an app for dating, an app for friendship, a group chat for everything, a platform for whatever obscure interests or kinks you happen to have, and a phone in your pocket that can connect you to almost anyone you’ve ever known. You can wake up and know what hundreds of people are doing before you’ve even gotten out of bed. You can have thousands of followers, people commenting on your photos, watching your stories, sending you messages, and still have no idea who you’d call at 3 a.m.
That’s the part I can’t get past.
We’ve solved the problem of access, but we have yet to solve the problem of closeness.
And I’m not pretending there was some magical time when everyone sat around the kitchen table having meaningful conversations every night. People were lonely then, too, and people have always struggled to make friends, maintain relationships, and find people they genuinely trust. But there’s something different about being lonely in a world that gives us so many ways to connect.
But we’ve built an entire culture around being connected, and sometimes I think we’ve gotten very good at looking connected without actually feeling connected.
We Know What Everyone Is Doing, But Not How Anyone Is Doing
You can watch someone’s stories every day and know where they went for dinner, what they bought, what concert they went to, and what their dog is doing, while having absolutely no idea whether they’re miserable.
You can message someone constantly and still never have a real conversation.
You can follow someone for nine years without knowing what they’re afraid of, what they’re struggling with, or whether they’ve been sitting alone on their couch wondering why nobody has called them.
We’ve gotten incredibly good at low-level intimacy.
A like here. A reaction there. A “happy birthday.” A meme sent at midnight. A quick reply to a story. Enough little interactions to make you feel like you’re maintaining a relationship without actually having to do much of the uncomfortable work that makes a relationship real.
And I’m not above any of this. Once upon a time, I did it too.
Sometimes it’s easier to send someone a stupid video than to say, “I’ve been thinking about you. How are you actually doing?”
The first one takes five seconds.
The second one might lead somewhere.
The 3 a.m. Test
I’ve started thinking about friendship less in terms of how many people are in my life and more in terms of who I could actually call when things went to shit.
Who could I call at 3 a.m. without staring at my phone first and wondering whether I was asking too much?
Who would pick up and not make me feel like an inconvenience?
Who knows enough about my life that I wouldn’t have to give them a five-minute explanation before I could even get to the point?
That’s a very different measurement of social connection than followers, likes, invitations, or how many people you could theoretically text.
And the list is usually pretty short.
I don’t think that’s necessarily sad. I don’t need hundreds of people I can call at 3 a.m. I’d probably hate my life if I did. But I do think it’s worth noticing when you have a full contact list and still can’t think of anyone you’d feel comfortable calling.
That’s not a lack of people.
That’s a lack of closeness.
We’re Available All the Time and Somehow Still Not There
The other weird thing is that we’re expected to be reachable constantly.
You can text someone whenever you want. You can call them. You can send a voice message. You can see whether they’re online. You can watch their life unfold in real time.
And yet we’re not necessarily available to each other in any meaningful sense.
We react instead of responding. We watch instead of asking. We send something funny instead of admitting we miss someone. We say “we need to hang out soon” and then both people go back to their lives.
Again, I’m guilty of this too.
Part of it is that adult life is genuinely difficult to coordinate. People move. They get married. They have kids. They work too much. Their parents get sick. They’re exhausted. Everyone’s calendar starts looking like a hostage negotiation.
But I also think we’ve become accustomed to relationships that require very little from us.
Real friendship is inconvenient.
You have to remember that your friend’s mom is having surgery. You have to show up when they’re having a terrible week. You have to listen to the same story you’ve already heard. You have to make plans instead of waiting for someone else to make them. You have to let people see you when you’re not particularly fun to be around.
You also have to risk needing somebody.
That might be the biggest one, especially for someone hyper-independent like myself.
The Loneliness Nobody Sees
What bothers me most is that loneliness doesn’t necessarily look lonely anymore.
Someone can have a packed social calendar and still go home feeling completely disconnected. Someone can have a partner and still feel like they have nobody they can actually talk to. Someone can have 50,000 followers and spend a Sunday night wondering why nobody has checked in.
You can be constantly perceived without actually being known.
And I think that’s a particularly shitty way to be lonely because from the outside, it can look like you have everything you need.
People see the photos. They see the parties, the trips, the comments, the birthday messages, the people around you. They don’t see you sitting in your car before going inside because you don’t particularly want to go home yet.
They don’t see the text you typed and deleted because you didn’t know who to send it to.
They don’t see that your phone can be buzzing all day and still be completely useless when you’re having a really bad night.
Maybe We Don’t Need More Ways to Meet People
I don’t think we need another app telling us how to make friends.
Most of us already have people.
The harder question is whether we’re actually letting those relationships become something deeper than casual contact.
Maybe it’s calling someone instead of reacting to their story. Maybe it’s making plans and actually keeping them. Maybe it’s asking how someone is and sticking around long enough to hear an answer that isn’t “good.” Maybe it’s telling a friend you’re lonely instead of assuming they’ll somehow figure it out.
None of that is particularly profound.
It’s just harder than scrolling.
And maybe that’s the uncomfortable part of all of this. We have built an incredible system for finding people, displaying ourselves to people, keeping tabs on people, and staying loosely connected to people.
But intimacy is still stubbornly old-fashioned.
It takes time. It takes repetition. It takes trust. It takes showing up when there’s nothing to post about.
You can have thousands of people watching your life and still feel like nobody knows you.
What matters is whether, when things really fall apart, there’s someone you can call.
And whether they’d answer.
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