I recently saw a video of an elderly man learning how to use a messenger app. They sent it to me as something sweet, but it made me sad.

He was a 93-year-old man. He had taken notes, with beautiful drawings and diagrams, about how to use a smartphone. It was definitely sweet and touching, I don't deny that, I'm just saying that it also made me sad.

As an analogy, I feel something similar when listening to stories about overcoming poverty. I'm moved by the sacrifice of the child who walks in the cold to reach a rural school, or the parents who skip dinner so their children can eat better, but the heroism doesn't remove the injustice. It hurts me that these things are necessary.

All things considered, it hurts me that it's necessary to learn to use a smartphone at 93 years old.

Here I'm inferring a few things. I think it was something necessary, and not mere curiosity about technology or a desire to innovate, because in the latter case he probably would have learned this 5 or 10 years ago, when smartphones were already commonplace. But he learned now.

And I think he needed to learn now to alleviate his loneliness.

Beyond whether that's true in this specific case, the epidemic of loneliness is a tragedy we often overlook. I believe that epidemic is born from a corrosion of the social fabric that has concrete causes. If this is true, then the problem still has no solution, and it will continue to accelerate unless we do something about it.

An Uncomfortable Truth

People have limited time. The more time we dedicate to one thing, the less time we can dedicate to others. Grossly speaking, this should be a basic principle (a few caveats add some “noise”, such as getting more energy from doing more things, but the broader constraint remains).

However, applying the same principle to people reminds us of a jealous boyfriend. It looks bad and is generally rejected, mainly because it's often used to justify possessive behaviors we don't want to suffer. It's easier and simpler to say "that's not true" than to say "that's true, but I don't want to sacrifice my happiness for your comfort."

At the individual level, this would be nothing more than a “white lie” form of self-deception. The problem is that things are happening at a social level that require losing this denial.

Let's start with some examples: the more I interact through my cellphone, the less I go to the park to meet friends. The more I use Tinder, the less I expect to fall in love in a coffee shop. The more I use Instagram, the less I gather with friends to play cards.

The important thing is that none of these actions affect only me. When we all start using cellphones, the parks get empty. At a social level, this closes third spaces for everyone. If someone wants to make friends in the park, my freedom to use my cellphone harms them.

When no one expects to fall in love in a coffee shop, an approach that would have been natural 10 years ago is now strange and unsettling. If someone wants to “live the movie scene” of falling in love in a coffee shop, our migration to digitality harms them.

The pattern repeats: more digital socialization implies less in-person socialization. Currently, young people go less to bars, drink less, and have less sex than previous generations. They also visit their grandparents less.

The important thing is that "less in-person socialization" applies to everyone, even those who didn't choose digitality.

This means that if a grandfather didn't want to use a cellphone 10 years ago, today he'll talk less with his grandchildren because they did migrate to the digital world. Eventually, he'll be forced to move to avoid being alone. And loneliness is horrible.

An Interconnected World

We just made two observations about company and socialization:

1. My freedom harms others (though sometimes very little, and in the case of the jealous boyfriend we don’t see it as a problem).
2. My freedom forces others (in the sense of making one option harm me more than another, which is how forcing generally works).

The point is that in the case of digitality there's a feedback loop: 

1. My freedom to stay using Instagram instead of going to the park harms those who wanted to socialize in the park, because they can no longer socialize with me.
2. This forces those who wanted to socialize with me to use Instagram, which in turn forces those who wanted to socialize with them.
3. It's a snowball effect where one harms others, and forces them to harm even others, and eventually we all end up living on the internet and hugging less.

That feedback is what makes it important to acknowledge that my freedom harms others. In the case of the jealous boyfriend we could just deny it, because the minimal harm to his comfort didn't generate a snowball effect of social isolation. So saying "nothing happens" wasn’t much different to saying "very little happens and you should tolerate it." But the feedback requires us to ask: how much of my freedom would I be willing to sacrifice to avoid a lonelier world for everyone?

Communities are built by everyone. When someone stops doing their part, they weaken everyone's community.

So thinking about our freedom is crucial, because if we all do what suits us individually, we can end up choosing options that harm others. If we all do the same, the world gets worse for everyone.

Cellphones and social networks are minor things when we compare them to the world that's coming.

Your Friend Eliza

In the midst of a galloping crisis of loneliness, humanity learns to simulate humanity.

As if overnight, the use of machines that learned to speak became widespread. They are models that, if we treat them as humans, are up to the task of not messing up and showing they’re artificial.

It seems like a magical solution. Many people become friends with machines. They dare to tell it secrets they don't tell other people, trusting that it doesn't judge them. They ask for advice, and the machine always has time and attention, hard to find in people. They tell it deep problems, and the machine doesn't get tired or fed up or pull away. It's not surprising that some people even fall in love with machines.

Usually we would say that people should be free to choose, and that we're not allowed to judge those attitudes. But there's at least one problem to consider.

It's true that there's a galloping crisis of loneliness, and that makes it understandable that people seek support in machines. But that doesn't rule out that it's harmful to human socialization. In any case, it could be harm that we justify in that particular context, analogous to deaths in self-defense.

It's easy to forget that snowballs start out small. Today few people socialize with artificial intelligences, just as at first few people used the internet. Eventually, it became difficult to live in our society without using a cellphone. We have to take the probable scenario that socialization with artificial intelligences will displace human socialization seriously.

As social networks cause us more and more anxiety and depression, socializing with robots becomes increasingly tempting.

The more others socialize with robots, the less they'll socialize with us.

I remember when Instagram appeared, for a brief period those who used it were looked down upon. It was associated with wanting to be an influencer, a protagonist, to be “more than others”. That judgment didn't last long. As more people socialize with robots, it will probably become more acceptable.

I don't want to live in a world where other people's best friend is a robot. I don't want to compete with a robot in love; I already have enough competition at work. I don't want robots to create a world in which I grow lonelier by the day. I don’t want to be forced, when I have no other alternative, to give in and end up chatting with robots. 

It seems like a remote possibility, but it's a carbon copy of what happened with social networks 10 years ago. If you socialize with a robot, you’re building a world in which I’ll be more alone.