Many people are not antisocial; they may be socially deconditioned.

Digital connection is real, but it may not fully replace face-to-face interaction.

Social stamina can be rebuilt through small, repeated moments of connection.

There's something I've been hearing a lot lately, usually said with a kind of hesitant self-consciousness:

"I think I'm getting worse at being around people."

Not meaner. Not less caring. Just rustier. Like a skill that hasn't been used in a while and nobody quite noticed until it was needed.

People describe dreading dinners they actually want to attend, going blank during pauses in conversation, or feeling quietly relieved when plans fall through. The people describing this to me are thoughtful, warm, often professionally accomplished adults who genuinely like other people. And yet somewhere along the way, real-time human interaction started to feel like a muscle they're no longer sure how to use.

I've watched this up close. I spend much of my working life around students at a large, diverse university. I’ve noticed a hunger for connection and a simultaneous unease with its unpredictability.

What I've come to believe is that what many of us are experiencing is not social failure. It's something closer to social deconditioning.

Deconditioning, Not Deficiency

Physiologists use the term deconditioning to describe what happens when the body loses stamina through reduced use. Muscles weaken. Endurance drops. None of that means the body is broken—it means the body adapted to a lower level of demand.

Human beings evolved through repeated, embodied exposure to one another—faces, voices, eye contact, touch, and the subtle repair work that happens after misunderstanding. Research on face-to-face interaction, co-regulation, and nonverbal communication suggests these experiences are foundational to emotional well-being and attachment. Coan and Sbarra's Social Baseline Theory argues that human beings are biologically wired to regulate stress and conserve effort through the presence of........

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