Has Technology Made Us Less Courageous? |
A popular social media trend in 2025 was the celebration of social isolation. Reels, posts, and memes abound that celebrate rebuffing social invitations, giving up on dating, doing the bare minimum at work, and even lamenting the loss of social distancing as though it was the silver lining and not an unfortunate consequence of the global pandemic. People seem to have really had it with other people.
There is a certain irony to celebrating social isolation on social media, the very platforms that were meant to promote social connection. Are people truly celebrating solitude, or are they actually voicing a complaint? Have modern technologies that were meant to connect us eroded social connections? And if so, how has this happened, and what can we do about it?
One of the many ways that technology has transformed communication is that it has made it easy for us to avoid courageous communication, the kind that cultivates social connectedness. Courageous communication is admitting when we're wrong or don't know the answers, having difficult conversations, and approaching conflict with respectful dialogue. Such behaviors build trust and strengthen relationships. And they are precisely the behaviors that digital environments make easy to bypass. In short, technology may be making us cowards.
Consider recent trends. For example, ghosting, or ending........