Highly connected – yet profoundly lonely

Never before have we been so reachable, so visible, so connected—and yet loneliness seems to be on the rise. Studies show that people who spend several hours a day on social networks report feelings of isolation and emotional exhaustion more frequently. Sociologist Sherry Turkle (2011) spoke more than a decade ago of an “illusion of community” — a world in which we are alone together.
Never before in human history has it been possible to be so close and yet so distant at the same time. The meaning of proximity has shifted in the digital age: from a concept of physical nearness to a discursive relationship based on shared opinions. One might be at odds with one’s immediate neighbors while finding true allies in largely anonymous online forums. So-called echo chambers contribute to the formation of parallel publics — spaces that, as Jürgen Habermas (2022: 62 f.) notes, “share the porous character of openness toward further connections, yet differ from the essentially inclusive nature of the public sphere […] by rejecting dissonant voices and assimilating consonant ones into their own identity-preserving, limited horizon.”

Digital communication has made many things possible, but it has hardly replaced one essential experience: presence. Encounters have turned into feeds, conversations into messages, and proximity into an interface. Social interaction has become quantifiable — it can be counted, liked, stored. But what can be measured is not necessarily meaningful.

Every notification, every like, every reply activates the brain’s reward system. Increasingly, we mistake stimulus for resonance, activity for relationship, and sympathy for empathy. The need for attention is not a sign of weakness but an expression of an anthropological constant: the desire to be seen, to assert one’s own agency, and to make a tangible difference — one that can be recalled with a certain quiet pride.
But what happens when this act of seeing takes place within a distorting hall of mirrors that never ends? When actions provoke reactions, yet no genuine resolution — no shared understanding — ever emerges, only ever-hardening fronts?
Digital networks generate resonance without depth. Signals are sent and received, aligned but rarely related. Relationships form in their most primitive state; stark black-and-white contrasts dominate, while nuanced shades of meaning are conveniently ignored. A new form of social dissonance emerges: we know more about one another, yet understand each other less — and, at times, we no longer even wish to understand. The reality of the echo chamber deceives us into believing that compromise is obsolete, that the world can be ruled unilaterally from within our own filter.

Technology has always fulfilled two essential human desires: the wish for creative control over one’s own influence, and the wish for connection. Technological innovation promises to help us overcome limitations — yet also to be enough unto ourselves. Artificial intelligence, chatbots, and social companion systems like Replika cater to this dual desire almost perfectly. They are available, patient, seemingly nonjudgmental — and they simulate what we increasingly lack in everyday life: undivided attention.
But this kind of relationship is asymmetrical. It gives without asking. It comforts without contradiction. It mirrors without ever unsettling. And therein lies its danger: the more perfectly machines tend to our needs, the less willing we become to allow real closeness. Because, deep down, we know that our quirks, contradictions, and beliefs might rub others the wrong way.
Psychology offers a simple principle for this: we learn through friction. What does not challenge us cannot change us. In our dealings with submissive technologies that simulate social competence, we risk becoming emotionally blunt — comforted, yes, but quietly estranged from what makes relationships truly human.

Loneliness is not an individual failure. It is, more than ever, a structural consequence of a society that values efficiency over experience. We have learned to optimize work, communication, and emotion – yet the smoother these processes become, the less space remains for ambiguity, chance, or genuine care.
Of course, everyone needs time alone. But there is a crucial distinction between chosen solitude and profound loneliness: the former is a deliberate pause, the latter a persistent imposition. Remote work, algorithmic curation of our news feeds, and digital filter bubbles all create comfort – and distance. We live in networks that can do almost anything, except foster intimacy. And yet, intimacy is precisely what holds us together as social beings.
The sociologist Hartmut Rosa (2016) describes resonance as a “responsive relationship with the world” (p. 182), a state in which we are, quite literally, fully immersed. When nothing answers back, when we no longer encounter contradiction or learn to question our seemingly fixed perspectives, we lose the ability to be touched — by others, by the world, by life itself.

The question, then, is not whether technology makes us lonely, but how we can design it to enable closeness. Design – understood as a cultural practice – could play a crucial role here. An empathic interface would not merely respond but listen. An AI that doesn’t imitate relationship, but inspires it. The goal is reflexive augmentation, not the illusion of companionship.
Empathic Design, Age-Conscious Design, Human-Tech Futures – all these concepts point in the same direction: away from technology as a mere means to an end, toward technology as an enabler of relationship. It’s not about less connectivity, but about cultivating a different quality of connection.

Empathy is not a technological feature – it is a general attitude. And yet, for years, we have been trying to reproduce it technologically. The term Affective Computing, coined by Rosalind Picard (1996) at MIT, describes the attempt to teach machines to recognize, interpret, and respond to human emotions. Heart rate, tone of voice, facial expression – signals once reserved for intuition – have become measurable, even modelable.
But empathy does not arise from recognizing emotions; it emerges from the ability to share them and reflect upon them. This is precisely where Empathic Design begins: it’s less about making technology emotional and more about designing it to be responsive – fostering relationships based on resonance and feedback.
An empathic interface doesn’t only ask how someone acts, but why. It knows when a pause matters more than a reply, when silence fosters more connection than words. In a world where algorithms increasingly govern attention, this may be the most radical notion of all: that machines should not only respond – but also hold back. Paul Watzlawick’s famous dictum that “one cannot not communicate” experiences a kind of renaissance here.
The connection between Affective Computing and Empathic Design runs deep. The analogy between hardware and software seems almost inevitable: only through their synthesis can we envision technology that genuinely resonates. Instead of amplifying distance, the goal becomes to foster understanding. The objective is not to make machines human – nor to reduce humans to machines. It is, rather, to bridge the gap and allow technological systems to participate in social processes where they remain themselves, yet appear as partners – in relationships grounded not in optimization, but in attentiveness.
True intelligence, then, does not lie in the calculation or quantification of emotional states, but in the ability to engage with them while acknowledging the limits of understanding – and learning to live gracefully with that uncertainty.

Perhaps the future of digital systems lies in allowing for randomness once again – the unplanned, the uncertain, the human – in short, in recognizing emptiness itself as something of value. Technology does not become more human by simulating emotion, but by enduring ambiguity and contradiction. If we truly wish to engage in meaningful exchange with technological agents, it must happen under a different premise than human-to-human interaction.

At Taikonauten, we understand what it means to engage with the future sustainably. Within our R&D Lab, we’ve already demonstrated how we approach the themes of tomorrow: with a spirit of inquiry and genuine curiosity. That every exploration must meet methodological rigor is, of course, part of that truth.

The overarching task for research, design, and policy is to create spaces where digital communication once again produces something beyond functionality: lasting trust. Trust arises not when systems are flawless, but when they show understandable imperfections – the kind we recognize in ourselves. Trust becomes necessary precisely when certainty is impossible. That is why, in our R&D Lab, we are dedicated to investigating new technologies, experimenting with their processes, and exploring the interplay between the technological world and the sociosphere – to foster a deeper, more sustainable understanding of both.

Loneliness is not the opposite of connectedness – it is its ever-present shadow. Equally important, however, is distinguishing involuntary loneliness from chosen solitude. The more complex our technological systems become, the more essential simplicity becomes: listening, attention, presence. Between notification and silence lies what truly connects us – not data, but idiosyncratic meaning.
Perhaps the end of digital loneliness begins where we relearn to not only share the world, but to feel it. At the very least, a crucial part of our human connectedness is rooted in our relationship with technology. All the more reason, then, to keep a close eye on how it is shaped – and to engage with progress not fearfully, but with mindful persistence.