We’re not online anymore. We’re on-leash. We’re in touch with everyone, but in contact with no one. That thought came to me recently as I caught myself standing, motionless, at the kitchen bench, phone in hand, scrolling through something I can’t even remember now. I wasn’t online; I was tethered. A dog on a lead, sniffing every post.
If you believe the stats, the average person now spends three and a half hours a day on their phones (two and a half of those hours are on social media). That’s one full month every year. Imagine standing by your letterbox for 30 days straight while unsolicited junk mail pours through the slot; flyers you didn’t ask for, promotions you’ll never use, opinions you didn’t seek. Once upon a time, we complained about paper clutter. Now we willingly volunteer for the digital avalanche, wading through it one thumb-flick at a time.
We used to kill time. Now time kills us; one scroll at a time.
But worse than the time suck is what it’s stealing from us: the art of talking to one another. Remember conversation? That ancient practice where two people look at each other, exchange words, nod, laugh, argue, drift off, and come back? Social media has made us fluent in emojis and memes, but illiterate in nuance. A face-to-face talk, with all its awkward pauses and unexpected detours, is far more demanding than pressing “like.”
We’ve traded eye contact for screen contact.
Social media doesn’t steal your attention. It rents it out by the minute. And while your attention is away earning rent for the platforms, your ability to sit down with another human being and actually engage in conversation quietly atrophies.
Digital distance looks like intimacy until you try to hug it.
It’s no wonder loneliness is skyrocketing. Digital distance delivers loneliness in bulk, no assembly required. A million connections and not a soul to call on when you need to move a sofa. Somewhere along the way, we mistook constant contact for real contact. It’s a bit like being surrounded by fast food joints and wondering why no one’s inviting you home for dinner. We’re in touch with everyone, but in contact with no one.
I confess: I’m a serial conversationalist. A social athlete, if you like. I talk to people in the street. Taxi drivers. Shopkeepers. People on trains. The man sitting alone in the café corner. The person who looks like they’re waiting for someone, but isn’t. I’ve made a habit of it for decades, and the return on investment has been extraordinary.
It takes courage to invite yourself to the table as a lonely traveller. But when you do, you discover the unexpected generosity of human beings. The stories I’ve heard, the perspectives I’ve gained, the moments of sheer delight; these are not things the algorithm can deliver. They are earned through curiosity and a willingness to take the first step into conversation.
I’ve met people who’ve changed the way I see the world simply because I asked, “How’s your day?” That question, in the right moment, is more radical than a thousand retweets.
Meanwhile, the digital flood keeps rising. Most of what passes for “content” today is little more than pollution. Once upon a time, marketers obsessed about brand strategy, meaning, empathy; now social media teams churn out cut-and-paste material at industrial scale. They measure success not in resonance but in reach.
It’s not conversation; it’s category karaoke. Everyone sings the same tune, with slight variations, until the consumer can’t tell one brand from another. Worse, they can’t stand any of them.
It’s the one-night stand of communication. Slam. Spam. Thank you, ma’am. Disposable, forgettable, and often regrettable. And like a regrettable fling, it leaves you emptier than before.
So what’s the alternative? To stop the scroll and start the stroll. To return to the street, the café, the chance encounter. To rediscover conversation not as an obligation, but as the oldest and richest form of social media we have.
Conversation is slow. It’s inefficient. It meanders. It refuses to be measured in clicks or conversions. But it’s also where empathy is built, where ideas are tested, where human beings feel less alone.
We don’t need to romanticise the past to see what’s at stake. A renaissance of real human engagement is not nostalgia; it’s survival. If we don’t re-learn the art of conversation, we risk becoming spectators in our own lives, outsourcing our voices to platforms that see us not as people, but as data.
Let’s be clear: I’m not proposing a Luddite bonfire of smartphones. The digital world is not going away. But we need to be more conscious about how we use it, and more intentional about stepping away from it. If you wouldn’t spend a month of your year standing at the letterbox flipping through flyers, why spend it scrolling through feeds?
For brands and marketers, the message is sharp: stop polluting. Don’t abuse your audience with generic content that makes you indistinguishable from the next brand. Stop mistaking frequency for relevance. Instead, create work that arrests attention, invites curiosity, and most importantly; respects the human being on the other side.
For the rest of us, the challenge is personal: go and talk to someone. Not online. In person. Be awkward. Be curious. Be human. If conversation is a muscle, many of us are badly out of shape. It’s time to train again.
Because at the end of the day, loneliness is the only thing that multiplies the more you ignore it. A conversation with a stranger may be the most original content you’ll consume all week. Social media is a loudspeaker. Conversation is a dinner table. We can keep scrolling through the deluge, or we can choose to step out of the flood and sit at the table. I know which one makes life richer.
