Digital natives vs previous generations

When cursive becomes archaeology

“Is it true that the latest generations can’t write in cursive and can’t read analog clocks?” The question may seem nostalgic, almost a lament from those who miss the “good old days.” But behind this apparent banality lies something much deeper: the first visible symptom of an unprecedented anthropological transformation.

The short answer is: not entirely true, but there’s a grain of truth. In many countries, especially the United States, cursive teaching has been reduced or eliminated from school curricula over the past 10-15 years, favoring print writing and digital skills. As for analog clocks, many young people indeed have less familiarity with reading clock hands, though they’re not completely incapable.

The causes are multiple and interconnected: digitalization has made these skills less necessary in daily life, schools have limited time and must choose what to teach, and young people simply have fewer opportunities to practice. You don’t need cursive to take notes on a tablet, you don’t need to read analog if you always have your phone in your pocket.

But the consequences go beyond practicality. There’s a cultural loss: difficulty accessing historical documents, grandparents’ letters, and manuscripts. There’s a possible cognitive loss: some studies suggest that handwriting, especially in cursive, promotes different neural connections compared to typing, helping memory and learning. And there’s a small generational gap forming.

Yet these are only the most superficial symptoms. Cursive and analog clocks are the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the surface is a much more radical change in how new generations think, relate, experience emotions, and construct their identity.

Two worlds, two brains: Growing up in the Digital Age

The fundamental difference lies not so much in technical skills as in lived experience. “Digital natives” – born after the mid-’90s – experience technology as a natural environment, not as an acquired tool. For them, smartphones and the internet are not innovations but the air they breathe. Those who lived through the transition from analog to digital world have instead an awareness of “before and after,” a memory of how the world worked without it, which creates a different critical sense and sometimes nostalgia.

This difference profoundly shapes how one relates to reality.

Information and Memory: Digital generations are accustomed to having immediate answers to any question. This develops specific skills: they know where to find information quickly, excel at processing multiple data simultaneously, and have flexibility in navigating between different sources. But they memorize less. Those who grew up with encyclopedias and libraries developed patience in research and stronger mnemonic techniques, but perhaps less agility in the era of information overload.

Mediated Sociality: Younger people have had relationships constantly mediated by digital means since adolescence: social media, instant messaging, video calls. This creates opportunities (maintaining long-distance contacts, finding interest-based communities) but also new and specific pressures: constant social comparison, FOMO (fear of missing out), cyberbullying, and managing public image during crucial formative years. Those who experienced both worlds often have a more selective and conscious approach, having experienced adolescence privately.

Fragmented Attention: Growing up with continuous stimuli – notifications, infinite feeds, digital multitasking – seems to influence sustained attention capacity. Some studies suggest that digital generations excel at processing rapid information but struggle more with deep concentration. Those who grew up reading books without digital distractions developed different “attention muscles.” “Empty” boredom – those long afternoons with nothing to do that stimulated imagination and autonomous play – has practically disappeared. There’s always a screen within reach.

Public Identity: Building identity online as well, often publicly, during formative years creates different pressures compared to those who experienced adolescence privately. On the other hand, it also offers more possibilities to explore identity and find belonging communities for those who don’t recognize themselves in traditional contexts.

Practical Skills: There’s an interesting paradox: digital natives are extremely skilled with interfaces but sometimes less so with the technology “under the hood.” They know how to use apps intuitively but understand less about how file systems, hardware, and basic troubleshooting work. Those who saw the evolution often had to “get their hands dirty” more, learning out of necessity.

It’s not about establishing which generation is better or worse – both have advantages and disadvantages. But certainly the experience of transition creates a comparative perspective that’s missing for those born already immersed in the digital, just as digital natives have a naturalness and fluidity that those who learned as adults rarely achieve.

The new geography of fears

Do new generations have more fears? It’s a question without a simple answer, but the data is concerning. Several studies in recent years indicate a significant increase in anxiety, depression, and mental disorders among adolescents and young adults in Western countries, with marked acceleration after 2010-2012. Rates of hospitalization for mental health problems, self-harm, and suicidal thoughts have grown, particularly among adolescent girls.

The causes of the phenomenon are multiple and interconnected:

Social Media and Constant Comparison: Continuous exposure to others’ apparently perfect lives, “likes” as a measure of personal worth, and cyberbullying. All this amplifies insecurities already typical of adolescence, but with unprecedented intensity and pervasiveness.

Information Overload: Constant access to news about the climate crisis, wars, pandemics, and disasters. Previous generations knew these things existed, but didn’t have them in the palm of their hand 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Economic and Future Uncertainty: Job precarity, unaffordable housing costs, enormous student debts, and pensions that seem like a mirage. Many young people have expectations of materially worse lives compared to their parents – a break in the “generational pact” that held for decades.

Academic and Performance Pressures: Increased competition for universities and jobs, résumés to build from childhood, and less room for error. You must be perfect at everything: studies, sports, volunteering, digital skills, and soft skills.

Paradoxical Isolation: Digitally hyperconnected but with fewer face-to-face interactions, less time outdoors, and fewer solid physical communities.

However, it should be considered that there’s also greater awareness: today, there’s more open discussion of mental health, less stigma in asking for help, and more tools and language to express distress. It’s possible that the fears were always there but were simply hidden, repressed, and unspoken.

Every generation has had its specific fears: those who grew up during the Cold War lived under constant nuclear threat, those in the ’70s-’80s faced deep economic crises and terrorism. It’s unclear whether, objectively, there are “more” fears today, or different and more visible fears.

The case of Phone Anxiety

A specific and illuminating example of this new emotional geography is “phone anxiety,” which has become surprisingly common among younger people. Many strongly prefer texting over calling, and some experience real anxiety at the idea of having to make or receive a call. They let the phone ring and then write “sorry, couldn’t answer, everything ok?”, or postpone important phone calls for days – medical appointments, work calls – that would take just a few minutes.

Why does this happen? First, lack of practice: those who grew up communicating mainly via text simply haven’t developed familiarity with phone calls. It’s like any social skill: without exercise, it creates discomfort. Then there’s the need for control: a message gives you time to think, reread, and correct. On the phone, you must respond in real time, manage silences, and improvise. For those accustomed to curating every communication, this spontaneity is frightening.

There’s also fear of immediate judgment: on the phone, you can’t hide hesitations, mistakes, or embarrassment. Your voice and your tone are exposed. For generations raised with the possibility of building more controlled identities online, this vulnerability is uncomfortable.

The consequences are practical (difficulties in professional contexts), relational (loss of emotional nuances that voice conveys), and create a vicious circle: the less you call, the more it scares you, so you avoid it even more, losing further practice.

For those who grew up when the phone was the only way to hear from friends, calling is natural. For digital natives who had WhatsApp at 12, the phone call is an almost foreign medium, used mainly in emergencies or with parents, thus already associated with stress.

Thought and language in transformation

Many teachers and employers report difficulties in the new generations regarding the formulation of complex and articulated thoughts. There’s observed struggle to maintain attention on long texts or reasoning that requires time, a preference for brief and easily consumable information, a tendency toward simple phrases, and difficulty constructing structured arguments, and in some cases a contraction of active vocabulary.

The causes are linked to attention fragmentation: growing up with TikTok, Reels, and continuous feeds accustoms one to 15-60 second content. The brain adapts to this rhythm and struggles with longer and slower formats. There’s also less deep reading: reading on screens favors “skimming” (superficial and fast reading) over immersive reading. Moreover, social media and messaging reward brevity, immediacy, and rapid emotional reactions rather than articulated elaboration.

But beware of generalizations: there are young people excellent in complex thinking, writing, and argumentation. And young people often excel in different forms of thought: rapid synthesis, lateral connections between multiple sources, visual thinking, multimedia communication. It’s not that they don’t think; they think in different ways.

The real risk is atrophy from disuse: if the environment doesn’t require and doesn’t reward long and articulated thinking, why develop it? It’s a problem of incentives and opportunities more than intrinsic brain capabilities.

The invisible factor: The economics of isolation

There’s an elephant in the room that’s talked about too little when discussing youth isolation: economics. Living costs have contributed enormously to isolation and the reduction of gathering places, perhaps more than technology itself.

The Cost Problem: Going out for coffee, going to the movies, to a club, or to a bar costs amounts that impact entry-level salaries or allowances much more than 20-30 years ago.

Prohibitive Rents: Many young people still live with their parents until 30+ years or have tiny shared apartments. This drastically reduces the possibility of hosting friends, organizing dinners, and house parties. Previous generations at 25 often already had their own home where they could gather.

The Closure of Spaces: Free or cheap gathering places have disappeared: clubs, social centers, oratories, libraries open in the evening, lively squares. Many have closed or reduced hours. What remains are shopping malls (which push consumption) or spaces requiring increasingly high minimum consumption.

Commercialization of Public Space: Increasingly difficult to stay in a place without having to consume. Even sitting in a square can lead to evictions if you’re “too many” or “too noisy.” Gentrification has transformed working-class neighborhoods into expensive areas, with historic venues becoming exclusive wine bars.

The social consequences are profound:

Digital Sociality as Economic Fallback: It’s not just technological preference; it’s also economic necessity. Messaging, gaming online, and watching series together on video call cost practically nothing. It’s rational to take refuge in the digital.

Forced Isolation: It’s not that young people don’t want to go out; they often literally can’t afford it regularly. This generates frustration, a sense of exclusion, and shame.

Accentuated Inequality: Those with well-off families can afford “normal” sociality, while those who can’t fall behind. This creates social fractures within generations themselves.

Loss of Serendipity: Casual encounters, friendships born “by chance” at the bar, in the square, require physical presence in shared spaces. If these disappear, so do these opportunities.

In the ’80s-’90s, with relatively higher salaries compared to the cost of living and affordable rents, young people had greater economic autonomy. They could afford a shared apartment, frequent outings, and expensive hobbies. This facilitated spontaneous and continuous aggregation.

Today, a precarious thirty-year-old still living with parents or paying 600 euros for a room has far fewer possibilities. It’s not laziness or preference for the screen – it’s economic mathematics. Gyms, dance courses, sports: too expensive for many. Concerts and live events have skyrocketed in price. Even just “having an aperitivo” every weekend becomes a luxury.

There’s also a component of chronic financial stress that influences sociality: those constantly worried about money, rent, and bills have less mental energy to cultivate relationships. Economic anxiety becomes social anxiety.

The paradox of technology: Cause and remedy

Imagine a young person going out alone in the evening in their car. They get fast food and eat it in the car. They listen to music. They spend time on YouTube or TikTok. Then on Netflix. And maybe they start talking with ChatGPT or another AI assistant.

This example, sadly common, perfectly illustrates technology’s central paradox: it’s simultaneously cause and remedy for isolation.

That person alone in the car is isolated – no real human contact, no physical sharing. But without technology, they’d be even more alone: sitting in silence, eating, without music, without entertainment, without even the possibility of “talking” to someone (even if it’s an AI).

Technology didn’t create their loneliness – maybe it’s due to economic costs, lack of available friends, social anxiety, odd hours, or simply that nobody was free that evening. But technology makes that loneliness more bearable.

What Technology Offers the Isolated:

• Simulated Company: ChatGPT, voice assistants, and even TV series characters become “presences.” They don’t replace real people, but they fill the void.
• Infinite Entertainment: YouTube, TikTok, Netflix: zero boredom, always something to watch. Without it, that person would stare at emptiness.
• Illusory Sense of Connection: Scrolling social feeds, seeing others’ lives, commenting, reacting. It’s not real interaction, but creates the illusion of participating in something.
• Control and Safety: You can “turn off” Netflix or ChatGPT when you want. Real people are more unpredictable and require more emotional energy.

But here’s the problem: this good enough solution reduces the urgency to seek more difficult alternatives. Why make the effort to go out, face social anxiety, risk rejection, spend money, when you can have a “pleasant enough” evening alone with technology?

It’s like junk food: not nutritious like a real meal, but easy, cheap, and gives immediate satisfaction. So you stop cooking (or socializing).

The Vicious Circle:

1. You’re isolated (for various reasons)
2. Technology alleviates the discomfort
3. You become dependent on this alleviation
4. You practice even less in real interactions
5. When you have social occasions, you’re more rusty and anxious
6. The occasions go badly, or you avoid them
7. You return to technology, which is safer
8. Isolation deepens

The impossible comparison: Would they have been worse off without?

Would a person from the previous generation, with the same difficulty, find that people have been more damaged? Probably yes, but in different ways.

Without Technology (1980s-’90s):

• Total and Concrete Isolation: Sitting literally alone, in silence, staring at emptiness, or watching broadcast TV with fixed programming. The experience of loneliness would have been rawer, heavier, more oppressive.
• Fewer Coping Resources: You couldn’t search for motivational videos, read forums of people with the same difficulties, or listen to podcasts. You were alone with your thoughts.
• Greater Stigma: There was less understanding of social anxiety, depression, and relational difficulties. “Shy” was seen as a character defect. More shame, less language to express distress.
• No Alternative Way: If you couldn’t do face-to-face, you had no options.

But there were also protective aspects:

• Less Social Comparison: You didn’t constantly see on Instagram how much fun others are having. Isolation was painful, but less accompanied by continuous comparison.
• More Forced Occasions: Even shy people had to do things in person: go to the bank, post office, buy tickets. Small obligated interactions that kept you minimally “trained.”
• More Motivation: If loneliness were truly unbearable and you didn’t have Netflix as an anesthetic, maybe you would be more pushed to leave your comfort zone. Desperation can be motivating.
• Stronger Local Communities: There were more community structures where you could insert yourself: parishes, clubs, and neighborhood associations. You didn’t have to be socially brilliant, just show up.

It’s like asking: Is it worse to have a broken leg without painkillers or with painkillers that create dependency and prevent proper healing?

The person from the ’80s-’90s had a greater probability of extreme outcomes: either suffer intensely and remain deeply isolated, or be forced to seek help out of desperation. Today’s person has a greater probability of stabilizing in a suboptimal but sustainable equilibrium: moderate but chronic pain, a “gray zone” of semi-isolation that’s not painful enough to force change.

Technology has transformed the nature of isolation from acute to chronic, from visible to invisible, from unbearable to bearable-but-unresolved.

Love in the time of apps

Even romantic relationships now pass mostly through dating apps, with the same exact paradox: democratization of opportunities and commodification of people coexist in the same tool.

The Advantages Are Real:

• Amplified Access: You can meet hundreds of people you would never have otherwise encountered, overcoming geographical and social circle limits.
• For those with Difficulties: Shy, introverted people, those with social anxiety can “break the ice” from behind a screen. It eliminates the anguish of a cold approach.
• Efficiency and Clarity: Everyone knows why they’re there. No ambiguity of “do they like me or are they just being nice?”
• Niches and Specificity: Apps for specific sexual orientations, religions, lifestyles. Those with particular preferences find otherwise impossible communities.
• Initial Safety: You can chat, verify compatibility, and research the person before meeting. For women especially, there’s a level of screening that a casual approach doesn’t offer.

But the Disadvantages Are Deep:

• Commodification of People: Swiping transforms human beings into catalog products. Instant judgment based on 5 photos. It’s literally shopping for people.
• Paradox of Choice: Too many options paralyze. There’s always someone “potentially better” around the corner. Very difficult to commit. Relationships become disposable.
• Obligatory Superficiality: You win or lose based on photos and a 3-line bio. Physical attractiveness always mattered, but before it could emerge, together with charisma and chemistry. Now it’s an absolute prerequisite.
• Unbalanced Dynamics: Beautiful women receive hundreds of matches, average men almost none. For many men, it’s a total desert; for many women, it’s an unmanageable bombardment. Nobody’s really doing well.
• Normalized Ghosting: Disappearing without explanation has become standard. Before, if you met someone through mutual friends, there was social accountability. Online, you’re a stranger; disappearing has no consequences.
• Gamification of Intimacy: Matches, likes, notifications: it’s designed like a video game that creates addiction. The dopamine of swiping becomes the goal, not actually finding someone.
• Distorted Expectations: Highly curated profiles, best photos, idealized lives. Real meetings often disappoint.

The Generational Comparison Is Sharp:

In the ’80s-’90s, you met someone through friends, school, work, hobbies, or chance. The pool was limited, but connections were more organic. You had to “settle” more, but maybe this led to giving people more opportunities. The approach was more stressful but created stories to tell. Relationships started more slowly but perhaps with more solid foundations.

Today, meeting people “in real life” has become almost inappropriate or strange in certain contexts. The pool is infinite, but connections are more fragile. The illusion of finding “the perfect person” makes it hard to settle. Approach is mediated, but interactionsare emptier. Relationships start faster (physically) but dissolve just as quickly.

As with social isolation, apps have become necessary because other channels have atrophied: less free time and gathering spaces, fear of “disturbing” or being inappropriate by approaching in person, frenetic life rhythms, and fragmented social networks.

Apps fill a void they partly contributed to creating.

Psychological Effects Are Heavy:

• Self-Esteem: Being repeatedly ignored or ghosted erodes confidence. Even receiving only physical attention without interest in the person is alienating.
• Romantic Burnout: After years of apps, many become cynical, disillusioned, and exhausted. “Dating fatigue” is a real phenomenon.
• Relational FOMO: The idea that there’s always someone better prevents investing in the person in front of you.
• Desensitization: You treat people as interchangeable options. This pollutes offline relationships too.

And there’s an uncomfortable truth: dating apps work very well for a minority (very attractive people, socially skilled, in big cities) and badly for the majority. But since that minority shows their success stories, everyone continues using them, hoping to be lucky.

Moreover, the business model of Tinder, Bumble, and similar isn’t to make you find love – it’s to keep you on the platform as long as possible. If you found someone quickly and deleted the app, they’d lose a customer. So they’re incentivized to give you enough hope to continue, but not complete satisfaction.

The vicious circle: When the solution becomes the problem

But there’s an even more insidious aspect that closes the circle: technology doesn’t just (poorly) solve an existing isolation problem. Technology itself creates and reinforces isolation by making people less capable and more distrustful toward real interaction.

If you get used to communicating only when you’ve had time to think, reread, and edit your messages, the immediacy of real interaction becomes disorienting. “What do I say? How do I respond? I don’t have time to think!” What was once natural becomes a source of anxiety.

If for years you’ve met people only through apps or formal introductions, when someone speaks to you spontaneously at a bar or library, the reaction is: “Why are they talking to me? What do they want? It’s weird.” A friendly, casual approach is perceived as anomalous or threatening.

Online, you can block, mute, or ignore anyone who bothers you. In real life, you must tolerate small annoyances, imperfect conversations, and awkward silences. Those accustomed to total online control struggle enormously with the imperfection of real interaction.

The new unwritten rules

A new social ethic of “do not disturb” has been created:

• Headphones = Do Not Disturb: Headphones have become a universal signal of “leave me alone.”
• Avoiding Eye Contact: Many young people actively avoid making eye contact on the street, on the subway, and in shops. Gaze has become intrusive. Before it was normal, now it’s almost aggressive.
• The Death of Small Talk: “How’s it going?” “Nice weather today” – interactions that served to build social bridges are seen as superficial, useless, and annoying. But they were training for deeper conversations.
• Everything Requires Prior Notice: Even calling a friend without first texting “can I call you?” is considered invasive. Spontaneity is dead. Everything must be planned, scheduled, and approved.

The Cascade Effects Are Evident:

Public places become quieter: trains, waiting rooms, parks – everyone on screens, nobody talks. This reinforces the idea that talking to strangers is deviant. A child/adolescent growing up seeing adults always on phones, never in spontaneous conversation, doesn’t learn how it’s done. It’s not in their behavioral repertoire.

And a self-fulfilling prophecy is created: since everyone is distrustful, when you try to be sociable, you’re viewed with suspicion, which confirms that “it’s not done,” so you stop trying, which makes it even stranger when someone does it.

The generational comparison is dramatic

1970s-’80s:

• Talking to strangers on trains was normal
• Children played with other children at the park without their parents knowing each other
• Asking for directions, making conversation in line, commenting on the weather: daily routine
• Neighbors knew each other, asked for favors, borrowed salt and sugar

Today:

• On trains, everyone is isolated with headphones
• Children can’t talk to strangers, so parents organize formal playdates
• Google Maps killed the need to ask for directions
• Neighbors are strangers, knocking on the door is weird

We complain about being isolated and alone, but we’ve built increasingly high social walls. We want connection, but we interpret every attempt at connection as invasion.

The safety paradox

It should be said that many, especially women, appreciate this new “do not disturb” norm because it reduces unwanted approaches, catcalling, and harassment. And this is legitimate and important. But the cost is that every approach, even innocent and friendly, becomes suspect.

The baby has been thrown out with the bathwater: to protect from negative interactions, positive ones have also been closed off.

Distrust as default

Distrust has become the starting attitude:

• Toward Strangers: “Why are they talking to me? What do they want to sell me? Are they a scammer? A harasser?”
• Toward Neighbors: “Better not to know them too well, then they expect things, they disturb you.”
• Toward Colleagues: “I keep work and private life separate” pushed to the extreme: zero socialization.
• Even Toward Friends: “I don’t want to seem needy/clingy/invasive,” so I wait for them to write, but they also wait, resulting in nobody contacting anyone.

The golden cage: Reflections without conclusions

When an entire generation grows up without ever having seen models of spontaneous sociality, without having practiced small talk, with the idea that every unplanned interaction is intrusive… how do you recover? It’s like asking someone who’s never swum to cross a river. It’s not just that they lack practice – they simply don’t have the concept of how it’s done.

Technology’s role is multiplied:

1. It provided alternatives that made real interaction unnecessary
2. It created expectations (control, perfection, efficiency) that real interaction can’t satisfy
3. It built new social norms that stigmatize spontaneity
4. It atrophied the skills necessary for real interaction

It’s no longer just a bandage on a wound – it’s a poison that creates the wound it then promises to cure.

We’ve locked ourselves in golden cages, and now the bars seem like protection rather than imprisonment.

Yet we can’t simply say “technology is bad, let’s remove it.” For those already isolated, removing it would only mean more suffering, not magically more friendships. The boy alone in the car wouldn’t suddenly have friends if you took away his phone – he’d just be worse off.

The real problem is structural: why have we created a society where it’s normal for a young person to spend the evening alone in a car because:

• They have nowhere to go (spaces closed/expensive)
• They have no one to go with (fragile social networks)
• They don’t know how to socialize (atrophied skills)
• They can’t afford alternatives (precarious economy)

Technology is a bandage on a larger social wound. A useful bandage that alleviates pain, but doesn’t cure the wound, and perhaps hides it enough that we don’t realize how deep it is.

Questions without answers

Is this process reversible? When entire generations have grown up this way, can they still learn – or re-learn – spontaneous sociality?

Is it better to suffer acutely but briefly (as in the ’80s-’90s without technology) or to suffer moderately but chronically (as today with technology as an anesthetic)?

Must we accept that the human being has simply changed, that this is the new normal, and stop looking back with nostalgia?

Or is there still room to rebuild accessible gathering spaces, educate toward real sociality alongside digital, and find a balance between technology’s benefits and fundamental human needs for authentic connection?

Technology as a mirror

Perhaps the fundamental question isn’t “does technology help or harm?” but “why have we created technologies that isolate us?” and “what does it say about us that we use them so willingly?”

Technology is morally neutral – it’s a tool. But the fact that so many people use it as a substitute for human connection tells us that something in the social structure has broken. It’s not technology’s fault if we’re alone; technology is just the faithful mirror of a society that has stopped taking care of its members.

The economy makes it impossible for young people to afford an autonomous and social life. Privatized and commodified public spaces. Dissolved local communities. Precarious work that prevents life planning. Ruthless competition that starts from childhood. The absence of social and emotional safety nets.

In this context, technology isn’t the problem – it’s the best solution we’ve managed to find. An inadequate solution that creates new problems, but still better than nothing.

And until we address the structural problems – economic, social, urban, cultural – that created this mass loneliness, we’ll continue to take refuge in screens. Because, in the end, it’s still better to talk with an AI than to stare at the emptiness of your own life.

Toward a possible synthesis: Technology that serves the human

Yet, amid this complex scenario, a possible way out emerges. It’s not about going back – something impossible and probably not even desirable – nor passively surrendering to this drift. It’s about radically rethinking the relationship between technology and humanity.

Technology as Bridge, Not Destination

The best solution might be to adopt the attitude of the previous generation – that openness to spontaneity, that tolerance of imperfection, that valorization of casual encounter – but with intelligent help from technology. Use digital tools to fill gaps created by real social and economic problems, but always with the final goal of physical sharing and real encounter.

A WhatsApp group of photography enthusiasts should serve to organize photo outings together, not to comment on photos endlessly without ever meeting. A dating app should be the means to overcome initial shyness and find compatible people, not the place to cultivate endless virtual relationships. An online chess players’ forum should lead to tournaments in local clubs, not replace them.

Technology should be the bridge you cross to reach the other shore, not the house you permanently move into.

Amplification, Not Creation

It’s important to recognize that technology has probably brought out and amplified already existing problems, rather than creating new ones. Shyness existed before WhatsApp. Economic isolation existed before Netflix. The difficulty of finding truly compatible people existed before Tinder.

What technology has done is make these problems more visible, more measurable, more pervasive. And in the process, it offered partial solutions that, however inadequate, are better than nothing. The isolated young person of the ’80s suffered in silence and invisibly. Today’s isolated young person suffers with a smartphone in hand – it’s more evident, more studied, but not necessarily worse.

The difference is that today we have the tools to address these problems more systematically, if only we used them wisely.

The Best of Both Worlds

Imagine a society that combines:

• The social openness of previous generations + technology’s ability to overcome geographical barriers
• The spontaneity of casual encounter + algorithms that help you find people with common interests
• Tolerance for human imperfection + digital tools that facilitate first contacts for the shyest
• Physical gathering spaces + platforms that make them accessible and visible
• Patience in building relationships + efficiency in finding potentially compatible people

It’s not utopia. It’s simply using technology for what it does best (connecting, informing, organizing) while preserving what humans do best (empathizing, improvising, creating authentic bonds).

Technology as Facilitator of Real Communities

The true unfulfilled promise of technology was this: connecting people who would never have found each other otherwise, then having them meet in real life. People with niche passions, with similar experiences, with shared values, who live in the same city but would never have crossed paths.

This would happen if technology were designed with the explicit goal of bringing people OUT of the screen, not keeping them in. If it rewarded real meetings, not virtual likes. If it measured success not in “usage time” but in “true friendships created.”

Meetup.com, in its original intentions, does this: you use the platform to find people with your interests, but the goal is always to meet physically. Sure, even Meetup has its problems, but the principle is right.

The Attitude Needed

But technology alone isn’t enough. A cultural change is also needed, a new attitude:

• Use chat to organize, not to replace the meeting
• See online time as an investment for offline time, not as an end in itself
• Recover tolerance for the imperfection of real interactions
• Value physical presence as something qualitatively different, not just quantitatively superior
• Teach young people that technology is a magnificent tool to begin, but real life happens outside the screen

The Role of Economics

And naturally, we need to address the economic problem. No technology can compensate for the fact that young people can’t afford to go out, have no spaces to meet, and live in constant precarity. Technology can be a bridge, but if on the other side of the bridge there’s nothing accessible and economically sustainable, the bridge is useless.

We need free or cheap gathering spaces. We need salaries that allow autonomy. We need cities designed to favor casual encounters, not isolation in private boxes. We need local communities that take care of their members.

Technology can help organize all this, but it can’t replace it.

An Alternative Vision

Imagine a future where:

• A shy boy uses an app to find other comic book enthusiasts in his city
• The app connects them and suggests cheap cafés where to meet
• After the first digitally organized meeting, the group decides to meet regularly in person
• The app continues to facilitate organization (who’s coming? where? when?), but the center of social life is a physical meeting
• The boy, through this group, overcomes shyness, makes true friendships, and maybe even meets a girl
• Technology was essential to start everything, but then became invisible, a background tool

This is possible. It’s not science fiction. It’s simply using technology to amplify the human, not to replace it.