Are You Really 'Online'? 5 Signals Tell You’re Losing Real Connection

I used to think scrolling was my meditation.

I grew up in a Brooklyn apartment where my mother taught me that joy lives in rhythm—and my father coded systems that never lie. At 3 a.m., I’d watch strangers post their triumphs like sacred rituals: every like, every comment, a silent exchange that felt more real than the face of the screen.

The first signal: Your feed feels like a museum exhibit.

You scroll through curated moments—each post polished, each story staged—not as expression, but as performance. The algorithm doesn’t reward your truth; it rewards your predictability. I once spent an hour watching my own reflection in a loop: no one smiled back.

The second signal: You miss the sound of silence.

We’ve traded breath for bandwidth. Your quiet isn’t solitude—it’s surveillance. The app doesn’t ask if you’re alive; it asks if you’re profitable. My grandmother used to say: “True connection doesn’t live on screens—it lives between heartbeats.” She was right.

The third signal: Your ‘likes’ are memorials without mourners.

A thousand clicks don’t heal grief. They just archive it. Every ‘liked’ photo is a tombstone with no name carved into it. I posted once about my father’s death—and got zero replies. That wasn’t engagement. That was erasure.

The fourth signal: You confuse trend-following with belonging.

You chase streaks because the system told you they mean something—but they only mean data points. True community doesn’t grow on algorithms; it grows in shared silences at 4 a.m., when the world is still breathing.

The fifth signal: You believe automation is intimacy.

The platform calls its filters ‘fair.’ But fairness isn’t random—it’s calibrated to keep you hooked. My mother used to say: “Technology should serve soul—not script.” I’m still learning how to unplug without losing myself.

What moment did you last feel truly ‘seen’?