We Have Time for Everything—Except Each Other: Why the People Who Matter Most to Us Send Us Abbreviated Texts

By Jeffrey R. DeSarbo, D.O., The Bucket List Doctor

The Most Connected - and the Most Disconnected - Society in History

There is something deeply contradictory happening in modern life. We have created the most technologically connected society in human history, yet many people feel increasingly lonely, isolated, forgotten, and emotionally disconnected. We carry devices that allow us to communicate instantly with almost anyone, almost anywhere on Earth. We can see someone's face from thousands of miles away, send a message across the world in seconds, and remain continuously updated on the lives of hundreds or even thousands of people. By almost every technological measure, we should be the most connected human beings who have ever lived. Yet something feels wrong. Loneliness and social isolation are not merely uncomfortable experiences; research has associated them with meaningful risks to human health and mortality.¹

We will spend thirty or sixty minutes on a Zoom meeting for work without questioning whether we have the time. We can spend an hour watching YouTube videos, another hour scrolling through Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok, and another twenty minutes browsing Amazon or eBay. We search for information about movies, actors, musicians, politicians, sports figures, diets, beauty treatments, anti-aging products, restaurants, vacations, and people we will never meet. We can disappear into our phones for hours, often without remembering much of what we just consumed.

Then a close friend sends us a message. We see it, intend to respond, and tell ourselves we will get back to them later. Hours pass. Sometimes days. Eventually, we write, "Sorry, I've been so busy." But were we really too busy, or have we simply changed what we consider worthy of our time?

That may be one of the more uncomfortable questions of our era. We often say we do not have enough time for the people we care about, but our phones may tell a very different story. Screen-time reports can reveal hours spent each week consuming content created by strangers while the people who supposedly matter most to us receive abbreviated texts, delayed responses, occasional emojis, and promises that "we really need to get together soon." Perhaps we are not running out of time. Perhaps we are reallocating it. And if time is one of the clearest expressions of what we value, what does that say about the direction in which our values are moving?

We Were Built to Be Social Beings

Human beings are profoundly social creatures. Long before cities, corporations, smartphones, or social media, our survival depended upon one another. We lived in groups, raised children together, protected one another, mourned together, celebrated together, and shared stories and experiences. For much of human history, isolation was not merely emotionally uncomfortable; it could be dangerous. Our brains evolved accordingly, becoming extraordinarily sensitive to facial expressions, tone of voice, body language, trust, threat, acceptance, rejection, and belonging. In one way or another, the human brain is constantly asking: Am I safe? Am I accepted? Am I valued? Do I belong?

Our brains were built to connect with other brains. Technology can transmit words, photographs, videos, and voices, but human connection involves a much richer biological exchange. When two people sit together, their brains process facial expressions, subtle changes in tone, posture, eye contact, pauses, laughter, touch, and countless other social signals, many occurring outside conscious awareness. A conversation is not simply information moving from one brain to another. It is an extraordinarily complex interaction between two nervous systems. This may be why time spent with someone we love can feel fundamentally different from the same amount of time spent observing the lives of hundreds of people online. One may leave us stimulated; the other can leave us genuinely connected. Those are not necessarily the same thing.

There may also be important consequences for how our brains age. Longitudinal research and meta-analyses suggest that stronger social relationships and continued social engagement are associated with healthier cognitive aging, while social isolation and loneliness have been associated with greater cognitive decline and dementia risk.^2-4 Social interaction asks the brain to do many things at once: listen, remember, interpret facial expressions and tone, regulate emotion, retrieve language, respond spontaneously, understand another person's perspective, and adapt to an unpredictable conversation. In that sense, meaningful social engagement may function as a remarkably complex form of exercise for the brain. We often talk about physical activity, diet, and mentally stimulating activities as investments in healthy aging, but perhaps we should also recognize conversation, friendship, community involvement, and maintaining close relationships as part of caring for the aging brain. If technology gradually displaces rather than supports these interactions, we may be giving up something biologically important as well as emotionally meaningful.

Are Humans Becoming More Like the Technology We Created?

For decades, one of the goals of technology has been to make machines behave more like human beings. Computers became easier to communicate with. Phones learned to recognize our voices. Artificial intelligence learned to converse, respond, and simulate increasingly natural interactions. But while technology has been becoming more human, something else may have been happening in the opposite direction. Human beings may be becoming more like technology.

Our conversations are getting shorter, our responses more abbreviated, and our interactions increasingly asynchronous. Our attention shifts rapidly from one stimulus to another. We communicate in fragments, respond when convenient, filter what we show others, and avoid what makes us uncomfortable. We mute people, unfollow them, scroll past them, leave messages unanswered, and increasingly expect relationships to function with the same efficiency and low emotional demand as our digital environments. We may even be beginning to treat people the way we treat content, quickly deciding what is interesting, relevant, useful, or worth our attention before moving on to the next thing.

This may be one of the most profound social transformations of the digital age. Technology is no longer simply something we use. It may be teaching us how to behave. The question is whether we recognize what we may be losing in the process. Human relationships are inherently inefficient. They require time. They involve repetition. People tell stories we have heard before. Conversations wander. Someone takes twenty minutes to explain something that could have been summarized in two sentences. People have emotional needs at inconvenient times. They become sick, lonely, anxious, disappointed, and vulnerable. They sometimes need us when we would rather be doing something else.

That inefficiency is part of being human. Technology, by contrast, teaches us to optimize. It trains us to prefer what is faster, shorter, more convenient, more personalized, and more immediately rewarding. The danger is not simply that we are spending too much time on our devices. The greater danger may be that we are gradually applying the values of technology, including speed, convenience, efficiency, stimulation, and instant gratification, to relationships that depend upon almost the opposite qualities: patience, presence, vulnerability, sacrifice, tolerance, and time.

The Great Reallocation of Human Attention

Every day, we vote for what matters to us. We vote with our attention, our calendars, and our time. Time is perhaps our most valuable nonrenewable resource. Money can sometimes be earned again. Possessions can be replaced. Opportunities occasionally return. But the hour you spent this morning is gone forever. That makes the way we allocate our time one of the clearest reflections of our priorities, even when those priorities are unconscious.

Think about your own week. How many hours did you spend answering emails, attending virtual meetings, scrolling through social media, watching videos, shopping online, checking sports scores, reading political arguments, or looking up information about celebrities and entertainment? Now compare that with the hours spent sitting across from someone you love, calling an old friend simply because you wanted to hear his or her voice, visiting someone without needing a reason, or spending an uninterrupted hour with someone you care about without checking your phone. Somewhere along the way, we became willing to give strangers on screens hours of our attention while giving people we love fragments of it. We have become available to everyone and truly present for almost no one.

When Did Calling Someone Become an Imposition?

There was a time when the telephone ringing meant someone wanted to talk to you. They were not necessarily calling because something was wrong, because they needed a favor, or because they were trying to schedule something. Sometimes they simply wanted to hear your voice. Today, an unexpected phone call can almost feel like a violation of social etiquette. People now frequently text first to ask whether it is okay to call. We have reached an extraordinary moment in human communication when we sometimes feel the need to obtain permission to use the telephone for its original purpose.

Texting is enormously useful, but it allows us to control human interaction in ways conversation does not. We choose when to respond, edit our words, avoid uncomfortable pauses, and distance ourselves from sadness, vulnerability, disappointment, or conflict. Digital communication gives us many of the benefits of social interaction while allowing us to avoid many of its emotional demands. Yet those emotional demands are precisely where intimacy often develops. Human connection is built in the unscripted moments, including the pause before someone answers, the change in a person's voice that tells you something is wrong, the story that wanders off course, the unexpected confession, and the laughter that cannot be captured by an emoji. A text can transmit information, but a conversation can transmit humanity.

The Neuroscience of the Infinite Scroll

The human brain is particularly responsive to novelty, anticipation, and reward. Social media platforms provide all three in abundance. Every swipe offers something new. Every notification carries the possibility of social validation. Every post may contain something interesting, provocative, funny, frightening, attractive, or enraging. Research examining neural responses to social-media feedback, including the "like" feature, provides evidence that online social feedback engages brain processes involved in reward and social evaluation.⁵ We keep checking because we do not know what will appear next.

Meaningful relationships operate on a completely different reward schedule. People we know well are familiar. They are not algorithms designed to continuously surprise and stimulate us. The problem arises when a brain increasingly accustomed to rapid novelty begins to experience ordinary human interaction as insufficiently stimulating. Silence feels uncomfortable, long conversations feel tedious, and simply sitting with someone can begin to feel unproductive. We can become overstimulated and underconnected at the same time.

If you think this phenomenon is simply a byproduct of affluent, highly developed societies with too much leisure time and too many technological distractions, look more broadly around the world. In communities where families may struggle with poverty, limited infrastructure, or inconsistent access to basic resources, the mobile phone has often become one of the first and most powerful gateways to the modern world. Yet as internet access and social media spread, we can see adults and children becoming deeply absorbed in digital content, sometimes even while surrounded by family and community. We should be careful not to casually label every form of intense use as "addiction," but the speed with which these devices can capture human attention across cultures, languages, income levels, and vastly different ways of life should make us pause.

This is not merely a habit of wealthy societies. It suggests that the device and the medium are tapping into something deeply rooted in human neurobiology: our attraction to novelty, reward, social information, belonging, comparison, and stimulation. When the same technology can so quickly command attention in environments that otherwise share very little in common, perhaps the more important question is not why some people struggle to put their phones down, but why we ever assumed the human brain would be well equipped to resist something designed to engage it so continuously.

This also raises a larger societal question: At what point does protecting people from the potential risks of excessive or dependency-producing technology become more than an issue of individual self-control? Perhaps one of the most telling signs of where all of this may be heading is that governments are already beginning to grapple with the consequences of humans forming increasingly intimate relationships with artificial intelligence. China, for example, has enacted regulations governing AI anthropomorphic interactive services that address risks of excessive emotional dependency and include specific protections involving minors and virtual intimate relationships.⁶ Think about what that means for a moment. We have reached a point in human history where society is no longer simply debating whether people spend too much time looking at screens; we are beginning to debate what happens when the screen becomes the friend, the confidant, the companion, or even the romantic partner. The concern is not that technology can talk to us. It is that technology may eventually become easier to talk to than another human being.

As we learn more about how digital platforms can capture attention and shape behavior, particularly in children and adolescents, societies may increasingly have to consider what reasonable safeguards should exist around design features intended to maximize engagement, age of access, privacy, notifications, endless scrolling, and other mechanisms that encourage prolonged use. Public-health authorities, including the U.S. Surgeon General, have called for greater attention to the potential effects of social media on youth mental health and for stronger safeguards for children and adolescents.⁷ The goal should not be to demonize technology or have governments dictate how adults spend their time. It is to recognize that when extraordinarily sophisticated technologies are deliberately designed to compete for the attention of the human brain, telling individuals simply to exercise more willpower may not be an adequate public-health response. The question of responsibility may ultimately belong not only to the person holding the phone, but also to the companies designing what appears on it and to the societies deciding what protections, if any, should surround its use.

Connected to Thousands, Known by Almost No One

Social media has also created a form of social abundance that can conceal emotional scarcity. Someone may have thousands of followers and still have no one they feel comfortable calling when life falls apart. We know what hundreds of people ate for dinner. We know where they vacationed, what concert they attended, what their children accomplished, and what political candidate they support. Yet we may have very little understanding of how they are actually doing, and they may know equally little about us.

There is an enormous difference between being seen and being known. Being seen can require little more than a photograph. Being known requires time, repetition, vulnerability, memory, and reciprocity. It requires someone remembering what you told them three months ago and asking what happened next. Social media can absolutely strengthen genuine relationships, especially across distance, but it can also create the illusion of relationship. We see someone's posts and subconsciously feel that we have remained part of their life, even when we have not spoken to them in years.

The Loneliness of Being the One Who Always Reaches Out

There are still people who call, send the message that says, "I was thinking about you," remember birthdays, suggest dinner, organize gatherings, and check on people when nothing is wrong. If you are one of those people, you may also understand one of the quieter forms of loneliness: the loneliness of always being the one who reaches out.

At some point, you may conduct an experiment you never intended to conduct. You stop calling. You stop texting. You stop suggesting dinner. You stop organizing. Suddenly, certain relationships disappear. No one calls, no message arrives, and weeks become months. You begin wondering whether the relationship existed because two people valued it or because one person kept it alive. Those who test this theory most often find they were correct as to their anticipated outcome. Eventually, in futility, many find themselves becoming the very person they once resented: the one who stops reaching out.

This can hurt more than people realize. Reciprocity communicates value. When someone reaches out without needing anything, the message underneath the message is powerful: you crossed my mind, you matter to me, and I want you in my life. When that effort is repeatedly unreturned, the message received may be very different, even if it was never intended. It can begin to feel as though you exist in someone's life only when you remind them that you are there.

People may be busy, distracted, or genuinely caring. They may assume you already know how they feel. But relationships are not experienced through intentions alone. They are experienced through behavior. Loneliness is not always the absence of people. Sometimes loneliness is having people you love who rarely seem to remember you. Over time, that experience can contribute to feelings of being unwanted, unneeded, unappreciated, disliked, or unloved. It can leave people wondering whether their absence would even be noticed, and that is not a trivial psychological experience.

What If You Are the One Who Disappeared?

There is also another side to this story. Perhaps you are reading this and realizing that you may be the person who disappeared. You love your friends, care about your family, and would immediately respond if there were an emergency. Yet somewhere along the way, your relationships became passive. You respond when contacted, attend when invited, and answer when called, but you rarely initiate. When nobody contacts you, the empty space is easily filled. Work expands. Netflix starts the next episode. TikTok supplies the next video. Instagram provides the next photograph. YouTube recommends the next clip. Amazon suggests the next purchase.

Algorithms come looking for us. Relationships usually do not. Perhaps that is one reason maintaining human relationships has become more difficult. Technology pursues our attention relentlessly, while the people who care about us eventually get tired of asking for it.

Are We Losing Our Social Muscles?

Social interaction is also partly a skill, and like many skills, it can become easier with practice and more uncomfortable with avoidance. When we repeatedly choose forms of communication that allow maximum control and minimum vulnerability, spontaneous social interaction may begin to feel more demanding. A telephone conversation feels awkward. Walking into a party alone becomes intimidating. Meeting new people produces anxiety. Sitting at a dinner table with unfamiliar people feels uncomfortable.

For some, alcohol or other substances become a way to self-medicate and overcome that discomfort by reducing inhibition, quieting self-consciousness, and making social interaction feel easier. Social anxiety is a genuine psychiatric condition with complex biological, psychological, developmental, and environmental contributors, and technology should not be blamed as its sole cause. Yet research has identified a significant association between social anxiety and problematic social-media use, making it reasonable to ask whether a culture increasingly built around controllable, electronically mediated interaction may allow social avoidance to flourish in vulnerable individuals.⁸

The brain adapts to what we repeatedly ask it to do. Practice avoidance and avoidance becomes familiar. Practice conversation and conversation becomes familiar. Practice vulnerability and vulnerability becomes more tolerable. Practice connection and we become better at connecting. Perhaps our social muscles, like physical muscles, weaken when they are rarely used.

The Societal Cost of Millions of Small Disconnections

The consequences of this transformation extend beyond individual friendships. Healthy societies depend upon people interacting with people who are not exactly like them, including neighbors, coworkers, extended family members, community members, older generations, younger generations, and people with different backgrounds and opinions. As social interaction increasingly moves into algorithmically curated environments, those encounters may become less common.

The front porch disappears. The neighborhood becomes quieter. The dinner table becomes interrupted. The spontaneous visit becomes unusual. The telephone stops ringing. No single disappearing interaction seems important, but multiply millions of small disconnections across an entire society and something fundamental changes. Families become less interconnected. Communities become less communal. Friendships become more transactional. People become more suspicious of strangers and perhaps less comfortable around one another.

We created the most sophisticated communication technology in human history, and then, somehow, we started communicating less with the people who actually matter.

A Bucket List May Need More People and Fewer Places

When people hear the words "bucket list," they usually imagine destinations. They think of seeing the Grand Canyon, visiting Paris, going on safari, or seeing the Northern Lights. Those are wonderful goals, but perhaps some of the most important items on your Bucket List should not be places. They should be people.

Call the friend you have been thinking about. Visit your parents. Take your adult child to dinner. Spend a weekend with your siblings. Reconnect with the college roommate you have not spoken to in fifteen years. Ask your grandparents to tell you their stories while they still can. Take your grandchildren somewhere they will remember long after you are gone. Attend a group healing or adventure with new people with similar interests. Tell someone what they meant to you before you attend their funeral and wish you had said it sooner. A meaningful life is not measured only by what we accomplish or where we travel. It is also measured by whom we shared the journey with.

If You Are the One Who Always Reaches Out

If you are the person who always reaches out, your Bucket List can help you become more intentional about where you invest your emotional energy. You do not necessarily have to stop being the person who calls. Reaching out may be part of who you are. But notice reciprocity. Pay attention to which relationships nourish you and which repeatedly leave you feeling forgotten or taken for granted. Plan activities with those who enrich your life.

Your Bucket List can include opportunities to create new connections as well as preserve old ones. Join something, learn something, travel with a group, volunteer, take a cooking class, or invite someone new to coffee. Sometimes we invest so much energy trying to revive relationships that have become one-sided that we fail to notice the people we have not met yet. Your future may contain friendships that have not even begun.

If You Realize You Have Stopped Reaching Out

If, on the other hand, you recognize yourself as someone who has stopped reaching out, your Bucket List can become a wake-up call. Write down the names of five people you genuinely care about but rarely contact. Not people you follow and not people whose photographs you like, but people whose absence from your life would actually hurt. Call one of them. Do not wait until you need something, until it is their birthday, or until someone gets sick. Simply tell them you were thinking about them and make a plan to reconnect.

Put relationships on your Bucket List as deliberately as you put destinations there. Schedule the dinner. Plan the family reunion. Take the weekend trip. Establish the monthly breakfast. Make the Sunday phone call, hand-write and snail-mail a birthday card. It may seem strange that we need to schedule something that once happened naturally, but perhaps that is exactly why we need to do it.

The Ten Percent Challenge

Open the screen-time report on your phone and look at the number. Look at where your hours actually went. Then imagine redirecting just ten percent of that time toward another human being. You do not have to abandon technology. You simply have to make sure technology has not quietly replaced the life it was supposed to enhance.

One day, your Instagram feed will still be there. There will always be another YouTube video. Amazon will always have something else to sell you. There will always be another political argument, another celebrity story, another notification, another post, and another scroll. But the people in our lives are temporary, and so are we.

Perhaps one of the most important questions we can ask ourselves is not who is following us, but who we are walking through life with. An even more difficult question may be whether those people know how much they matter to us. If the answer is no, then we already know something that belongs on our Bucket List.

Because at the end of our lives, the number of people who viewed our posts will probably mean very little. But the people who sat across the table from us, laughed with us, traveled with us, cried with us, called us for no reason, and made us feel that our presence in this world mattered—those are the people who helped make the journey worth taking.

Perhaps the greatest danger of our technological age is not that artificial intelligence will become too human. It is that human beings will forget how to be.

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Dr. Jeffrey DeSarbo, is a neuropsychiatrist and author of The Neuroscience of a Bucket List: Getting the Most from Your Brain and Life. In addition to being a frequent guest on various media shows and lecturing internationally, he has a practice in Garden City, New York where he works with a variety of patients to achieve optimal mental health.

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