The question today is no longer whether technology has changed the way we communicate, but how profoundly it has reshaped the very meaning of human relationships. More and more of our social lives now take place not face-to-face but on social media, messaging apps, and increasingly through artificial intelligence chatbots. While these tools have given us near-constant connectivity, they have not brought us a deeper sense of closeness or belonging.
This is the central question posed by sociologist Vidar Halldórsson, a professor at the University of Iceland, in his new book on the impact of screen use on social alienation. Halldórsson argues that the migration of social life to digital interfaces has changed more than the way we communicate; it has altered the nature of human interaction itself. Relationships are no longer always one-to-one. Increasingly, they are mediated by a device, platform, or algorithm that determines what we see and how we respond.
The problem, according to Halldórsson, is not a lack of contact. We send more messages, see our friends’ pictures throughout the day, receive constant notifications, and can follow people's lives on the other side of the world almost in real time. But more contact does not necessarily mean greater human closeness. Knowing what someone is doing is different from sitting opposite them. You can see their face, hear their voice, and notice the hesitation, silence, and emotion that words or symbols cannot easily convey.
Neuroscience offers a partial explanation. Research into in-person conversations suggests that two friends’ brain activity may become synchronised, including in regions associated with social perception and understanding other people’s intentions, such as the right temporoparietal junction. This phenomenon is sometimes described as ‘interpersonal neural synchrony’, in which the neural activity of both participants begins to display similar patterns during an interaction.
Some studies, however, suggest that this synchrony does not occur to the same degree when communication takes place through a screen. This does not mean that digital conversations have no value, or that the brain somehow stops communicating. Rather, face-to-face interaction exposes us to a richer mix of sensory and social cues. We do not simply listen to words; we read facial expressions and body language, distance and posture, gaze, tone of voice, and rhythm—all part of a broader system of signals that helps us understand the other person.
Halldórsson invokes sociologist Randall Collins's concept of 'emotional energy', the state that emerges when people share attention, emotion, and a sense of mutual presence. Such moments do more than convey information. They strengthen trust, belonging, and our sense of connection with others.
By contrast, sociologists often describe screen-based communication as low in social cues. When we write a message, for example, most of the subtle signals conveyed by the face and body disappear. Even video calls, although richer than text, cannot fully reproduce the sense of physical distance, shared space, or natural eye contact. More subtle signals, such as smell and physical proximity, are absent altogether, despite having long played a role in human communication.
This loss of cues may help explain why tone is so easily misunderstood in messages or why digital arguments can seem harsher than in-person conversations. When signs of hesitation, friendliness, or humour disappear, we rely more heavily on our own assumptions to interpret what someone means. Recent studies have also linked excessive or addictive social media use with declines in some aspects of people's ability to take others' perspective and understand their emotions, although these associations alone do not establish a direct causal link.
A sense of community
The effects of this digital shift are not confined to relationships with friends and family. They extend to brief, passing encounters. Sociologist Erving Goffman was interested in these apparently simple details of everyday life, such as greeting a neighbour, exchanging a few words in a queue, or smiling at someone on public transport. These brief interactions form small social rituals that recur throughout daily life.
