Many of you are experiencing loneliness because you’ve relinquished the agency of your social lives to dystopian algorithms designed to make you enslaved to a digital version of reality that is not conducive to connection but to endless consumption.

Real friendships are messy, they require mutual sacrifice and commitment, they are one of the many privileges of being alive: to know other human beings intimately and share part of our human story with them.

Only exposing yourself to highlight reals or short and intermittent “hang outs” of convenience for fleeting moments isn’t how you formed real bonds, it’s how you slowly numb yourself to others because the part of you that craves real and meaningful connection never gets fully satisfied.

Taylor Simmons