When my son was just a year old, our family of three packed up our lives and moved nearly 2,000 miles from our home state of Colorado to Massachusetts. In doing so, we left behind family, life-long friends, and everything familiar to us. It was a decision driven by a vision I shared with my husband: a chance to reset, create new opportunities, and build a future on our own terms. That was more than 13 years ago, and I've learned a lot since then.
People across every age group describe feeling disconnected and alone, missing a sense of community and deep friendships. Our reliance on technology, the fact that we spend our days interacting with screens and talking to bots, not people, working in isolation; the geographic scattering of families and the disappearance of community pillars; the overall shift in our values as a society, with "progress" having replaced contentment; all of it contributes to the situation in which we now find ourselves.
Dear Eric: I retired a couple of years ago. I like many people, I think have realized that most of my friends and even acquaintances were work-related. My family doesn't live close. I've always been a loner, so this doesn't normally even bother me. I recently had a health issue come up where I needed a responsible adult to drive me home from surgery and I had a hard time coming up with someone.
Instead, I was sitting in my Iowa City apartment scrolling on my phone. I passed a video of hundreds of people gathered in Memorial Union Terrace for live music, a photo of old friends clinking margaritas at a Mexican restaurant I used to love ... As I saw more posts from my community back in Madison, Wisconsin, I felt a pang - not of jealousy, but something closer to grief.
Despite living in a hyper-connected world, where social media platforms promise constant interaction and hundreds of "friends" at our fingertips, many people report feeling isolated, unseen, and emotionally unfulfilled. [1, 2] This paradox, where the tools meant to bring us together can instead, in some situations, leave us feeling further apart, is driving an important cultural shift. Increasingly, some individuals are turning not to other people, but to artificial intelligence (AI) companions for a sense of connection and belonging. [3]
As a leader, there are many things you won't be able to share with the folks on your team-and that's just the way it is. For example, you may feel jealousy when you see them laughing and having a good time while you're stuck doing the budgeting. Don't fight these feelings; acknowledge them. Accept the reality that you're the leader, and that many times you'll have to stand alone.
When we perform in a way that is inauthentic, we communicate information to others that does not accurately reflect how we actually feel. For example, we may say "work is good" and "I had a wonderful weekend with my family" when we actually mean "work is overwhelming" and "I felt really sad this weekend."
A landmark article published last year by scholars Andrew Little and Rachel Meng shook the field of political science by demonstrating that most evidence for claims of a "crisis of democracy" comes from "democracy scores" based on subjective opinions.
