Connected, But Apart

Photo by Mariia Berezovsky on Unsplash

By Victor Jacob

Having your friends over for dinner can be exciting, especially when you have not seen each other in a long time. You have planned the meetup for weeks. You prepare the food, arrange the table, and look forward to catching up on old times.

Then they arrive.

Everyone sits around the table, but the conversation never really starts.

One person is replying to a message. Another is scrolling through Instagram. Someone else is taking pictures of the food. Every few minutes, another notification pulls someone's attention away.

You are all in the same room, at the same table, sharing the same meal. But somehow, everyone seems to be somewhere else. The people you invited to catch up with are physically present, yet their attention is elsewhere.

Connected, yet apart.

And perhaps that is one of the strangest contradictions of our digital age: we have more ways to reach one another than ever before, yet being together does not always mean that we are truly present.

We all have friends and family members, some of whom we are only able to reach through our digital devices.

Mostly because of geographical barriers.

Whether it is family or friends, our close communication and bond with them can slowly deteriorate. We may still be close, but perhaps not as close as we should be.

Social media has made it easier to stay connected. We can talk to friends who live far away, keep up with family members, find communities, share experiences, and maintain relationships that distance might have made difficult.

That is something worth appreciating.

But being able to reach someone does not necessarily mean being connected to them. We can be constantly available online while being emotionally unavailable to the person sitting beside us. We can respond to messages from people miles away while barely listening to the person speaking directly to us.

So the question is not whether social media connects us.

Yes, it does.

But I cannot help but feel that our ways of communicating have quickly supplanted true, deep connectedness. Over the phone, through calls or text, you can say so much. You can share updates, ask questions, and keep a relationship going. But nothing beats physical presence and the depth that can come from sitting with someone and having a real conversation.

The question is whether we have started confusing being reachable with being present.

There is a difference between knowing what is happening in someone's life and knowing how they are actually doing.

I have had a friend I grew up with. We all wanted to grow up together because we attended the same primary school and even the same secondary school. Because of how close we were, people thought we would attend the same university if possible.

Unfortunately, life does not always work that way.

My friend relocated. At first, we kept in contact and communicated regularly. But as the years went by, we rarely spoke or checked in with each other. I even lost contact.

So what am I saying?

Yes, social media has brought a new age in communication. But in doing so, has it also created a space where communication can become more about simply talking instead of actually communicating and building connections?

Sometimes, we mistake seeing someone's updates for actually checking on them. A like can acknowledge a moment. It cannot always replace a conversation. We can know someone's relationship status, where they travelled to, what they ate, and what they bought without actually asking the simplest question: “How are you really doing?”

And sometimes, the person we need to connect with is not even online.

They are sitting right beside us. Sometimes, connectedness needs to happen in the present, physically, for it to truly hit deep.

Our well-being is not only about whether we are physically healthy. It is also influenced by the relationships around us, whether we feel heard, supported, and able to talk to someone when things become difficult.

This is where our relationship with technology matters.

Social media can help people maintain friendships, find support, and stay connected across distances. But when digital interaction begins replacing meaningful conversations and genuine presence, we should pay attention to what we may be losing.

This makes connection part of the wider conversation around SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being. If healthier communities require people to feel supported and connected, then we also need to think about how the way we use technology affects those relationships.

At Shades of Us, conversations are an important part of how we examine the issues affecting people and society. Some months ago, we had a community engagement to mark Menstrual Hygiene Day. In collaboration with Stand With A Girl (SWAG) Initiative, we visited a government secondary school to educate students, particularly the girls, on menstrual hygiene and the stigma surrounding menstruation.

But the engagement was not just about standing in front of the students and passing information to them. We interacted closely with them. We listened, asked questions, and understood what they were experiencing. We had to be present with the students we were trying to reach. That experience reminded me that communication goes beyond simply passing a message from one person to another.

Sometimes, real communication requires presence. It requires attention. It requires understanding the person on the other side. If you can relate to the same struggles, that is even better. Make communication much easier.

Sometimes, the issues worth discussing are not the dramatic events that make the news. They are the everyday behaviours that slowly become normal without us stopping to question them.

How we communicate with one another is one of them.

Social media is now part of everyday life. But being used to something does not mean we should stop asking what it is doing to us. Are we listening to one another? Are we checking in beyond someone's social media updates? Are we giving the people around us our attention? These questions matter because the quality of our relationships also shapes the quality of our lives.

The answer is not to delete social media or pretend that life was better before smartphones.

We simply need to become more intentional. Call when a conversation needs more than a text. Check on people privately, not only through their posts. Put the phone down when someone is telling you something that matters. Stay connected to people who live far away without becoming disconnected from the people who are close. And perhaps, sometimes, allow yourself to enjoy a meaningful moment without immediately turning it into content.

Not every meaningful moment needs to be documented. Not every conversation needs to be shared. Sometimes, being there is enough. Maybe that is what we need to remember when we gather around the same table again. Because social media can bring distant people closer. But it can also make nearby people feel far away.

Connection is more than access.