Swatting at Flies
My Take on How Technology Is Ruining Our Connection and What to Do to Fix It
I sent out an invite for a cookout on Memorial Day. A mass text to my local guy friends.
Looking back, the invitation was probably as cold as the response. I was doing the very thing that frustrates me, creating the problem myself by just expecting people to feel special and attend from a broadcast.
And then, nothing. No replies.
My first thought? "I know people are seeing this, why is it so acceptable to ignore things we want to say no to?"
There were no big excuses from anyone, no follow up. I just had to move on. But if I'm being honest, the feeling is still there because the rejection was never reconciled. I was just left feeling disconnected from my friends.
This is killing us. This way of communicating has made us all mini-narcissists, where we can only feel the world through our own perspective of ourselves. Someone didn’t reply to my text? Now they are jerks, or maybe they hate me.
Maybe the truth is we are all just overwhelmed. Overwhelmed with the options and opportunities we have. We used to be in tribes, where we would all connect every day over a fire at dinner. Now we have to schedule a connection. Plan it. Make it work.
It makes me think of Father's Day recently. It’s easy to blast out a "Happy Father's Day!" text to every dad you know. It checks a box. But do you do that for the three close dads you actually see the most? Or do you choose to call them?
Texts and emails are great, but they have become a scapegoat for the effort required for real human connection. I am for sure guilty of this. I’ve watched our society’s emotional depth get blunted because we blunted our “connection effort” with each other. Imagine getting a letter to your wife during the Civil War. The effort required to get pen and parchment, to learn to read and write (or find someone who could), then to find a messenger to hand-deliver it. Communication used to carry HUGE intention. Now? It’s like flies. It’s everywhere, all the time, and we often just swat it away because we are overwhelmed with our own chaotic nuclear survival.
So what do we do to fix it, right? The answer isn't a simple, “tech is bad.” It’s more nuanced. I’m going to challenge you to answer these questions yourself:
What does "connection effort" look like today? If a Civil War letter was the peak of effort, then, what is the modern equivalent? It could be writing a letter, but what small action carries uncommon weight today? Phone calls? Leaving work to visit a friend in need? A quick pop-in?
Who is the 'one person'? Instead of thinking about "everyone," who is one person you've been meaning to connect with? What would be the most intentional way to do it? What's the smallest possible step you could take to move that connection from a "fly to be swatted" to something meaningful?
How do you choose your effort? We can't give that Civil War letter-level of effort to everyone. How do we decide who gets our best energy? Does it mean letting go of the pressure to keep up with hundreds of people to truly show up for a handful?
What is the opposite of a 'mass text'? If my cookout invite was the "problem," what would the "answer" look like in practice for the next cookout? Is it a personal phone call? A voice note? A knock on a door? A sincere invitation where you communicate you miss someone?
How do you build a defense against the 'flies'? If communication is overwhelming, what's one practical boundary you could set to create space for the communication that matters? (e.g., Turning off notifications for an hour, choosing one time a day to answer non-urgent texts, etc.)
I believe we're in a painful phase of our evolution because we haven't hit rock bottom yet. We're on the same timeline as the society in the sci-fi movie Surrogates (2009). In the movie, everyone lived through flawless avatars, terrified of showing their real, messy selves. They traded authentic connection for perfect safety and ended up with neither. We are seeing the same symptoms: the curated lives, the fear of real interaction, the loss of intimacy.
But I don't believe that's our ending. The need to connect over a fire, to see a real face, to hear a real voice is a core human driver that can't be coded away. The answer isn't to reject technology, but to master it, to build and use it in a way that brings us closer, not pushes us apart.
The modern campfire looks like intentional phone calls and unexpected pop-ins, ditching the chaos of life to focus on connecting. It’s making plans with one or two people frequently, versus five different “mass events” where no one feels special for being invited. It’s the conscious, present awareness of making the choice to stay connected.
Take it from an "elder millennial" who existed before the screens. Before email, before Instagram, even before AOL.
Cut through the noise. Connect. Call and visit the people you care about.