Virtual Intimacy

Magritte, René. The Lovers. 1928. Oil on canvas, 54 x 73.4 cm. Museum of Modern Art, New York.

The first time I ever liked a girl, there was a lot I didn’t have to do. I didn’t have to pick a moment—after class maybe, when all the kids were in the hallways. I didn’t have to steel myself, clench my hands in the big pocket of my nike hoodie, and walk over to her. I didn’t have to drag my eyes up off the floor or words out of the back of my throat. Instead, it was simple: I handed my phone to my much cooler friend (he did this last week) to type a clumsy text message. Then—without even reading it—I hit send, and threw my phone across the room. 

She also didn’t have to do any of those things to ghost me.

Romance, like all forms of social interaction, needs lots of practice, or play. Young people need trial and error to sort out which actions and words welcome smiles and which raise eyebrows. This practice is an integral part of the play-based childhood, and crafts adults capable of finding love, connection, and sex.

The phone-based childhood, however, has been a disaster for learning romance. 

As is the case with many parts of childhood, much of the romantic play and experimentation that is supposed to be happening face to face has moved online—like my first time asking somebody out. This shift has robbed my generation of the chance to properly flirt and redirected fledgling desires to virtual chatbots and porn. Almost unlimited access to pornography has been a cancer for Gen z’s romantic pursuits, especially for boys. Rather than face the uncertainty and risk of courting others to satisfy their desires, many teens simply take the easy way out and load up porn. Doing this once or twice is not disastrous, but done repetitively—obsessively and compulsively for many boys—this habit “wears the path smooth” between arousal and Pornhub.com, creating lifelong habits and addictions.

Personally, early and unrestricted access to pornography splintered my perception of romance and sexuality. Exposure to an endless catalog of fully-grown, physically altered women stole the beginnings of my sex drive from its intended target, people my age. As I grew, I started to want to hug girls, look them in the eye, maybe even hold their hand. But sex? That was for the Ipad between my mattress and box spring. Since my phone-based childhood robbed me of the unity between sexuality and romantic attraction, I spent much of my later adolescence relearning the connection between sex and love, all the while battling the cultural dominance of and my personal dependance on pornography. At fifteen I was already picking up the pieces of my phone-based childhood. 

But social media and the phone-based childhood is not only giving room for desperate and perverted grasps at sex and connection. It is also eroding healthy and stable relationships.

Social media has strictly categorized romance and sex. People have long had casual sex and used the “bases” terminology, but social media has disseminated an entirely new vernacular and set of expectations that have eroded sexual and romantic individuality. Terms like situationship, honeymoon phase, three-month rule, love-bombing, and simp, which all refer to either a predetermined type of relationship or way of behaving in one. These terms all come with rigid expectations and strip away relational autonomy, shifting focus from an individual person and onto what stereotype they represent. Kids refer to their current partner as the latest “hook-up” or maybe even a new “situationship.” At least my friends rarely use anyone’s name. This impersonalization dulls sex and intimacy by treating both as a set of checkpoints rather than an exciting experience with someone new.

I remember explaining the whole system to my mom once. She was curious about the words that leaked through my sister and I’s bedroom doors when we were on the phone. She was horrified by the rigid and oftentimes exploitative terminology. To her, it was simple: If you started seeing someone, you were dating, and then you both did what felt right. To her, that might mean having sex twice a month, or it might mean spending Thanksgiving with their family, dealers’ choice. Today, expectations engrained by social media make many of those choices, and our relationships are worse off for it. 

Paradoxically, phones and social media also give couples far too much access to one another. Time apart, individual hobbies, and outside friends are all essential to maintaining a healthy sense of self while in a relationship. In turn, a healthy sense of self breeds confidence in oneself and their relationship with their partner. The phone-based childhood collapses this distance. Years of social media have rewired my generation’s brains to obsess over our phones, an obsession that often maps to relationships.

Why shouldn’t I check my phone in between sets at the gym? I have to sit there for a couple minutes anyway. Why shouldn’t I text them under the table quickly while at dinner with friends? Why not check to see if they texted you back? Why not pull up their location to figure out why they haven’t? 

And just like that, my rewired brain has transfigured my partner’s lunch with friends or time enjoying their hobby into active, malicious ignorance. Their phone gives them the constant choice to text me, and they are choosing not to. Worse, social media apps give teens various different addicting tools to constantly check if their peer has continued to ignore them, spurring significant anxiety. This is especially true with a romantic partner. They can check locations, last seens, and read receipts. Many of these tools—Snapchat’s, for instance—were explicitly designed to maximize user engagement. These tools are great for maximizing engagement and profits, but a disaster for romance. So, many couples enter into an obsessive, codependent existence dominated by invented checkpoints like Snapchat streaks. These markers demand constant conversation, stirring conflict, anxiety, and insecurity if they are not met.

But this constant connectivity can inflict more psychological damage after a relationship ends. Access to photos, social media accounts, locations, and phone numbers can cause mental turmoil and anxiety while trying to grieve or move on from a relationship. I came across a short essay Emilie Mendham posted on her Tik Tok account titled “Should I text my ex?” She put it like this: “Sometimes I think we imprison people into our lives through our phones long after they were meant to leave.” You may think I’m a hypocrite for using a tik tok to illustrate the benefits of social media. It is a platform whose short-form videos, infinite scroll, and algorithm are designed to dominate as much of its users time as possible, with no concern for their mental health. 

But it doesn’t have to be. 

I use this video to show the role our phones and social media could play in our childhood lessons in romance. Just as AI isn’t necessarily evil or fission only used in nuclear bombs, the internet itself is not the problem, rather it’s the way it is currently being exploited. This video is a shining example of what social media could mean for discovering romance, and childhood in general. It was rewarded for its quality, and the way it made its readers feel. It provided a well-thought out perspective on an issue I (clearly) care about and am still grappling with. Like the older brother I never had, this post gave me the wisdom of someone who had been through what I’m experiencing right now. I never could have heard Emilie’s perspective without the connective power of social media algorithms. 

That’s not even to mention the boon the internet has been for matchmaking. Dating apps and online forums create spaces for like-minded individuals to connect romantically—especially for marginalized groups like the LGBTQ+ community. And although boomers grumble that couples are meeting online and not in freshman seminars anymore, the results of online dating speak for themselves: 1/10 of all partnered Americans adults met online. 

Like nuclear fission or Artificial Intelligence, Phones and Social media networks hold enormous potential for both progress and harm. Currently, our Laissez-Faire approach to regulating this specific technology, both bureaucratically and culturally, have left the romantic prospects and mental health of young people in the hands of tech companies, with no real incentive to protect kids and teens. 

To fix this, and give kids flirting and every other part of the play-based childhood, there’s a lot to be done. Governments need to pass laws like the Kid’s Online Safety Act and the Verifying Kids’ Online Privacy Act to raise the age of internet adulthood and protect kids during sensitive periods of development. More bluntly, to keep 13 years olds the hell off Pornhub. Schools should outlaw phones on campus and give kids unstructured time to play and flirt with each other. But all of us—parents, grandparents, older siblings—need to chip in. Norms need to be shifted, screen time limits applied, Wait till 8th pledges signed. Parents should warn their kids of their snapchat and porn just as they do of strangers and white vans. Older siblings should explain why e-dating someone eight states away at 13 is a terrible idea. Kids should be left with no choice but to play tag, build a fort, or maybe even talk to that kid in class that makes them feel fuzzy.

When my kid asks someone out for the first time, I hope they got shot down in person.