Semi-related: I suspect a big draw of social media is that it resembles actual human communication while also conferring a lot more control to all parties.

Vulnerability is not required. Communication is stripped of almost all of its context, and is often asynchronous. There is little expectation of any sort of real commitment. People are easily muted, unfollowed, and blocked.

In sanitizing away the messiness of real relationships, we’re left with an empty shell that puts us more in control and yet also more lonely. It would seem that we cannot simply pick and choose which aspects of relationships we want, nor can we relate to others at the scale that social media enables us to.