I am personally super fascinated by how our relationships with tech have changed the course of human friendships, romance, and family. How the community is evolving with and around our phones and the internet and everything else.
In the zeitgeist of this moment, I feel like we are often using the term “alignment” to describe when situations, and interests are fueled by the same motivation. When I was complaining about not having enough sex, my therapist told me that she sees that sex rates all around are going down, we are just not talking about it. I asked her why she thought that was, she replied, “phones.” The following day I picked up, Out of Touch by Michelle Drouin and was met by an in-depth exploration echoing the exact words said to me the previous day.
Dr. Michelle Drouin is a psychology professor, forensic consultant, expert witness, and internationally-recognized researcher and speaker on issues related to technology, relationships, couples, and sexuality, and the author of Out of Touch: How to Survive an Intimacy Famine - a detailed account of the state of human loneliness. How can we cultivate meaningful connections and intimacy in a world where technology lets us have physical distance? Michelle fearlessly takes the complexities of this question on.
It was an honor to get to interview her for this book, which is totally reflective of my lived experience with technology and human relationships. She talks about how having more choices doesn’t always make us happy, the chemicals that make us feel close to each other in our brains, and how texting has changed the depth of our close relationships (making relationships disposable in some instances). She also will make a SUPER compelling argument for 20-second hugs with other mammals (there is research on how this helps us even have stronger immune systems). Does she see a future where AI can serve as a proxy for human-to-human/animal connections? Yes. It is not here yet, but maybe soon… I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.
We are not getting enough touch...