Digital Love Languages: How Technology Is Changing the Way We Express Affection
How do we express love? Is it through acts of kindness? Words of passion? Or maybe two cats with the caption “You and Me?”. The way we talk about love and show our love has changed, so let’s talk about it.
Back in the old days before phones, computers, cars or proper transportation you were limited to in person communication. Eventually (if you had the wealth of a king or merchant), you could afford to learn how to read or write, so you could send sweet love letters or notes of adoration. Then the telephone came along and people could hear the voices of their loved ones from the comfort of their own homes. This natural progression of expressing love in a spoken and written manner really culminated together and evolved with the birth of the internet.
From dial-up internet, the only way to express love and chat to one another was through slow connection. Romance was simply reduced to chat rooms and emails. The traditions live on with the furthering development of technology and a culture within a digital space. These spaces of communication bring within them emoticons, emojis and memes. With emojis and emoticons it’s all about how we are able to show our emotions with icons. By adding love hearts and winky faces it is able to perform a languageless sign of love and admiration. It’s been able to really elevate what it means to express emotion while talking. Yet in this day and age, we are constantly able to communicate with each other.
We are in the age of social media and constant connectivity, to people and to media. With algorithms designed to get our attention and make us scroll naturally. We want to share what we come across with those who mean the world to us. We want to hear a partner's opinion on all sorts of topics. Even a compressed picture of two cats cuddled up with the caption “Us?”, it’s an encouragement to send it to those you feel love for. It's wanting to be able to show and reflect something that our words are missing out on. It’s expression through the world. It’s using what’s around us to show our declaration of love. From comparing what character you are to stills from shows saying “this could be us”, everyone has an understanding of what it’s like.
The internet and technology has given us the ability to see everyone sharing their intimate moments through memes and emojis. On some deep level we can relate to sympathising with each other and our love lives. On the other hand, sometimes the ultimate expression of love in 2025 can just be a blurry cat photo.
Written by Niall Carey (@Niall.030)
Edited by Alex Kelleher (@alex_kelleher_)
