Letters to Our Generation: Are We Too Dependent on Online and Parasocial Romance?

Before, things were harder; the innumerable questions which blossom when beginning a new relationship would naturally take longer to be answered. There was a mutual understanding that it would have to be achieved slowly in order to get to know someone.
Today, things are easier – everything is accessible. You can sieve the people who you “might” date through filters. You can join the other 15 million users of “Rizz AI” and speed up the process of impressing a potential partner with “your wit”. You can stalk their socials before the date and ask questions about them which you already know the answers to. After the date, the two of you can text all night if you want and learn everything else about the other, through typos and abbreviations. If you miss their face at any point, you can search it up. If you’re running late to your next date, then you can just text them and it's no big deal. And when you’ve revealed everything about each other and the second date proves boring – you can quickly end the relationship –  find another face on a different app – and forget the reasons why you ended it with the first person.  

For many, because everything comes so easily, they feel like they don’t really want anything at all. All of the steps that used to build meaningful connections can be achieved so quickly now that they can feel a lot less important. You can be with somebody but also have an unending access to all the other people you “could” be with. People can struggle to commit when they are constantly scrolling for greener grass and people can struggle to commit wondering if their partner is doing the same. In reality, there is no way to know if your partner is scrolling through their phone, searching for a better match. For many, “fomo” means taking relationships slow a no-go. 

But people are still waiting for their “firsts” – to fall in love, to get married, to experience intimacy in a meaningful way.
While, at the same time, you have a generation of people who aren’t emotionally available or don’t want to commit.
Some want to work hard and patiently to find something “real” while others want instant gratification – a gratification which is much easier to receive in the modern world.
AI partner apps have been downloaded over a 100 million times in the last year alone. When you begin to treat intimacy as a product and connection as a reflection of your “positive traits” – then real romantic connections suffer and people – either through fear, distrust or apathy – choose artificial bots to quench a need that’s not computing in the real world. 

This article might be framing technology in a negative way. It’s idealising the past because of the absence of it. However, relationships have been tricky since the beginning of time and commitment stems from within, not from the environment around you. Social media can be excellent in opening up discussions or taboo topics, allowing people to work on themselves and reflect on how to better approach relationships. Additionally, romantic aesthetics of the 80’s or 90’s make waves online and motivate many to approach dating with a similar philosophy.

Meaningful connections and romance are not dead …it just might be a little harder sometimes…and if anything, that only makes the romance even more romantic. Remember, you can wait outside a lover's window, throwing pebbles, if they’re not answering your texts. You can share a love-song playlist to them, surpassing the limits of the mixtape as they can listen to it anywhere. You can treat texts like love letters and you can openly communicate about how the two of you will approach the relationship together, each step of the way. Relationships don’t have to go as fast as that sprint through the rain to dash to the airport in time!
If it goes a bit slower …then…that dash through the rain arrives. 

Written by Ben Lynch (@Ben_Lynch__)

Edited by Alex Kelleher (@alex_kelleher_)