From real to virtual and now AI companions, has technology led to a deeper isolation in our lives?

For a lot of people growing up in the 2000s and early 2010s, their coming of age happened on the Internet. There was Facebook where you added everyone you had ever known and there was an innocuous Instagram where people would share their unfiltered (or with extreme colour filters) everyday moments —a cup of coffee, a pretty flower on a sidewalk, or a funny selfie with their best friend. Those were simpler times… of course, not as simple as before smartphones were invented, but who even remembers that now?