JUST SPAMMING| Loneliness And Friendship In The Age of AI
Based on the results of a path breaking national study involving 4,527 young people across 24 States, the book’s author M John Alexander, an academic and a ‘Salesian of Don Bosco’ having over 30 years of experience working with the youth, discovers that many present day youth feel lonely even in the company of friends
A friend in need is a friend indeed is an age-old English proverb that has not lost its heft or relevance even in this digital epoch where friendship is also fostered through social media and online maneuvers. A recent book titled ‘Friendship as Well-being in the AI era’ explores new models of youth accompaniment and tries to figure out what friendship means to the generation growing up among smartphones, social media and artificial intelligence. It comes up with a finding that the ability of the youth to navigate the unprecedented relational complexity with resilience and moral seriousness has not been fully recognized.
Based on the results of a path breaking national study involving 4,527 young people across 24 States, the book’s author M John Alexander, an academic and a ‘Salesian of Don Bosco’ having over 30 years of experience working with the youth, discovers that many present day youth feel lonely even in the company of friends. But the risk that lack of communication poses to friendship is preventable as the remedy is, as the book says, in the willingness to speak, to listen and to return to the friendship when it has gone quiet. It also identifies betrayal and toxic behavior as other risks.
However, the younger generation is conscious of AI and digital technologies changing the way friendships are built and maintained. Most of the youth, 63.20 percent to be precise, recognize a clear shift happening around while the book raises to question if AI, by becoming a companion, advisor and emotional mirror to the youth, can deepen humanity or gradually weaken the desire and capacity of the youth for real human relationships. The concern is over the possibility of young people gradually becoming comfortable with relationships that make no claims on them and preferring the AI over humans.
Human friendship requires attention, apology, gratitude, forgiveness, waiting, understanding, repair and loyalty, kinship while AI can imitate availability but not offer mutuality. It may respond but cannot remember as a human does and cannot share moral responsibility even if it can offer advice. Above all it can sound caring but not loving. Since it is a simulation of friendship that could be mistaken for the real thing, it may gradually erode the capacity of young people for the difficult, demanding and irreplaceable work of human relationship, the book says.
Identifying an anthropological challenge before parents, educators and other dealing with young people, the book raises serious questions: What kind of persons are young people becoming in a digital and AI-shaped culture? Is AI helping young people communicate better with human friends or quietly replacing the difficult but necessary work of human connection? These are formative questions of a generation growing up at the boundary between digital convenience and human depth, it says.
Even now, as the book reveals, 58.6 percent of the youth interviewed for the study felt a lack of deep emotional connection, while 54.8 percent felt emotionally misunderstood and 50.3 percent said that their emotional needs were not being met. It also challenges several widely held assumptions about the youth as 82 percent of the respondents revealed that caste, religion and language did not determine their friends. In fact 78.3 percent of the youth said they turned to friends when they were emotionally low, says the book that proposes a framework of accompaniment as friendship to encourage parents, educators and youth leaders to respond to the challenges of the AI era through deeper listening, recognizing hidden loneliness, treating friendship as a life skill and showing greater trust rather than exercising greater control.
While decoding the friendship-loneliness paradox, the book raises the question if friendship contributes to the well-being of youth and comes up with the answer: Yes. Because the study found 88.5 percent of the respondents affirming that friendship was a meaningful contributor to their well-being. At the same time, it wonders as to why more than three in four persons experience loneliness despite having friends. The problem is not primarily friendlessness but the absence of friendship that is ‘deep enough, honest enough and emotionally safe enough.’
Asked to identify the ways in which friendship supports their well-being, 86.30 percent said emotional support, while for others reduction of stress and loneliness (79.12 %), creating a sense of belonging (72.59 %), boosting self-esteem (63.36 %), encouraging personal growth (59,93 %) and practical help and advice (57.54 %) were the attractions Yet, the book reveals that friendship is also fragile and a double edged reality since the bond that heals can also cause harm and the relationship that gives strength can also become a source of disappointment, anxiety and pain.
To a guiding question, ‘what makes the difference between a friendship that breaks and the one that endures,’ it provides the answer: Friendship among youth people in India is genuinely fragile as it is threatened by silence, betrayal, jealousy, toxic behavior and ordinary disruptions of life. But the youth are not passive victims of friendship’s fragility but active agents of its renewal. They discuss, apologize, forgive, wait, repair and return, the book says.
Analyzing the most common difficulty experienced in friendship, the book cites lack of communication as the most important one, as told by 75.11 percent of respondents, followed by work commitment (56.31 %), incompatibility in values or lifestyle (48.23 %), relocation (46.21 %), lack of trust (45.06 %) and jealousy (39.21 %).
