My parents often talk about how precarious communication was during their childhood. Having a telephone in every home was a luxury reserved for big cities. In smaller towns, people still relied on the telegraph to share family announcements. They used the neighborhood store’s phone or simply the radio. This assumed, of course, that everyone was tuned to the same station all day long.

When we hear this, we imagine the 19th century, but in reality, they’re talking about the 1950s. My parents have lived through the entire technological spectrum—from the telegraph to artificial intelligence. They look back nostalgically at how communication has transformed over the past 75 years. Today, setting up a video conference with any of the planet’s 8 billion inhabitants is completely ordinary. And soon, AI will even make it possible to converse with loved ones beyond this life.

In what ways do we communicate online? In every way imaginable. Listing the hundreds of options available today would be absurd. The conventional telephone—the one that made strange noises and required a rotary dial to call numbers—and handwritten letters, full of emotion, are now subjects for history classes. Even calls made over cellular networks are losing ground to apps installed on our mobile devices.

All of this makes us wonder how humanity is losing the ability to interact face-to-face. Physical interaction is vital for developing social skills. Yet, we are becoming islands of flesh and bone. We are separated by a sea of digital communication.