The Fragmentation of Human Connection

Concert and phone focused crowd

We are more connected than ever, yet deep down I feel as if the distance between people has grown. We favor speed over quality, cultural context holds less weight in our exchanges, and we talk more than we listen, but at what cost? Through a short series of articles we will explore how connection, empathy, and trust are shaped, or strained, by the systems we build, the choices we make, and the conversations we neglect.

By Hans Sandkuhl, eolas – 8 minutes read

The signs are quiet and build up slowly. You see colleagues switch off their webcam more often in meetings. A friend cancels with a message that says, “can’t now, lets try next week,” but next week never comes. Your friend sends three really long consecutive audio messages instead of calling you, and in a bit of horror I find myself also preferring not to answer immediately and explaining my mood in real time. In a group chat, someone shares something vulnerable, and no one replies. A dinner table goes silent while all phones are being used. Even in a room full of people, you notice some are not really there, distracted or somewhere else entirely. A gentle absence, we notice it, yet let it slip.

I heard some experts call it post-pandemic fatigue or just the new rhythm of hybrid life. Others point to social media, work stress, the usual suspects, yet none of those feel like a full answer to me. It almost feels like the disconnection has grown, and we have started to accept it. Maybe that is what unsettles me most, the fact that we have adjusted. That we measure connection in pings, presence in status dots, and intimacy in 1.5x playback speed. There is nothing wrong with the tools, still, I am unsure whether they are helping us remember how to be with one another, fully, attentively, and without the layer of performance that our screens demand.

I sometimes wonder if we are still interpreting, even listening, or if we are just reacting. In how fast we reply, and how little attention we pay to what someone really meant. How rarely do we pause to ask: “What did this mean for them?” It is way easier to send a comment immediately than to stay with a moment of silence, it is easier to react than to witness. Easier to attack when we don’t know. Easier to troll and bully than trying empathy. 

And this does not happen far away from us. Even in work, where communication is supposedly efficient, the most common personal feedback I hear is: “I do not feel heard.” Not disagreed with, not challenged, but simply not heard. There is a difference, and I feel it is not a minor one.

Much of it may have to do with the pace. The pace we have chosen to live in, or the pace we have been dragged into if you feel better with the circumstantial victim approach. We reply fast, scroll faster, and forget what was said five minutes ago. The average human attention span is now less than that of a goldfish (human: 8.25 seconds vs. goldfish: 9 seconds) and everything is designed to nurture this, in a harsh vicious cycle. Presence, in this setting, has become an interruption. Yet presence is what makes us feel real to each other, as it is what gives weight to the moment.

I do not pretend that smoke signals or telegrams were more “human” than what we use today. Every era has its tools, and every tool changes how we relate. Society evolves, and interaction accelerates, but not everything that moves faster moves us deeper. What does shape our sense of connection is the rhythm, not the medium, the synchronicity. The stories we co-create when we are truly present, and we lose that because we stop paying attention to each other inside it, not because of technology.

I recall a product meeting some time ago, where someone told a story about a customer who struggled with the new product. It thought it was not a dramatic story, nothing crisis-level, just a confused experience that left someone feeling small. For a moment, the room stilled, and it was not because of the data, but because of the detail of that story. Because someone cared enough to describe it properly, and because someone else cared enough to listen. Good storytelling starting with a good Why instead of the What, also helped a lot to make the connection happen. 

I think we underestimate what that kind of moment does. I don’t mean it in terms of KPIs or outcomes, but rather in terms of belonging and trust. The quiet signal that, even here, we are still human. We speak often of empathy in professional circles, almost as if it were a tactic, yet I rarely see it practiced without a cost. True empathy slows things down, it disrupts plans, it asks for your attention even when your schedule says no. It is inconvenient, and that might be why it matters. It also depends on the kind of memory that builds over time, for instance by remembering people rather than facts. The way someone usually speaks, when they go quiet, how they ask for help without saying it. You only catch these patterns when you are close enough, and often enough. And even then, you might still get it wrong.

I guess there is no ideal past to return to. Nostalgia has poor memory, human connection was never easy, though we started in small tribes. Still, I find myself looking for the conditions that once made it easier to feel close. Spontaneous interaction, unscripted time, fewer layers between intent and expression. And being seen.

In education, I have seen this play out quite clearly. A learner submits an assignment that follows all the rules, ticks all the boxes, and still feels hollow. Another writes something raw, a little messy, but it lands. You know they meant it, you know they showed up in the work. That difference is not technical. It is relational! The same goes for leadership, where a polished all-hands speech might be forgotten in a day, and a rough story shared over coffee, of how you failed, the things you learned, and why it mattered might live in the team for months. And it will happen because of that element of spontaneous truth, rather than charisma..

Do not get me wrong, I am not writing this as an elegy or plaint, nor as a call to return to anything. It is just an observation, a quiet sense that something has stretched too thin, and we feel it more than we admit. What holds us together often starts small, with the slow accumulation of being seen, over time, in small ways. Through shared looks, awkward pauses, unfinished conversations, and the relief of finally being understood.

I also wonder if something else has gone quiet underneath all this, something harder to define. Not necessarily belief, but presence. The kind that once lived in rituals, shared silences, or simply in pausing to notice that we are here, together. Perhaps what we lose in constant stimulation is a kind of spiritual rhythm instead of just depth or empathy. Not religious. Just human. A way of feeling part of something larger than ourselves, even for a moment. Maybe that lens helped us connect through meaning, through a shared sense of something larger than ourselves.

Connection sometimes means letting a silence stay a little longer, to understand, and observe. Or having the courage to ask a second question when the first one gets a vague reply. Or, simply staying, when usually walking away would take you less effort. I do not have five steps for fixing it, if that is what you were expecting. I do not think it works that way, and what I do know is that the conditions for human connection are not mysterious. They just ask more of us than we usually give. 

And that, perhaps, is where it starts again.

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