It can transform a sense of something missing into aversion, or numbness, or unreal expectations about what human contact should be. The resilience to survive difficulty and discord, to brave the vagaries of unmediated human contact, must be maintained through practice. I wonder if people choose them over speaking to the cashier out of that aversion to contact that technology has inculcated in us. The solution to technology is not more technology. Technology has stolen us from each other and in many ways from ourselves, and then tried to sell us substitutes.