In recent years, social media has come to dominate the first stages of friendship. When the default is to scroll through someone’s curated highlight reel, the reliance on social media for connection deepens. If we want to resist the insincerity of social media, we may need to start texting more, not less. Social media platforms — Instagram in particular — are so addicting in large part because they offer “easy” social connection. In a poll conducted by Pew Research in 2024, 48% of teens said social media harms people their age.