> But my take is that devoting a lot of mental and emotional energy to distant relationships comes at the expense of time that could be spent developing local

> But my take is that devoting a lot of mental and emotional energy to distant relationships comes at the expense of time that could be spent developing local relationships, which can be more important. This implies that one replaced the other, or that one can be brought about by eliminating the other. IMNSHO, this is a form of false nostalgia: I saw how much of my parent's generation lived: for most people, social networks haven't replace real world socializing.