That’s an interesting point. I would also add that having a pretext can be important as well. I’ve had 24 hour instant access via phone/text to my siblings for

That’s an interesting point. I would also add that having a pretext can be important as well. I’ve had 24 hour instant access via phone/text to my siblings for almost 2 decades, but we really didn’t talk much until we started doing gaming stuff with voice chat on weekends. I think part of it is it really helps if there’s something, anything, that can fill the gaps in conversation and provide a pretext to getting together (even just virtually). We’ve since talked about so much that we likely would have never otherwise brought up or picked up a phone to talk about. Hell, one of my favorite games as a kid (wyvern: https://web.archive.org/web/20040102095422/http://www.cabochon.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20040102095422/http://www.caboch...) was basically just a chat box with an adequate mmorpg attached. Sometimes I even just skipped the game and connected via telnet, since that was an option, so I’d be available when someone I knew popped on.