Mark Zuckerberg destroyed friendship. Now he wants AI to replace it.

Forget the 700 Facebook friends you have largely neglected since college. In Mark Zuckerberg's The last vision of the future, we fill in our empty hours, talk to our generative AI lovers. In an era when people spend more time alone than ever before, the Meta CEO not only proclaims the power of his business to connect us to each other – but also to attract our attention to new ones, Fake friendsTo.

In an interview last week, Tech Podcaster's Dwarkesh Patel talked about Zuckerberg about how AI could make social media more interactive, including making AI -chat bots friends for people who are few and want more. “Does it replace personal connections or real connections? My default is that it is likely to be negative,” says Zuckerberg. “There are all the things that are better in physical connections than you have. But the reality is that people just don't have connections and they feel much more time than they want.”

Zuckerberg is far from the only one that pushes the future AI friends (and lovers, twins, co -workersand parents) but this is his last approach to tonic rods loneliness Some claim that the social media companies owned by him are inflammatory.

In social media, his comments were widespread. “This happens when you believe that humanity is reduced to binary data – you are thinking about friendship through offer and demand through the lens,” said the writer Neil Turkewitz X -il X.

Young people who are forced to zoom in during high school and college want to meet and hang out. In a study by the Axios and Generation Laboratory College and Graduate Students in 2023, almost 80% of respondents said they used dating applications less than once a month, if at all. Nearly half of the teenagers in the 2024 year Pew Research Center study said that social media sites had a negative impact on their age group, rising from 32% in 2022. out -of -school activities Like clubs and sports, there are higher grades, higher aspirations and a more positive attitude to school, has found studies. People scratch dating apps and turn to book clubs, running clubs or Applications that organize meetings to find their people. They are eager to hang out and spontaneous.

The last two decades show us that Zuckerberg's idea of ​​friendship often leaves something to be desired. Meta's own past interior study He found that the social sites of the company could exacerbate than alleviate loneliness, but concluded that Facebook was “net positive” for loneliness. Social media has given us a glimpse of thousands of people at once, but the connections simply peel the surface. Even if AI-friend is always at your fingertips, it is a low investment interaction that can only connect to the parrot, not replace it.

The last two decades show us that Zuckerberg's idea of ​​friendship often leaves something to be desired.

This is due to the fact that friendship or at least good does not mean just a validation-it is a two-way street, which is also support. We feel good when we show our friends and help them, said Jeffrey Hall, a professor of communications at the University of Kansas, who has researched friendship. Social media platforms and push to bake Gen AI in our applications and communication leaves the whole point of having a friend, he says, “Friendship is not effective. This is actually the best if it is ineffective.” It comes at the wedding as you stand next to you, preserving a comfortable silence next to you long flightAnd complaining about the extended happy hours of a person you both hate. “There is nothing particularly effective in power conversation,” Hall adds. “This has been done because of the joy and value of caring for another person.”

Many major technology companies move our web experience with each other beyond connecting and closer to connecting to robots who never have to fall asleep or work or to work their child's emergency room. The AI ​​-chat booth does not need you back – it is constantly existing and quickly answers questions and validation. If companies build a stranger that creates your attention, it can pull us beyond the human connection. “It makes us want to return to our devices more often,” says Hall.

Average person spends more of his time on the screens If with friends in person. The technique that promised to unite the world made some of us even more isolate. Facebook started with less than meeting you with like -minded people and adding more classmates and each move on the following decades. Rising Instagram He threatened to share photos on Facebook with his more simplified, visual first design. The former open -minded application gave the opportunity to influencers and trademarks to a performed, performative playground, and the comparative nature and pressure of the post is related to teenage mental health problems. In 2021 Zuckerberg turned his eyes towards the metaSt: triggering a perennial obsession with the future in which we put on obstructive glasses and walk (as soon as they could understand how to understand how to understand code of code) around comic book centers, office parks and arenas to see our favorite actors open. It has to pay a meta tens of billions of dollarsTo.

The Gen AI boom quickly went on an una -realized leap. For some, it seems deeply unnatural that AI could become the newest way to find a connection for us without ever connecting to people. By postponing, Meta launched AI application Last week, the idea was based on the idea that AI-generated content should move from the private boundaries of chat programs to a more social feed. Facebook's original mission “to give people the power to share and make the world more open and united” made it sound like we had the power, but the Meta mission is now “the future of the human connection and the technology that allows it”.

Chatbots Meta has already built problems: journalists found that they could lie on Instagram as licensed therapists and may have been Sexual conversations with users under 18To. A Meta spokesman told me that AI is “clearly labeled and there is a disclosure that shows that the answers generate AI.” They added that sexual conversations are “hypothetical” and show tool manipulation. “We have now taken additional measures,” a spokesman noted, to make it even more difficult to manipulate it.

In Podcast's interview, Zuckerberg claims that the average American has three or less friends, but capacity and travel to about 15. It is not clear where he draws this status, but he is right that loneliness is an urgent problem. In 2023, 38% of American adults said they had five or more friends, but 8% claimed that they had no one. The older someone was, the more likely they had five or more close friends, half of the 60s and older categories. Only 32% of younger than 30 people said the same. In 2023 the US surgeon Vivek Murthy loneliness epidemicTo. In a survey of the 2024 year in the morning consultation of the American Psychiatric Association, 30% of adults said that they felt lonely once a week, and 10% claimed to feel lonely every day.

Facebook did not create a loneliness crisis, but it often gave us the quality of our communication because people spent more time alone. “Likes” and “Pokes” and reminders on someone's wall “Happy Birthday” can replace a phone call. For me, there were some meaningful connections on Facebook: I joined a group dedicated to my upcoming college class and searched for my Major roommates or other people before arriving in the campus. It became an easy way to find events in the new city or to expel the party invitations.

However, Facebook made little to grow or maintain deep connections on its platform – it was a more personalized newspaper to share a college and to share job updates with the masses, a way to keep tabs with foreign friends and copies, and ultimately also a rumor mill that lets you know who has a child. Facebook and Instagram have long been big and related to our real names. Trying to accept everyone you knew as a friend or follower grew pressure to post in a way that looked cool to your peers, but which is acceptable to your grandmother. The context collapsed and the pictures were curated.

This does not mean that online connections cannot be as real as a network connection. As a teenager, I forged with the best friendship than a girl who went to another school in the city, connecting a conversation and finally every weekend at the mall. Tumbler Has promoted online friendships that include decades between people running in the same Fandomiring. Fans of fans offer communities, often with strict parameters and their social norms. And the AI ​​chat programs also have their advantages. Autistic people Let's say they help them practice navigation in difficult social situations. Some say they act through problems or help them prepare job interviewsTo.

Gen AI is still new, but we are already seeing it is less like a true friend and rather an imaginary friend. “AI individuals are exactly like fictional characters,” says Hannah Kim, professor of philosophy at the University of Arizona. “If the question is: fictional characters can help us develop ideas and entertain us, but they can't have real dimensional relationships with us. The chat bot can always be accessible and always has complete attention, but relying too hard can further harden people's expectations for their friends.”

Early this year, META took off the AI-Generated Instagram profiles What users hated. But Zuckerberg thinks they become better and become our friends. It doesn't really matter if Facebook, Instagram, the meta -voucher, or AI chat bots make people less lonely. It is important that we are constantly clicking on them.

Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent for Business Insider, a technical industry. He writes about the largest technology companies and trends.