Is Texting Being Replaced With Real Emotions?

Welcome to virtual heaven

My beloved niece turned four a day after my birthday in mid-May, and her mom and dad (my brother) decided to celebrate their daughter’s blessing with a virtual event via Zoom.

That was my official introduction to this version of planed festivities that would ordinarily involve hugs and cheers in the presence of arriving attendees, who couldn’t imagine the futuristic method of participation, that requires verified logins and screen-ready venues.

My parents and I didn’t know what to expect, but once we submitted to the experience, it turned out to be everything we hoped for and more.

It turns out that creating your own fun can be a glorious and fulfilling mandate, powered by the collective deposits of love and happiness that inevitably permeates the screens and bursts into confetti, that showers the delighted celebrant.

But there’s more to this new phenomenon that has irrevocably transformed the art of engagement in ways that has restored what was assumed lost, due to the headiness of daily living, and how we readily succumbed to the barest of communications with the aid of trained fingers and emoticons.

It seems that we are desperately yearning for tangible connections with loved ones during this…