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In our busy societies, holidays can be rare oases: sources of plentiful free time that is so elusive the rest of the year. Time, that is to say, available for what we truly want to do and not just what we have to do.<\/p>\n
How someone stewards their free time is as good a window into a human soul as anything. And what most people seek when not constrained by duties is companionship, whether they realise this or not (in both senses of that word).\u00a0Companionship \u2014 not just company \u2014 is what Christmas and other holidays should replenish us with. But if the talk of a loneliness epidemic is anything to go by, we are becoming strikingly bad at achieving it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The emotional struggle for companionship \u2014 a struggle of the heart, which we increasingly seem to be losing \u2014 could well be rooted in a struggle of the mind, an ever weaker ability to grasp what companionship even means. If that\u2019s the case, one need not look far for a culprit.<\/p>\n
Those who remember the world before Facebook may also remember how the social network subtly usurped the meaning of the word \u201cfriend\u201d. The arrival of \u201cfriending\u201d infected what the word had used to mean, and not for the better. And when you don\u2019t have a word for the real thing you want, no wonder it becomes harder to find.<\/p>\n
Lexical degradation was quickly matched by the erosion of actual social ties. There is good reason to blame social media in particular and screen-based digital contact in general for undermining social competence. \u201cFriending\u201d crowding out friendship, \u201cconnections\u201d isolating all of us even more. And now technology has come for \u201ccompanionship\u201d itself.<\/p>\n
In 2025, \u201cAI companions\u201d went mainstream (including one called, yes, \u201cFriend\u201d) as the answer to our apparently unfulfilled desire for companionship. None other than Mark Zuckerberg (him again) identified the gap between people\u2019s reported number of actual and desired friends as the new business case for AI. The same industry whose previous products deprived us of companionship is proposing a new one to fill the void. As an antidote, try to take seriously what friendship, connection and companionship really require.\u00a0<\/p>\n