The Social Wallpaper Trap: Are You Really Connected?

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Hi there,

I met Chris within hours of hopping off the school bus that first day I attended Cumbres Junior High School in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Due to a quirk in school districting for our small mountain town, well over half of my elementary school classmates were assigned to attend Pueblo JHS, the rival junior high.

So it fell to me as my rite of passage at the ripe old age of 13 to make new friends at Cumbres.

Chris and I shared four classes that year, including band. I think it was the music room that sealed the deal. He played trumpet while I played saxophone, and we were to be in the same bands (jazz, symphonic, marching, pep, you name it) for the next five years together.

We were thick as thieves, working our way through puberty and public schooling in small-town New Mexico. We navigated the awkwardness of dating, the freedom of learning to drive our cars, the joy of discovering MTV music videos, and the hangovers after too much partying.

Sure, there were others who came and went in our extended friend group, but Chris and I remained close even after he entered a serious long-term relationship with his girlfriend in tenth grade.

On short notice, my family moved away to Washington, DC, just before my senior year started, and Chris and I seldomly got in touch until the power of Facebook arrived on the scene to reunite us online.

Once we found and friended each other, we exchanged messages and caught up on our lives and new families. While I’d found my way into the tech industry at AOL in DC and then out in Silicon Valley, he’d moved back to Los Alamos and was working at the same national lab that our fathers had worked at.

We’d been reconnected! No longer old and cold.

Chris’s social posts became part of the wallpaper of my life: I felt like I knew what was going on with him, likely in the same way he knew what was going on with me.

Whenever I wondered what was up with Chris, I could simply skim his posts to see what he’d shared.

It turns out that I have many friendships that are in the wallpaper of my life. With the flick of a thumb, I can check in on the highs and lows, the triumphs and tribulations of hundreds of friends from around the world.

I think many of us have this social wallpaper in the background, providing us glimpses into the lives of the people who have been important to us over the decades. But I think the wallpaper doesn’t actually do anything more than provide a thin view of what’s really going on.

Scanning the social wallpaper is kind of like checking the weather map: we know generally what is going on, but we don’t actually feel any of the heat or cold or precipitation.

The feelings only come when we talk with friends about the internal weather: the stuff we don’t post to socials. And those conversations take time and effort.

And that’s often where we fall down in keeping up our friendships and connections: the time and effort is too much to keep track of so many.

So we take comfort in the wallpaper as a proxy and go back to what we were doing without engaging.

In the pre-dawn hours on Tuesday morning of this week, I was scanning my wallpaper before I hopped out of bed, and I learned Chris had passed away unexpectedly the day before.

The brief announcement was accompanied by photos of a man just 16 days older than me with his wife and family. He still had the eyes of that teenage co-conspirator I’d gotten into and out of trouble with so many times.

I shared my condolences with his family. And I’ve watched as fresh condolences have poured in from hundreds of others.

Each one a testament to the amazing person Chris is, and was.

Each one is a fresh update to the wallpaper of all my friendships.

Yet each one is a post closer to the last appearance of Chris on my wallpaper.

I don’t want him to go.

Who would?

Rest in Peace, my friend.

You made the world a better place by how you showed up in it. I’ll miss you.

The news of Chris's death this week is yet another stark reminder that I’m in a stage of life where my network of friends is shrinking just because that’s simply how old I am (and we are) now.

Starting in our 20s, all our friendships begin to atrophy, and they continue to atrophy in our 30s and 40s as we focus on career and then family (or family and then career) instead. We simply don’t have enough time and attention to keep them going.

And this doesn’t even begin to address the predicament that many of us find ourselves in as we care for our parents AND our children at the same time.

If we’re not careful, we find ourselves in midlife with a very dynamic wallpaper of social posts from our friends but no one to feed our dog when we go away for the weekend.

And this is something that needs to be addressed.

So, I’m going to address it.

Loneliness is on the rise, and it’s not just a personal issue—it’s a public health crisis.

🧓 Loneliness increases with age:

• 43% of adults over 45 report feeling lonely, according to the AARP.

• By the time we hit middle age, social networks often shrink due to career shifts, family demands, or life transitions.

🧠 The health effects are real:

• Loneliness has been shown to increase the risk of early death by 26%, according to a meta-analysis published in Perspectives on Psychological Science.

• Prolonged isolation is as harmful to health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day (Holt-Lunstad, 2015).

👫 We’re social animals:

• Human beings are hardwired for connection. Neuroscience shows that our brains release feel-good chemicals like oxytocin when we engage in meaningful social interactions.

• Community and belonging aren’t just nice-to-haves—they’re essential to our well-being.

✅ What’s to come:

So, starting next week, I’ll use this newsletter to address the social isolation crisis, especially among adults in midlife and beyond.

Every week, I’ll bring you:

• Insights into the science of connection and belonging.

• Practical tips to help you rekindle relationships and form new ones.

• Stories of resilience and transformation in the face of loneliness.

• Actionable challenges to help you break out of isolation and rediscover community.

Whether you want to strengthen your personal connections, build meaningful friendships, or simply feel less alone, I’m here to guide you.

I know for some of you this is a departure from the content you subscribed to, but I believe it’s even more relevant to our overall happiness and productivity as individuals and communities.

Thank you for continuing the journey with me.

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I’ve already heard from several of you that you are excited about this new trajectory and see loneliness as an issue that needs to be addressed. Thank you.

Got something different you think I should know? Just hit reply — your email goes straight to my inbox. 🙏