[The] absence of social feedback is the default experience in virtual communication, and was from the beginning. You write or post or email or text something and then… you… wait. Every communication you send onto the internet leaves you abysmally hanging. In virtual interaction you are alone in time, in a way that you aren’t in physical conversations.

Pretty much everything you do on the internet throws you into an unresolved future, where human feedback lingers in teasing deferral. For language-having animals like us, whose deep emotional tuning presupposes social nearness, this aspect of online communication means it’s perpetually filled with inner drama, and this inner drama translates into preoccupation, need, a compulsive interest in coming back.

From Matt Feeney’s Little Platoons: A Defense of Family in a Competitive Age 📚. While core narrative/argument of the book concerns parenting, I found the discussion Feeney develops on the internet to be insightful and applicable well beyond how I think about being a parent.