From Social Media to Social Experiences: Why Technology Must Bring Us Back Together

As Meta agrees to pay up to $18 billion to settle claims that Facebook and Instagram were designed to addict young users, perhaps it is time to ask a bigger question: should the next generation of technology be designed to keep us online, or bring us back into the real world?

“Technology promised to connect us. Too often, it has ended up isolating us. The next generation of technology needs to bring people back into the real world.”

Technology was supposed to connect us.

For more than a generation, that has been one of the great promises of the digital revolution. The internet connected countries. Smartphones connected people wherever they went. Social media allowed friends, families and communities to communicate instantly across almost any distance.

On paper, we have never been more connected.

Yet increasingly, the evidence suggests something very different is happening. We may be communicating more while actually meeting less. We may have hundreds or thousands of online connections while experiencing fewer meaningful human ones. And technology that was originally designed to connect us has, in some cases, evolved into technology designed to keep us looking at a screen.

The consequences of that model are now becoming impossible to ignore.

Meta's $18 Billion Reckoning

On August 26, 2026, Meta agreed to pay up to approximately $18 billion over the next decade to resolve lawsuits brought by nearly all U.S. states alleging that Facebook and Instagram were deliberately designed in ways that addict children. The settlement includes major changes to the way teenagers can use Meta's platforms, including a default two-hour daily limit, overnight restrictions without parental consent and limits on notifications during school hours. Meta denies wrongdoing and the settlement is not an admission that the allegations are true. Reuters reported the settlement here.

The sheer scale of the agreement makes it significant far beyond Meta itself. The case is fundamentally about attention: how technology companies obtain it, how they hold it and how far they should be allowed to go to prevent users from looking away.

For years, many of the world's biggest digital platforms have operated around a simple economic reality: the longer users remain engaged, the more valuable their attention becomes. Every extra scroll creates another opportunity to show content. Every additional minute creates another opportunity to serve an advertisement. Notifications give people reasons to return. Algorithmic recommendations give them reasons to stay. Infinite feeds remove the natural point at which an experience would otherwise end.

It has been extraordinarily effective. The question society is increasingly asking is whether it has also come at a cost.

Connected Everywhere. Together Less Often.

One of the most revealing pieces of evidence comes from the OECD. Its 2025 report on social connection found that in-person interactions with friends and family have been steadily declining for around 15 years, while remote communication has increased. In 21 European OECD countries, 21% of respondents reported getting together with friends every day in 2006. By 2022, that had fallen to 12%. Daily meetings with family members outside the household fell from 17% to 11%. Meanwhile, daily remote contact with family increased from 23% to 29%. Read the OECD analysis.

The OECD is careful not to claim that technology alone caused this change. Social behaviour is affected by many factors. But the direction of travel is striking: we communicate remotely more, while seeing one another physically less.

Among younger people, the amount of time spent connected digitally is extraordinary. Pew Research Center found in 2024 that nearly half of U.S. teenagers said they were online almost constantly, up from 24% a decade earlier, while 96% reported using the internet daily. Read the Pew Research Center report.

Being online is not inherently harmful. Social media can provide friendship, education, support and access to communities that may otherwise be unavailable. But connection through a device is not necessarily a replacement for human connection in the physical world.

Loneliness Has Become a Global Health Issue

This distinction matters because loneliness and social isolation are no longer simply being discussed as lifestyle issues. The World Health Organization's Commission on Social Connection reported that around one in six people globally experiences loneliness. Among adolescents and young adults, the figure is around one in five. WHO estimates that loneliness is associated with approximately 871,000 deaths each year, around 100 deaths every hour. See the WHO Commission on Social Connection.

There are also specific concerns about the amount of time young people spend using social media. The U.S. Surgeon General's advisory reports that children and adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media face double the risk of mental health problems, including symptoms of depression and anxiety. It also cites a survey showing teenagers averaged around 3.5 hours a day on social media. Read the U.S. Surgeon General's advisory.

This does not mean social media alone is responsible for loneliness, depression or isolation. Human behaviour and mental health are far more complicated than that. But taken together, the evidence raises an important question: if technology is making communication easier than at any point in human history, why aren't we feeling more connected?

Maybe We Have Confused Communication With Connection

A WhatsApp message is communication. An Instagram like is communication. Watching someone's story is communication. Sending an emoji is communication.

But none necessarily provides the same experience as sitting across a table from somebody, attending a concert together, walking through an exhibition, going shopping with friends, watching a sporting event, visiting a museum or simply talking face to face.

Humans are physical, social creatures.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that safe access to public areas such as parks and recreation centres can encourage community connection and reduce social isolation and loneliness. Read the CDC guidance on social connection.

There is something technology cannot entirely reproduce about being somewhere together. And perhaps that is where the next great opportunity for technology lies: not in replacing the physical world, but in making the physical world more compelling.

We Don't Need Less Technology. We Need Technology With a Different Objective.

It would be easy to look at the Meta case and conclude that technology itself is the problem. That would be the wrong conclusion.

Technology has transformed medicine, communication, education, entertainment, commerce and almost every other aspect of modern life. AI is going to transform them again.

The question should not be whether technology belongs in our lives. It should be: what is the technology encouraging us to do?

There is a fundamental difference between technology designed to keep somebody sitting alone and consuming content for as long as possible, and technology that encourages somebody to get up, go somewhere and experience something.

The next generation of digital experiences can exist in shopping centres, museums, airports, stadiums, retail stores, theme parks, exhibitions, concerts, experience centres and public spaces.

They can give people reasons to leave home, meet friends, explore cities, discover brands, visit attractions and participate in experiences together. Technology doesn't have to replace real life. It can make real life better.

The Demand for Real Experiences Is Already There

Perhaps the most encouraging evidence is that younger generations themselves appear to want this. Eventbrite's 2025 Fourth Spaces study found that 95% of 18-to-35-year-olds surveyed were interested in exploring interests and communities they had discovered online through in-person events. 73% said they were likely or very likely to attend an in-person event in the next six months, and 84% of interest-based event attendees said they had developed close friendships through those gatherings. Read the Eventbrite study.

The research is Eventbrite's own commercial study, so it should be read in that context. But it points towards an important behaviour: digital communities can become gateways to physical ones.

Deloitte identified a similar tension in retail. Despite Gen Z's digital fluency, its 2025 research reported that 73% of Gen Z consumers shop in person at least once a week. Read Deloitte's retail and consumer trends analysis.

The physical world isn't disappearing. It is evolving. And the winners may be the places that understand how to combine the best elements of digital technology with the things people still fundamentally want from real life: discovery, entertainment, interaction, surprise and other people.

From Social Media to Social Experiences

This is where we believe companies like Miirage have a role to play.

Miirage develops holographic displays, interactive experiences and holographic AI avatar assistants specifically for real-world environments.

Rather than putting another application on somebody's phone, Miirage brings digital content into the places where people are already gathering.

A holographic character can appear inside a museum and bring history to life.
A life-size AI assistant can welcome visitors to a shopping centre and answer questions conversationally.
A holographic brand ambassador can create a shared spectacle at a product launch.
An airport can use a multilingual digital human to help passengers navigate a terminal.
An exhibition can allow visitors to speak to an AI expert together instead of individually searching through their phones.

The technology is sophisticated. But the purpose is remarkably simple: give people something worth looking up for.

Miirage's technology is designed for shopping centres, airports, events, museums, retail environments and other high-footfall physical spaces. It combines holographic content with interaction, AI, wayfinding, information and entertainment. Explore Miirage.

And importantly, these experiences can be shared. A group of people can stop together. They can react together. They can ask questions. They can point something out to each other. They can photograph it, discuss it and experience the moment as a group. The technology becomes part of the environment rather than an escape from it.

AI Doesn't Have to Live Inside a Screen

The arrival of artificial intelligence makes this argument even more important.

Today, most people's interaction with AI happens privately. We type into a laptop. We speak into a phone. We ask questions through a browser.

But AI does not have to remain trapped inside rectangular screens.

Imagine walking into a museum and asking a life-size historical figure about the world they lived in.
Imagine arriving in another country and speaking naturally to a multilingual holographic airport assistant.
Imagine entering a shopping centre and asking an AI concierge where to eat, what events are happening or how to find a particular shop.
Imagine attending an exhibition and having a conversation with a digital expert alongside your colleagues.

That is still AI. It is still digital technology. But its relationship with the human being has fundamentally changed. Instead of technology asking us to withdraw from our surroundings, technology becomes part of those surroundings.

The Physical World May Become Technology's Next Great Platform

For decades, we have treated digital and physical experiences almost as opposites: online versus offline, e-commerce versus retail, digital media versus out-of-home, AI versus human interaction.

That distinction is becoming less useful. The future is likely to combine them.

A shopping centre can be both physical and intelligent. A museum can be historical and AI-powered. An airport can combine human staff with multilingual digital assistants. A public event can incorporate spectacular digital experiences without requiring everybody attending it to disappear into their own phone.

This is not technology replacing human experience. It is technology amplifying human experience.

Perhaps Attention Isn't the Enemy

The Meta case has inevitably created another debate about the technology industry's obsession with attention. But attention itself isn't necessarily bad.

A great film captures attention. A concert captures attention. A football match captures attention. A work of art captures attention. A spectacular experience captures attention.

The important difference is what happens next.

Does that attention lead endlessly into another algorithm, another notification and another hour of scrolling? Or does it create curiosity, conversation, movement, discovery and a shared memory?

At Miirage, we believe technology can capture attention without removing people from the world around them. In fact, it can do the opposite. It can give people another reason to enter that world.

Technology Brought Us Online. Now It Can Bring Us Back.

The Meta settlement may ultimately become an important moment in the history of social media regulation. But the bigger story extends far beyond one company.

We are beginning to confront what happens when a generation grows up permanently connected to technology while becoming increasingly disconnected from the physical experiences and relationships human beings have depended upon for thousands of years.

The answer cannot simply be to switch technology off. Nor should it be. The opportunity is much more interesting.

Build better technology.

Technology that encourages us to explore rather than endlessly scroll. Technology that enhances public places rather than replacing them. Technology that turns a shopping centre, museum, airport, exhibition or city into something more engaging. Technology that creates conversations between people as well as conversations between people and machines. Technology that gives people reasons to leave home. Technology that makes the real world more interesting, more interactive and more connected.

For the first phase of the digital revolution, the world's biggest technology companies competed for our screens.

Perhaps the next phase will compete for something much more valuable: our experiences in the real world.

And perhaps the most exciting technology of the future will not be the technology that keeps us online. It will be the technology that brings us back together.

Discover Miirage Holographic AI and real-world experiences: www.miirage.com