A Touching Tomorrow: Why Future Relationships Will Be More, Not Less Intimate

Counting the ways sextech might bring us further together

In Dr. Michelle Drouin’s Out of Touch: How to Survive an Intimacy Famine, the psychology professor points squarely at social media for causing many to “choose to interact with their phones over the human others in their lives, and this can cause conflict and jealousy in couple, family and friend relationships.”

Interestingly, other researchers have proposed the complete opposite: that technology—specifically the sextech variety—isn’t supplanting or hindering intimacy but might help us forge deeper, more sexually satisfying relationships.

All of us, together now

Published several years before Dr. Drouin’s book, an 8,000 person survey conducted by the Kinsey Institute revealed “participants who were engaging with sex tech reported less loneliness and less depression than those who were not engaging with sex tech.”

Specifically, “those engagers who felt an emotional or personal connection with their virtual partners. Lower rates of loneliness were also found for people who held more positive attitudes toward their own sexuality, as was greater satisfaction with their lives overall.”

Though we’ve seen a primarily younger-set surge towards less online dating activities, sextech’s rise in popularity is undeniable, backed up by Grand View Research’s report estimating the industry’s value at thirty-one billion and projecting a steady nearly seventeen percent rise from the present to the early 2030s.

Can I bring you to tea?

Hearing experts like Dr. Drouin decry what they feel might be technology’s negative impact on establishing or maintaining healthy sexual relationships never fails to remind me of a picture of what some might describe as the good old days: a snapshot of life before social media, smart pleasure devices, and smartphones, back when—according to some—people had to actually speak to other people.

The thing is, the image shows the opposite: a crowded streetcar where everyone’s face is hidden behind a newspaper.

The point is it’s easy to blame technology for intimacy issues when, in reality, people have sought new and novel ways to avoid social interactions.

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What’s unique about social media, sextech, and other recent technological innovations is they may, in fact, provide more fulfilling, more intimate, more satisfying relationship opportunities.

Going back to that streetcar photo, in retrospect, pre-Internet life was noticeably bereft of different communication options: sending and receiving letters, chatting on the phone, skywriting, and, naturally, face-to-face was all there was.

Can I take my you to bed?

Compared to today, with texting, messaging, Zooming, gathering in chat rooms, meeting in virtual reality as well as via snail mail, ringing someone up, or, if you’re so inclined, doing it in person.

The same is, of course, true for intimate relations; sextech allows us to sexually interact with someone in the same room or halfway around the world—after negotiating via a mutually agreed communication medium, followed by a discussion of how it was and how everyone feels about it.

That’s the key: choice.  There’s no denying there’ll always be a con to every technological pro, but we also have to accept that with every new sextech product or communications breakthrough, more than a few people will discover a new, comfortable, effective, and sexually/emotionally way to forge social connections.

Look at us

Just as printing was supposed to eliminate storytellers, radio replace reading, motion pictures would put Broadway out of business, and TV might drive theaters to bankruptcy, the Internet and sextech won’t transform us into soulless, screen-obsessed zombies.

Because what is and will always be on those very same screens: maybe cat videos, the latest meme, this or that social media platform, an ebook, a streaming service, or discussing what and how to use the coolest new sextech device with a lover, it’s all about communication.

As many sex educators, therapists, and mental health experts attest, when it comes to developing self-awareness, understanding and respecting the needs and desires of others, and, more than anything, being open and intimate, it all begins—however we choose to do it—by conversing with one another.  

Image Source: Depositphotos