I don’t think our generation knows what that feels like. It feels like we have traded presence for accessibility. We carry tiny devices in our pockets that give us access to almost the entirety of human knowledge, millions of people and an endless stream of entertainment. We can answer an email at midnight, reply to a message before Fajr, watch somebody else’s morning routine while still lying in bed and fall asleep listening to a stranger speak about a topic we will forget by breakfast.

The internet never sleeps, and neither do we. Not necessarily physically because many of us sleep.. We close our eyes, we rest our bodies. But our minds are constantly awake. Thinking, refreshing, checking, comparing, consuming, waiting.

Even silence has become difficult. We reach for our phones at the slightest hint of boredom, not because there is something important waiting for us, we have just forgotten how to exist without stimulation simply. I wonder what happens to a person who never experiences an uninterrupted thought.. What happens when every quiet moment is immediately filled with noise? You wake up and check your phone, you eat while watching something, you walk while listening to a podcast, you wait in a queue while scrolling, you fall asleep to YouTube. When exactly are we left alone with ourselves?

Perhaps that is why stillness feels so uncomfortable now. Because it is unfamiliar.

The Prophet ﷺ would retreat to the cave of Ḥirā’ before revelation came to him. There is something beautiful about that. Before one of the greatest responsibilities ever placed upon a human being, there was solitude, reflection, silence.

Today we fear all three. We call five minutes without looking at our phones “boring”, we panic when a conversation pauses, we instinctively fill every empty space with content, as though silence itself has become a problem to solve.

I think we underestimate what constant interruption does to the soul. We have become accustomed to consuming other people’s lives before we’ve even lived our own for the day. Before making du’a, we’ve checked five notifications. Before opening the Qur’an, we’ve opened Instagram. Before asking ourselves how we are, we’ve spent thirty minutes learning how everybody else is. No wonder we feel scattered; our attention belongs to everybody except ourselves. And perhaps even more frighteningly, everybody except Allah.

The internet has done something remarkable. It has collapsed distance. It has made knowledge more accessible than at any other point in history. It has allowed people to find communities they may never have found otherwise. I am not interested in pretending it is entirely evil because it isn’t. Some of the people I admire most, I found through the internet. Some of the books I have read, some of the teachers I have benefited from, and some of the ideas that have shaped me all reached me through a screen. But every gift comes with a test, and we know that too much of something is horrible. It makes me wonder: is our own test not knowing when enough is enough? Because the internet has no natural ending. A book ends, a conversation ends, a class ends, but the internet simply asks, “What next?”

Another video, another article, another opinion, another notification, another update and it never tells you that you have consumed enough for today. It never says “Go outside”, it never says, “Call your grandmother”, it never reminds you that your mother is sitting in the next room, it never asks whether your heart is tired, it simply keeps going.. and because it keeps going, so do we.

We have become people that mistake being informed for being transformed. We know everything that is happening everywhere all at once, yet many of us struggle to remember the last time we sat through an entire meal without checking our phones. We know the intimate details of strangers’ lives, we know what is trending in countries we have never visited, yet we do not know the names of the people living across the street. We are connected to the world and disconnected from the room.

All this to say I don’t think the answer is to throw our phones into a river or disappear into the mountains, i think the answer is far more ordinary. Leave your phone in another room sometimes, read without distraction, walk without headphones, watch the sunset without photographing it, sit after salah for a little longer than usual, visit somebody instead of texting them.

Allow yourself to become bored. PLEASE. You might be surprised by what boredom gives back because boredom is often where curiosity begins, silence is often where reflection begins and reflection is often where change begins.

Maybe that is what i miss most to be honest. A world where technology knew its place, where evenings belonged to conversations instead of screens, where boredom led to creativity instead of scrolling, where silence wasn’t something to escape, where our minds were allowed to become still.

The internet never sleeps.. but we should. our minds and hearts certainly should.

That’s not how we’re built. We absorb more than we realise. The words we hear on repeat start to sound normal. The habits we watch stop looking strange. The conversations around us slowly become the conversations inside us. Not all at once. Quietly, Almost invisibly, until one day we notice we’ve become a little more like the people we spend our time with.

The Prophet ﷺ said, “A person is upon the religion of his close friend, so let one of you look at whom he befriends.” Not because friends are a small part of life but because they become part of it. Their outlook becomes your outlook. Their standards, their fears, their habits, their ambitions.. people leave traces on us whether we consent to it or not.

You notice it most when you finally leave an environment. Months around people who complain, and suddenly you’re complaining more. Time around people who gossip, and the discomfort you used to feel just isn’t there anymore. But it cuts the other way too.. time around people who love knowledge, and you start wanting to learn, time around people who remember Allah often, and His name starts showing up more on your own tongue.

Good company isn’t a blessing because good friends are perfect. It’s a blessing because they remind you who you actually want to be. They make obedience feel lighter instead of heavier. They celebrate you without competing with you. They correct you when you’re wrong and make du’a for you when you’re not even in the room. They mention your name in places you’ll never hear about. And, the part that matters most is they help pull you toward Jannah, not away from it.

We talk about friendship like it’s mostly about enjoyment; shared interests, good conversation, someone who gets your humour. That stuff counts. But there’s a better question underneath it: does this person bring me closer to Allah? Simple question. Changes everything once you actually sit with it. There are people who make you laugh, and there are people who make you better. If you’re given someone who does both PLEASE hold on tightly.

The older I get, the clearer this: We live in a time that rewards being agreeable over being sincere. But a sincere friend is a mercy and a shield. Life is hard enough, the nafs is relentless enough, shaytan is patient enough so why add people to the mix who make the road harder than it already is?

Most of us are careful about what we eat, what we wear, where we work, what we study etc and careless about who gets closest to us. Yet those people probably shape us more than any of it. One friend, one conversation, one environment can quietly redirect the entire course of a life. Sometimes the whole difference between two futures is just who you let sit beside you.

And it’s not just about the people who are actively bad for you. Sometimes it’s simpler and sadder than that.. some company isn’t harmful, it’s just neutral. Hours spent with people who don’t push you anywhere. No harm done, but no growth either. Years can pass that way without you noticing, because nothing dramatic ever happens. You just wake up one day further from where you meant to be, and you can’t point to a single moment that caused it.

I’ve started asking a different question when I think about who I give my time to. Not “are they a bad influence,” because that’s easy to answer and easy to avoid. The harder question is: am I becoming someone I’d respect, in this company? Not someone more impressive, someone I’d actually respect if I saw myself from the outside. If the honest answer is no, that’s information. Uncomfortable, but useful.

There’s also a quieter test I’ve come to trust: how do you feel about yourself after you leave them? Some people leave you lighter. You walk away wanting to pray, wanting to call your mother, wanting to be kinder to the next person you meet. Others leave you heavier without you being able to explain why.. a little more cynical, a little more restless, a little further from your own intentions. That feeling afterward is rarely random. It’s usually telling you something true.

Friendship isn’t only tested in the good times either. Anyone can sit with you when things are easy. The real weight of a friend shows up in the specific moments; when you’re not in the room and your name comes up, when you’ve made a mistake and they have the choice to gossip about it or cover it. Character reveals itself most clearly in the moments no one is grading.

I also think we don’t talk enough about seasons. Not every friendship is meant to last forever, and that isn’t always a tragedy. Some people are placed in your life for a chapter.. to teach you something, to walk beside you through a specific trial, to show you a version of sincerity you needed to witness at the time. When that season ends, it doesn’t erase what it gave you. Grieving a friendship that’s run its course is allowed. So is releasing it without bitterness.

At the same time, this reflection isn’t only about who to choose. It’s also about who I need to become. Because somebody, somewhere, is asking the same question about me. Am I the kind of company that draws people closer to Allah, or quietly pulls them away? Do I make obedience look appealing or exhausting? Would someone leave a conversation with me feeling lighter or heavier? That’s a harder mirror to hold up, but it’s the more honest one.

There’s also a difference between being alone and being lonely, and it’s worth thinking deeply about. Solitude chosen to protect your heart isn’t deprivation, it’s wisdom. Better to walk a slower road with fewer people, or even by yourself for a season, than to rush ahead in company that erodes you piece by piece. Allah is enough company for the one who feels like they have none. That isn’t a consolation prize. It’s a genuine anchor.

None of this means chasing perfect people, because they don’t exist, and demanding perfection from friends is its own kind of arrogance. It means being honest about direction. Everyone around you is either nudging you toward Allah or pulling you subtly away, even when neither of you can name it out loud. Nobody stays neutral for long. Choose the nudge you want shaping your life. Everyone around you is influencing your direction, whether toward Allah or away from Him, even in ways neither of you fully notices. Hearts rarely remain unchanged for long.

So choose on purpose.

Choose people whose presence makes you remember Allah before you even realise you needed reminding.

Choose people who make you want to be better, not just feel better.

Choose people whose character holds up when no one is watching.

And, as much as you can, become that kind of person for someone else.

None of us reaches the end of life untouched by the people we’ve walked beside. The only real choice is who we allow to shape us, and who we’re helping shape in return.

The people beside us matter.

More than we think.

So choose.

But loneliness has become much harder to identify than that.

Because today, a person can wake up to messages, spend hours scrolling through the lives of others, exchange hundreds of words online, watch strangers speak endlessly through a screen and still end the day with a feeling they cannot quite name.. A feeling that sounds suspiciously like loneliness.

The strange thing is that we live in an age that treats loneliness as a connectivity problem. Feeling lonely?

Join a platform.

Create an account.

Follow more people.

Join a group chat.

Find a community.

Download another app.

And yet loneliness remains.

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In some ways, it feels worse than ever. Perhaps because loneliness was never about access. it has always been about belonging. and belonging is much harder to manufacture.

Belonging is not somebody liking your post, it is not somebody viewing your story, it is not somebody reacting with a heart emoji.

Belonging is knowing there are people who would notice your absence before you announced it, people who know your routines well enough to ask why you were not there, people who would knock on your door, people who would worry, people who would come.

For all our advances, many of us have become incredibly visible while remaining largely unknown. We know each other’s favourites cake flavor but not each other’s fears, we know what someone had for lunch but not whether they are struggling, we know usernames, profile pictures and aesthetics.

But we do not know each other. Not really.

See, the thing is, human beings were not designed merely to be seen, they were designed to be known.

There is a reason children do not simply need food and shelter. They need attention. Presence. Attachment. They need somebody who understands their cries before they can form words.

That need never truly leaves us if we’re being honest. It simply changes shape. As adults, we still want somebody to understand what we mean without needing a paragraph of explanation. We still want somewhere to belong, we still want to feel chosen.

The internet has given us unprecedented access to one another but access is not the same thing as intimacy. You can have access to a thousand people and intimacy with none. You can be followed by many and known by few. You can be surrounded by noise and still feel profoundly alone. And i think this is why so many people feel exhausted, not because they are disconnected, but because they are connected in ways that do not satisfy the deeper hunger.

It’s like drinking salt water; the more you consume, the thirstier you become.

I sit and wonder if previous generations had a better vocabulary for community than we do. And not because they were morally superior or cuz life was easier, but because community was often unavoidable.

You knew your neighbours, you knew the elderly people on your street; you attended the same masjid, you saw the same faces repeatedly. five times a day for the men; fajr dhuhr, asr, maghreb, isha. and it wasn’t just merely greeting each other, it was having deep conversations because there was no room for other than that. Relationships had the opportunity to deepen because they were given time.

Now many of us know people from six continents but have never spoken to the person living three doors down. We know what strangers think about politics but not the names of the families next to us. We have mastered connection while neglecting proximity and tbh i think loneliness is the price we are paying for that trade.

The answer is probably not to delete every account and move into a forest, lol! The answer is probably much less dramatic.

Know your neighbours, call your friends, visit your relatives, invite people over, accept invitations when they come, be the person who remembers, be the person who checks in, be the person who builds what you wish existed. Because community is not something we find, it is something we create. Perhaps that is the uncomfortable truth hidden beneath our loneliness.

Many of us are waiting for belonging to arrive, when in reality, belonging has always been something built by ordinary people choosing each other, over and over again.

In a hyperconnected world, the rarest thing is no longer communication, i think it is commitment. i think loneliness is not asking for more people, It is asking for deeper roots.