Technology affording illusion of companionship

The way I analyse where technology has brought us, is in terms of technological affordances and human vulnerabilities. Technology now affords us the capacity to be constantly connected and it turns out that people are vulnerable to that. But what it gives you is the ability, for example, to have the illusion of companionship, without the demands of friendship. That is where the technology affords you the possibility for that illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship. That is the technological affordance of Facebook. You have the illusion of friendships, but really you have defriended. It is not necessarily that you have all of these friends. This is very heady stuff. You have the illusion of never really being alone, but you may in fact be alone. A robotic pet gives the illusion of having company, but really you are with a creature that does not know you are there. Technology gives us many possibilities that gives us feelings and we need to understand our vulnerabilities to figure out really: is it is using us or we are using it?