The collapse of relationship skills

BY ELEANOR PINUGU

NOVEMBER 24, 2025

Read Next

Communicating empathy

AJapanese woman recently chose to marry her ChatGPT bot. After a painful breakup, 32-year-old Kano began seeking comfort from the platform. Eventually, she personalized her AI companion and named it “Lune Klaus,” describing him as the ideal partner: kind, attentive, and patient. After hundreds of back-and-forth messages, Lune Klaus “proposed.”

Although Japanese law requires marriage to be between two consenting humans, this did not stop Kano from having a ceremony attended by her loved ones. Wearing augmented-reality glasses, she exchanged rings and digital vows with a projected life-size image of her AI groom.

This scenario is part of a rapidly growing trend, with the global AI Girlfriend market expected to reach $9.5 billion by 2028. “AI-lationship” is a new term referring to the intimate attachment that a person has with their AI companion. Many treat the bots as friends they can confide in, but there is also a growing number of people like Kano whose AI-lationships involve imagined marriages, sex, and even pregnancies.

Advocates claim that AI-lationships are not intended to replace human connections but to offer supplemental emotional support. While there are, indeed, documented cases of artificial intelligence improving the well-being of people suffering from social isolation (especially among senior citizens), there are also numerous instances of how AI has fueled people’s harmful delusions.

Recent studies on young people’s AI use suggest another troubling trend. A 2025 study by Common Sense Media found that 31 percent of the surveyed teens felt their conversations with AI companions were “as satisfying or more satisfying” than talking with real friends, and that 33 percent had discussed serious issues with AI instead of real people.

Another report from the Center for Democracy and Technology found that 19 percent of US high schoolers said they or a friend had a romantic AI relationship. While there are no local studies yet, a quick Reddit search shows Filipino teenagers sharing similar experiences, including debates on whether it is considered “cheating” to have an AI companion if you already have a partner.

These numbers matter because adolescence is the stage when templates for handling future relationships are formed. Their heightened sensitivity to reward, combined with an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex, makes teenagers more vulnerable to impulsive behavior, intense attachments, and the blurred line between fantasy and reality. While the benefits of AI-lationships for adults may still be open to debate, the danger they pose to young people’s social and emotional development is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. One famous case is the death of a 14-year-old British teenager after his AI girlfriend encouraged his suicidal ideation.

My column last week (see “The collapse of dialogue (1),” 11/17/25) explored how technology has weakened our ability to have real conversations. Social media has trained us to express ourselves constantly, but often in a performative manner motivated by online engagement. At the same time, becoming accustomed to superficial connections has compromised our ability to navigate the reciprocal nature of face-to-face dialogue. AI has further deepened this shift as more people let chatbots write and reply for them, resulting in polished but hollow communication.

For relationships to deepen, they require a capacity to listen, negotiate differences, and communicate with sincerity. However, as people begin to outsource the cognitive and emotional labor needed in conversations, these relational foundations are also becoming increasingly fragile. In 2023, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy described the loneliness epidemic not as physically being alone but as a state of mind: “that results from perceived isolation or inadequate meaningful connections, where inadequate refers to the discrepancy or unmet need between an individual’s preferred and actual experience.” In other words, loneliness persists not because people lack interaction, but because they lack relationships that feel real.

SEE ALSO

EDITORIAL, OPINION

Online lending menace

The rise of nonhuman relationships reflects this crisis. It shows how deeply people want to connect, yet may not have the skills to start or sustain a genuine relationship. Always-available and always-empathetic chatbots are so appealing because they offer a type of companionship that one can fully control—free from uncertainties that come with relating to another person who carries their own complexities. For young people whose sense of self and social skills are still forming, overexposure to AI interactions risks shaping distorted expectations of intimacy.

Much of the discussion on AI ethics among young people has centered on classroom use and academic integrity. What we urgently need is a deeper examination of the regulatory frameworks and comprehensive education necessary to protect and guide young people in socially engaging with AI in more critically informed and emotionally healthier ways.

—————-

eleanor@shetalksasia.com

Take the ‘other’ to lunch

BY ELEANOR PINUGU

SEPTEMBER 22, 2025

Read Next

Early start

Ever since I became an opinion columnist two-and-a-half years ago, I have had front-row seats to how diluted and disjointed online conversations have become. I always strive to write with nuance, but some users respond only to the short excerpts, often without reading the full article. When opinions are formed based on a few lines taken out of context, the richer discourse that could have taken place is compromised. What often follows are brief and emotional exchanges that rarely go beyond the surface. Instead of striving to understand and dissect full ideas, people settle for sound bites and simplified versions of one another’s positions. In an effort to weigh in quickly on an issue, the opportunity to learn and deepen the dialogue is lost amid our tendency to react, rather than respond thoughtfully.

A friend, who also writes a weekly column, once advised me to stop reading the comments. As both an educator and a social scientist, however, I cannot look away. The educator in me cannot help but want to guide the audience toward the more complete picture that they are missing out on, while the social scientist in me feels compelled to analyze how and why our online conversations have become quite fragmented.

Much has been said about how social media has led to the demise of proper discourse. In an attention economy, online platforms are incentivized by the way people’s negative emotions translate into higher engagement. It has even given rise to a phenomenon called “rage-baiting,” wherein some people deliberately create content that provokes indignation.

Trial by social media

 

BY ELEANOR PINUGU

SEPTEMBER 1, 2025

Read Next

The theft of conscience: Why corruption is more than just stolen money

“Iskolar ng bayan” is a badge of honor usually associated with a graduate from the University of the Philippines. The term signifies not just the intellectual formation that one has received from a premier university, but also the civic responsibility that comes with an education that is funded by taxpayer money.

In the past few days, however, the term has taken on a more cynical meaning. Through Reddit threads, TikTok videos, and Facebook/Instagram posts, ordinary citizens have been calling out the extravagant lifestyles of different government officials and contractors who have been tied to anomalous flood control projects, claiming that their questionable wealth are from sham bids and backdoor deals. This includes the expensive university degrees their children obtained overseas, earning them the ironic label of “scholars ng bayan.”

Not too long ago, these political children were admired (even lauded) for the designer bags, luxury cars, and expensive jewelry they shared on their social media accounts. Many have made a career as influencers, posting from their private jets or their latest trips abroad. Once in a while, they would thank their parents for funding their lavish lifestyles, with one even calling her father her “never-ending ATM.”

Today, many of those accounts have been locked as private and are now hidden from public view. What used to be aspirational content is now considered incriminating, as anonymous users dig through old feeds and resurface photos with a detailed price breakdown of every item they own. One Reddit user even gave step-by-step instructions on how to retrieve deleted or archived posts, while another made a consolidated directory cataloguing all the gathered evidence/screenshots of each family’s “ill-gotten wealth.”

Before last week, many were quick to accept that some Filipino families simply existed at that level of wealth, rarely pausing to ask where the money came from. The harder truth that needs to be acknowledged is how we, as a society, helped normalize and collectively enabled the lifestyles of these political families. Filipinos have long gravitated toward celebrated displays of affluence. As the now-infamous Discaya features illustrate, media humanized these personalities through stories that framed their privilege as aspirational, while giving them a veneer of relatability. Social media followers strengthened their soft power through every like and share. Brands that collaborated with these individuals conferred status and credibility. Perhaps what is so important about this issue is not only the long-overdue scrutiny of these families, but also the uncomfortable recognition of our own complicity.

Political theorist Jürgen Habermas defined the public sphere as the realm where private citizens come together to debate matters of public concern. The past week is a good example of how social media platforms have effectively taken on that role. Despite being conducted in informal settings, this “trial by social media” could lead to real consequences for reputations, careers, and even government inquiries. For instance, public pressure has already reached the higher levels of government. President Marcos recently ordered a lifestyle check of government officials from the Department of Public Works and Highways and other agencies. When criticized about his own family’s wealth, the President said that he is more than willing to be subjected to a lifestyle check as well.

SEE ALSO

OPINION, TALK OF THE TOWN

Talk of the Town: Struggle for living wage continues

While I am not a big fan of the indiscriminating nature of cancel culture, the past few days have felt like a satisfying form of comeuppance. In an era of selective justice and seeming impunity, these Reddit threads are starting to feel like a legitimate way of pursuing accountability since formal mechanisms don’t always yield results. As one user noted, the hope is that this newfound determination to investigate and call out questionable practices will not be confined to flood-control contracts alone, but will extend to anomalous bids in health, education, and other public services.

Of course, this type of no-holds-barred tribunal is not without risk. While it can pierce impunity, it also blurs the line between accountability and mob justice. Whistle blowing on Reddit, and social media in general, relies heavily on anonymous or pseudonymous accounts. While it offers protection for the whistle blower, it can just as easily serve as a breeding ground for misinformation and harmful conspiracy theories to flourish.

And yet, we cannot dismiss the significant contributions it can make to advance public discourse. If the once seemingly invulnerable scions of political dynasties are now retreating from the spotlight, it means that those in power are feeling the weight of public scrutiny. Whether these viral posts and message threads will lead to an actual investigation and systemic reform, or simply to more careful curation of what these families share publicly, remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: more Filipinos are refusing to stay silent. The ongoing “trial by social media” of these officials’ extravagant lifestyles may be messy, flawed, and less than ideal, but it has definitely made the issue quite impossible to ignore.  

More than just reading

BY ELEANOR PINUGU

JULY 28, 2025

Read Next

Talk of the Town: Floods from a different lens

In the late 1980s, two American researchers conducted what would become one of the most cited experiments in education. A group of Grade 7 and 8 students was told to read a passage about baseball and answer a set of comprehension questions. As expected, strong readers who knew a lot about the sport obtained the highest scores. Surprisingly, however, students with lower reading ability but with extensive knowledge of baseball outperformed those with stronger reading skills but limited knowledge of the sport.

The now-famous baseball study challenged the long-held belief that reading is a skill that must be taught in isolation. It revealed how our prior knowledge of a topic acts like a scaffold that helps us make sense of new concepts by connecting them to what we already understand. A 2019 study published in Psychological Science reinforced this idea. Researchers found that when students are unfamiliar with 59 percent or more of the terms in what they’re reading, their ability to comprehend the text significantly suffers. To develop a child’s comprehension skills, it’s not enough to teach them how to read. We must assess what they know, build on that knowledge, and guide them to find the connections between ideas.

Understanding the science behind teaching comprehension skills matters now more than ever. In 2022, the Philippines ranked among the bottom 10 countries in reading comprehension in the 2022 Program for International Student Assessment. According to the World Bank, the Philippines has a 90 percent learning poverty rate, which means nine out of 10 Filipino 10-year-olds are unable to read or understand a simple paragraph. Since assuming office, Department of Education (DepED) Secretary Sonny Angara has prioritized addressing the learning crisis by launching various targeted interventions. Last week, DepEd announced a major improvement: the number of Grade 3 students who were unable to recognize letters dropped from 65,000 last year to just 2,000. This progress is certainly no small feat, and serves as a promising sign that urgent, focused efforts can move the needle.

You must upgrade your account to read the rest 

‘Marites’ in the workplace

BY ELEANOR PINUGU

JUNE 2, 2025

Read Next

Opec+ okays another big output hike for July

Irecently had coffee with a friend who heads a business news outlet. He shared how his website crashed after publishing a story about how a famous local celebrity is rumored to be dating the son of a prominent businessman. While he saw the incident as a “good problem” to have, it also felt like a sobering reminder of the power of gossip to draw and hold people’s attention more than any other type of content.

The act of gossiping has existed for centuries as a way for people to build social bonds while exchanging information. In the Philippines, our brand of gossiping culture is best embodied by how the term “Marites” has become a part of the Philippine lexicon. Popularized around 2020, it began as a lighthearted label for someone always “in the know.” It is interesting to note that the term is not necessarily derogatory, but is even seen as a badge of honor that can signal access to social capital or information.

While it often frames gossiping as a form of storytelling and amusement, the normalization of Marites culture carries more serious implications, especially when it spills over into institutional settings like the workplace. For instance, when left unchecked, having a Marites culture in the workplace can significantly affect an employee’s morale and professional growth. When coaching public school teachers, one of the common frustrations I receive from younger employees is that they are afraid to assert themselves and voice out new ideas because they do not want to be the subject of informal scrutiny. It leads to a form of intellectual shaming, wherein people who are perceived to be too ambitious, too eager, or too close to the principal are criticized and talked about. As a result, many teachers said that they just choose to conform rather than deal with all the intrigue and negativity.