The kind of solitude that refreshes and restores is very important, not just for children, not just for adolescents, but for all of us. If you don't teach your children how to be alone they will only be able to be lonely.

Technology proposes itself as the architect of our intimacies.

These days, insecure in our relationships and anxious about intimacy, we look to technology for ways to be in relationships and protect ourselves from them at the same time.

Does virtual intimacy degrade our experience of the other kind and, indeed, of all encounters, of any kind?

We expect more from technology and less from each other.

Not every advance is progress. Not every new thing is better for us humanly.

Loneliness is failed solitude.