Edward Heaney.
During an early morning Uber ride to a client meeting, I broke the cardinal rule of small talk: I ventured beyond pleasantries into a much deeper conversation. My driver, eager to share his thoughts on everything from geopolitics to bird flu, eventually turned the discussion to something more personal— loneliness. Initially, as the good Brit I am, I tried to steer the conversation back to polite silence, but he had other plans. He opened up about his sense of isolation and how, in search of relief, he turned to an unconventional “therapy” session with ChatGPT. The way he personified his interactions with the AI platform made it clear: he had formed a ‘connection’—not with another person, but with a machine.
His experience isn't unique.
One in four Australian adults now experience persistent loneliness, a recent report from Ending Loneliness Together found.
And people are choosing to spend more time alone than ever before—37% of Australians report spending less time in face-to-face social interactions compared to 2023. From rises in solo living (+5.6 percentage points since 1991), dining out alone (+14% YoY), going to the cinema alone (+4 percentage points from 2019-2023), or comments around having a drained ‘social battery,’ we’re witnessing the rise of conscious "social isolation". While this was a term popularised during the pandemic, it has now evolved from a mandated behaviour to one that many are actively choosing.
Here’s the paradox: while in-person connections have dwindled, digital ones are on the rise.
Time spent online has increased almost 7% from 2021 to 2023, with the average Australian now spending just over six hours per day online. This shift is reshaping connection in ways we didn’t expect. It’s driven by multiple factors—the pandemic, social media, remote work, and the ever-growing digitalisation of life.
And it’s a transformation unlikely to reverse.
Social media, once a place for digital connections with our friends, now feels less ‘social’ and more focused on content discovery—like goat yoga videos and cucumber salad recipes.
Alongside this, we’re witnessing the rise of parasocial relationships—one-sided emotional bonds between consumers and media personalities, influencers, or even fictional characters, with podcasters, content creators, and brand figures becoming the faces we connect with.
The shift from brands to people as brands has fuelled the popularity of online influencers, Ed Elson, co-host of the Prof G podcast, explains. He argues that the chronic lack of close friendships (12% of people report having zero close friends) has pushed people to form emotional bonds with figures like MrBeast. These influencers are trusted, consistent, and familiar, offering a reassuring sense of emotional connection to their audiences.
I feel that it goes further.
Like the Uber driver, we are now seeing the early forms of emotional bonds going beyond just parasocial relationships with influencers, to relationships with AI.
So, what does this mean for brands?
Well, as connections change, so does the role brands need to play in engaging with their customers. As consumers seek connection through more digitalised, one-way relationships, brands can tap into the trend of parasocial and AI-fuelled connections by repositioning the meaning they have in their customers' lives.
‘Virtual influencers’ are starting to take root, but could AI-driven brand avatars create entirely new forms of relationships with customers? Imagine the relationships that could be developed with a Tony the Tiger or Snap, Crackle, and Pop AI avatar that feeds off our interactions to provide increasingly personalised and ‘meaningful’ relationships—terrifying, but likely. UK-based telecommunications company O2 has already begun to explore this potential with their lifelike AI avatar, ‘Granny Daisy,’ who turns the tables on scammers by keeping them on the line in real-time to protect vulnerable customers.
The loneliness epidemic calls for an urgent rethink of how brands relate to consumers. Brands have an opportunity to lean into this trend by fostering authentic, meaningful personalised connections that look to enhance emotional well-being of their audiences while driving business success. Alternatively, they may wish to lean into this trend by fostering authentic, meaningful personalised connections that look to enhance emotional well-being of their audiences while that drive business success.
As unsettling as it may seem to some, the rise of digital, parasocial, and human-to-machine relationships is likely to continue, offering connections that, much like the Uber driver’s experience, can feel genuinely meaningful.
So, the question isn’t just what kind of connection brands want with their customers—but how deep they’re willing to go in this new frontier, where the lines between the digital and human worlds are increasingly blurred.