Guest Post: Love in the Age of TikTok

Even young conservatives are being rewired

I’ve spent this week in Boston, at The Machine Has No Tradition: a summer seminar on the themes of ‘Technology, Revolution, and Apocalypse’ hosted by the Abigail Adams Institute. To mark the seminar’s return, I’m publishing a guest post from Maria-Katrina Cortez, a doctoral candidate in politics, sometimes writer, and alumna of last year’s Machine Has No Tradition seminar, on the screen’s insidious, formative impact even among those who consciously try and approach life otherwise.

The bed is empty, but my screen hums. Night after night, I scroll—half-dazed, half-hypnotised—through an endless stream of Instagram reels. My phone, ever-vigilant, distills my thoughts into an algorithm, feeding me a steady diet of avoidant attachment, situationships, red flags, and the ever-expanding lexicon of modern love’s dysfunctions.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the comment sections under these posts are replete with twenty and thirty-somethings lamenting the state of dating today. But they are not limited to the libertines who drink the Kool-Aid of free love. No one is immune—not even the hopeless romantic.

I often wonder why even self-avowed conservatives are susceptible to the destructive forces of modern dating. One day, we scoff at our “liberated” peers and loftily proclaim traditional family values, yet the next, we find ourselves fulminating over our role as victims of the very dating culture we oppose.

We often lay the blame at the feet of the sexual revolution. But if young conservatives are consciously and sometimes even loudly critical of the legacy of the long ’60s, and yet are still affected by the shifting sands of modern love, could there be something more amiss? We may be overlooking even stronger forces that have conspired to destroy romantic relationships, the sanctity of marriage, and the role of family as a pillar of stability as they were upheld before modern disruptions. The invisible forces governing our era insidiously influence young minds—regardless of their convictions.

Erich Fromm and Michel Houellebecq converge in a critique of the result: a consumerist logic that governs modern relationships, with corrosive effects on intimacy. In The Art of Loving (1956), Fromm argues that capitalist society encourages individuals to approach love as a marketplace, where partners are evaluated like commodities based on their perceived value and exchangeability. Similarly, Houellebecq’s The Elementary Particles (1998) portrays a contemporary world in which sexual liberation and consumer culture reduce human relationships to transactional exchanges, stripping love of its depth and permanence. For both thinkers, this commodification of intimacy fosters deep dissatisfaction, leaving individuals trapped in a cycle of alienation. By bringing these two perspectives into dialogue, one sees a stark warning: when love becomes a product, its redemptive, transformative nature is diminished.

This erosion of love is not merely a byproduct of consumer culture—it is actively accelerated by technology. Marshall McLuhan, in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964), adds a critical dimension to this discussion by revealing how media shapes social dynamics. Instagram, for instance, exacerbates the commodification of intimacy by transforming personal connection into a curated performance. Love is marketed on an unprecedented scale, with users consuming idealized portrayals of themselves and others. This technological mediation, as McLuhan would suggest, reshapes not just how relationships are formed but how love is imagined—entrenching the consumerist mindset that Fromm and Houellebecq decry.

One crucial critique is missing from the debate on our post-capitalist tech market: we rarely consider how the brevity and relentless form of social media itself might be warping our ability to love. Regardless of political or religious affiliation, a generation of twenty- and thirty-year-olds devotes hours to scrolling through Reels every day and is unaware of their psychological effects. What once seemed the exclusive domain of TikTok and Instagram has also colonised Facebook and YouTube, transforming them into sprawling archives of bite-sized distractions.

McLuhan distinguishes between hot and cool media, with “hot” referring to those which require little participation and “cool” those that require more input from us. Here, the “hot” media of online reels, provides a high-definition, immersive experience that demands minimal intellectual or emotional participation from viewers. Such reels overwhelm the senses, leaving little room for interpretation. Cool media, by contrast—such as phone conversations—require greater personal involvement, inviting audiences to actively fill in gaps and engage.

Yet Reels has shifted this balance. The rapid-fire, short-form structure demands a different kind of engagement, drawing viewers into an almost reflexive rhythm of scrolling and reacting. While this may foster momentary bursts of attention, it comes at the cost of sustained focus. The fleeting, fragmented nature of these interactions undermines our capacity for more reflective thought.

McLuhan’s theory illuminates the paradox: these platforms overwhelm us with relentless immediacy, eroding the space required for thoughtful interaction. This torrent of reels may seem trivial at first glance, but its broader implications for how we connect—with ideas and with each other—strike a deep terror.

These media cast a shadow over the psyche of today’s youth—including those who, despite the temptation of instant gratification, cling to conservative values. These reels, drenched in brevity and spectacle, have a way of distilling human connection into fragmented flashes of allure, demanding little more than a momentary glance. For the young soul yearning for something rooted in the timeless values of patience and meaningful companionship, this world can seem foreign—-even hostile. But it is important to underline that his or her brain is also being altered by the reel’s form.

A recent study examined 30 papers published between 2014 and 2024, utilizing surveys to assess the impact of reels on attention across different age groups. Their impact has been a profound transformation in our attention spans. Designed for quick engagement, these short-form videos bombard the mind, leading to cognitive overload and attention fragmentation in younger users, rendering it ever more difficult to focus on singular tasks. No wonder why many of us are diagnosed (or self-diagnosed) with ADHD.

If our brain patterns are rewired—our very biology altered—by constant digital inputs, we become increasingly vulnerable to forces that undermine long-term commitment. As dopamine cycles erode our capacity for sustained focus, even our deepest values may falter under the weight of unrelenting, ephemeral stimuli. The pull of instant gratification becomes a formidable adversary to marriage itself, weakening our devotion to a sacred institution built on perseverance.

If I put my phone away, will it really matter? My hand will drift back to it, as if pulled by an invisible thread—a reflex I no longer control. The screen flickers to life, casting its pale glow across my bedroom as the reels continue—an endless cycle of theories, theatrics, and grievances.

As my fingers graze the screen, I lie to myself. If only we returned to tradition, we could escape the disarray of modern love. But neither nostalgia nor ideology will reverse what has already been set in motion. We are all trapped in the same current, and the truth is laid bare—unlike the intimacy I’ve learned to fear. No, we did not abandon love; we have been rewired to be incapable of attaining it, let alone holding onto it.

All that remains is the question of whether we are still human enough to resist forces never meant to be resisted—or if we have already surrendered, no longer sentient minds, but mere circuits in the vast network we once thought we controlled.