Digital Emotions
By: Faheem ul Islam
There was a time when emotions moved slowly. They had patience. They travelled through handwritten letters that took days to arrive, through eyes that spoke in silence, through voices that trembled during a long pause.
Now, our emotions travel faster than we can process them. They light up on screens, shaped into emojis, punctuated with likes, and measured in views. A smile is now a yellow circle, love is a red heart, and grief is a broken heart icon. Somewhere between handwritten notes and instant messages, we have begun to ask ourselves: are we truly emotional, or just digitally emotional?
The truth is, emotions have not disappeared. If anything, they are everywhere, surrounding us in endless digital streams. Every morning begins with a rush of feelings that arrive before we even step out of bed. We scroll through updates and are pulled into other people’s lives: a wedding celebration, an exam result, a political rant, a tragedy.
Within a few minutes, we have felt joy, envy, anger, and sympathy—all without saying a word to another human being. This intensity of emotion was once rare; now it is routine. The question is whether such emotions still have the same depth when experienced through screens.
Take, for instance, the way friendships unfold today. Earlier, a friend’s presence was measured in shared walks, hours of conversation, and simple gestures like showing up at the door unannounced.
Today, friendship is measured in streaks on Snapchat, in daily likes on Instagram, in remembering to respond with the right emoji at the right time. Young people can speak to each other all day through messages, yet feel strangely distant when they meet face to face. The digital world makes friendships constant but not always deep. We feel close, but often only as close as our Wi-Fi connection allows.
Family life has not escaped this transformation either. In many households, the dining table has become a place where everyone eats with one hand and scrolls with the other. Parents complain that children are “always on their phones,” but sometimes they forget they are guilty of the same. A father checks his emails in between bites, a mother scrolls through reels before bed, and children disappear into endless chats.
The emotional fabric of families is still there, but it is stretched thinner by devices that compete for attention. It is not that love has disappeared—it is simply that we now express it in shorter, distracted ways.
Of course, the digital space is not empty of genuine feeling. In fact, it often makes people bolder in expressing what they might otherwise keep hidden. A shy student may never tell his teacher in person that he feels nervous, but he may write it in a late-night message. A child may find it difficult to say “I miss you” to his/her parents face to face, yet says it easily with a heart emoji. In this sense, technology has become a bridge for emotions that once struggled to find a voice. For many, it feels safer to express themselves online because the screen provides a shield from judgment.
But with that freedom comes a certain risk: the risk of curating emotions for an audience. Online, sadness is dressed up as poetry, joy is filtered through perfect pictures, and anger is amplified into arguments that attract attention. We do not always show what we truly feel; we show what we think will be noticed.
The pressure to be visible sometimes overshadows the need to be authentic. A person may laugh loudly on a reel but feel hollow in reality. Another may post cheerful pictures while fighting loneliness in silence. The performance of emotions often becomes more important than their sincerity.
This is where the digital world tricks us. It makes us believe we are sharing everything, while in fact we may be hiding the most important parts of ourselves. The constant stream of reactions—likes, comments, shares—becomes a substitute for deeper validation. We feel noticed, but not always understood. We feel surrounded, but not always held. It is a strange paradox: never before have we expressed so much, yet never before have so many felt so unseen.
And yet, I cannot bring myself to condemn digital emotions as false. They are real in their own way. A message of encouragement received at the right time can brighten someone’s day. A late-night call can comfort a lonely heart.
A shared joke online can ease the weight of stress. The digital world may not replace human presence, but it does extend it. It allows emotions to travel across distance, to reach people we may never meet in person. It creates a new kind of intimacy—fragile, yes, but still valuable.
The challenge, then, is not whether we should be digitally emotional but whether we can remain fully human while doing so. Are we letting screens dictate the rhythm of our feelings? Or are we using them to support the emotions that make us human—love, empathy, care, and kindness? The danger lies in forgetting that the screen is only a medium. It can carry emotion, but it cannot create it.
Perhaps the balance lies in remembering the small, ordinary acts that digital life cannot replace. Sitting with a friend in silence when words fail. Listening without distractions. Smiling without emojis. Writing a letter that takes time and effort. These are not old-fashioned; they are timeless. They remind us that emotions are not meant to be consumed quickly like posts on a feed. They are meant to be lived, slowly, deeply, and in the presence of others.
So, are we digitally emotional? Yes, we are. But we must also remain emotionally human. Digital platforms should be bridges, not prisons. They should extend our connections, not replace them. At the end of the day, a heart on a screen cannot beat like a real one.
A like cannot replace love, and a comment cannot replace comfort. What we must guard against is the illusion that it can.The most advanced technology is not the phone in our pocket or the app on our screen. It is still the human heart—messy, vulnerable, unfiltered. As long as we remember that, our emotions, whether digital or physical, will remain what they were always meant to be: the thread that ties us to one another.
(The author is a public speaker hailing from Achan Pulwama. He has done his masters in international politics from AMU)
