Culture . 02/22/2008 07:02 AM . Alisa Harris

One in four Americans (and 31% of singles) believe the Internet could replace a significant other for a time.

I read this and scoffed until I realized that I’m smitten with technology. My computer and I spend almost every waking minute together. We cuddle on the couch, watch movies and have regular coffee dates. I spend hours looking deep in my computer’s eyes. After all, in what day but today could you have so many shallow relationships taking the place of one actual difficult one? In another age, you would actually know you were lonely, but now that you can request mates and make (and accessorize) babies together on Facebook, why go to the whole messy bother of marriage, pregnancy, labor, and diapers?

Then I remembered the time I tried to avoid an awkward date by claiming I had a previous engagement with my computer in a coffee shop. He didn’t buy it because he knew what all of us—even technology junkies—know: You can’t date the Internet. When we face the choice of living vicariously through Facebook or having fun with friends in the flesh, we choose people over technology.

Here’s some serious proof. The same poll asked people to pick who or what is sexier: Halle Berry, Scarlett Johansson, Patrick Dempsey, Derek Jeter, or the Apple iPhone. Despite the iPhone’s smart and sexy 16 GB drive, people would still rather ogle human beauties (everyone but Jeter, whom they’d never heard of) than a phone.

Since togas were in style, people have fretted that evolving communication technology would drive us apart. Socrates said reading and writing would destroy our memory. Neil Postman said television would destroy logic and literacy. Yes, technology changes us, but not that much. Human nature stays the same. Despite the fact that our Blackberries have molded to the palms of our hands, we will crave the curve of a human hand.

Technology actually grows from this deep need for human connection. In Business 2.0, Oma Malik writes: “Whether in Parisian cafes, Bombay chai stalls, or Manhattan singles’ bars, humans have an overwhelming need to get together, talk, communicate, and interact. Our genes are coded that way.” Malik says our online interactions mimic these offline interactions through webcams, texting, and other technology “that lets you share your life with those close to you, no matter how far away.” Technology changes but one thing doesn’t: “that very human urge to connect in real time.”

Technology like Facebook, that ostensibly major on social minutia, actually deepens human connection. Friendships fade not when you stop sharing the big events in your lives but when you stop sharing the insignificant details—when your lives drift so far apart that you no longer share inane inside jokes, insipid gossip, bad days and tiffs and beefs and peeves and insignificant joys and melodramas.

Two friends and I have a Facebook thread that is stretching to 1,000 messages, averaging 6 messages a day for four months now. It records big events—one engagement, two breakups—but primarily chronicles cranky days, sore throats, aborted crushes, roommate quarrels, goofy links and campus gossip. When we see each other face to face, we will still have something to talk about because it’s the silly, shallow things that connect us and make us able to share the big things with each other. (This is why most friendships begin with commiserating over the weather, not sharing dark secrets.) Technology makes relationships easier. Our online interactions often deepen our offline ones.

And thanks to the pace of modern life, even our technological hobbles will one day disintegrate. MySpace—yes, and YouTube, too—will one day pass away and another uncomfortably indispensable networking tool will take their place. In fact, the latest statistics suggest that people are tired of the social networking we already have. The average MySpace user spent 233 minutes on MySpace in December of 2006 and only 180 minutes in December of 2007. All year, people spent less time on every social networking site but Facebook. By the end of 2007, Facebook’s monthly averages were dropping too.

So as much as I love my computer, I’d dump it if somebody cuddlier came along. There’s nothing wrong with us dating-the-Internet singles that a couple of long walks on the beach and a little kissing won’t fix.

Alisa Harris is an editor for World on the Web. She lives in New York.