Our thesis
The leap toward each other
Every leap we've ever made as a species has been a leap toward each other.
City-states gave us envoys, so a stranger's language stopped being a wall. The printing press gave us ideas that could cross oceans without a ship, and generations of people. And the internet promised the largest leap of all — that distance would stop being an excuse. That anyone, anywhere, creed, class or origin be damned, could not just know someone, but be their friend.
I still feel that promise sometimes. I can call a friend in LA from Boston and see her facial expressions like she's sitting across the table, like she's actually laughing right there. That part of the miracle is real.
But somewhere along the way, we were given an illusion for the miracle instead of the miracle itself.
The loneliest generation
We are perhaps the most connected generation that has ever lived. More platforms, more followers, more "friends" than any other humans in history.
And yet we are the loneliest generation.
Eighty percent of Gen Z have felt lonely in the past year — almost double the boomers, who didn't grow up with this technology. Since 2003 the time we spend face-to-face with friends has fallen by nearly a third, and for teenagers closer to half. The average American had about three close friends in 1990; today it is closer to two, and one in eight of us has none at all.
What the algorithms wanted
Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok. They promised deep human connection. But instead, they built cash machines that weaponized our attention, packaged and sold, over and over, forever.
Facebook was supposed to keep you close to your friends. It became a marketplace with a newsfeed attached.
Instagram was supposed to help you share your life. Instead, it became a stage where you perform one. Guys auramaxxing. Girls lookmaxxing.
TikTok was built to entertain you. And it became so good, it took five minutes out of your day, then an hour, then your attention span itself.
The algorithm was never trying to make us close to anyone. It was trying to make us stay. And stay we did.
Foolish us — we traded time with our friends for impersonal online connection. We didn't trade hangouts for FaceTime calls. We traded them for scrolling, and we called it staying in touch.
We are watching our relationships slowly fade away, all the meanwhile wondering how it is happening when we are the ones digging our own grave.
Consumers, not friends
In my own life, I see friends quitting Instagram. Many have deactivated theirs. My own following count is so large that I see stories from random people I don't even know. I feel like I need to curate my posts, my stories, and even what I say.
Social media makes you a consumer. A passive being.
We critique others without saying it. We take a stance without commenting our beliefs. We like stories without swiping up. We stalk others without forming a connection.
Life was never meant to be lived like this. We were meant to foster deep connections. Deep relationships. Friendships that lasted decades. Not an acquaintance birthed out of a tap.
But life is not molded for us. And as much as we can blame Zuck or whoever made these apps, we still have final say over our lives. We have agency. We have choice. And we can fix our relationships.
What I'm doing about it
Today, I'm launching Circa.
Circa means "around" in Latin. When your friends are around you, you should spend time with them. When they're far away, you should actually call them, to be ephemerally around them.
This app is not trying to grasp your attention. It's trying to help you maintain your relationships with your closest friends — a proactive app that helps you know your friends on a deeper level and see them on your own cadence.
This won't be easy
Understanding friendship is one of the hardest problems there is. Some friends are there for a season — the ones tied to a class, a job, a phase of your life, who fade when the phase ends. Some friends you want for the next fifty years.
Does hanging out more mean you're closer? Not necessarily. What is the cadence of a friendship? If we hang out today, are we expected to hang out again in three weeks? What about friends you see once a year? Should we nudge you to call more often?
This is a hard quest. But I believe it's one of the most meaningful challenges to solve, if it's solvable at all. It's a personal problem I've faced, and one I'll be happy to say I tried tackling.
The same leap
Every leap we've made as a species — the envoys, the ships, the printed word, the internet itself — was really just one leap, taken over and over again: the leap toward each other. We built new tools each time, but we were never chasing the tool. We were chasing the distance between us, trying to close it.
Somewhere in the last twenty years, we stopped closing it and started monetizing it instead. The infrastructure is there — the internet, video calls, cameras, audio. But we let the space between us become a business model.
Circa isn't a new leap. It's the same one humanity's always been trying to make.
This is the correction we need. We should not have to view technology with distaste and disgust at what it's doing to our lives. Technology can and should expand our agency, our meaning, and our experiences as humans.
Today, that begins with our friendships.
Circa is now available on iOS. And to join, you'll need an invite from someone you're close with.