Pero, are we really connected?

I’m the founder and CEO of Kinnect, and right now, I’m on a walk in San Juan. The waves are crashing, the sun’s coming up, and I’m reflecting on what it really means to connect with the people we love.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it really means to connect with someone. Not just liking a post or replying with a quick “haha” on social media, but actually feeling close to the people you care about. The truth? A lot of us are lonelier than ever. Social media was supposed to bring us closer, pero now it’s basically a giant shopping mall pretending to be about connection.

What’s wild is that we’ve created these tools to stay in touch with more people than ever before, but we don’t have the right spaces or habits to actually feel connected. And it’s not just about connection—it’s about understanding.

Why does it feel so hard to stay close?

Families don’t live in the same neighborhoods anymore. Gone are the cul-de-sacs and multigenerational homes. I hear it all the time—siblings who haven’t talked in months, parents who only see their kids on holidays, friends who drift apart because “life just got in the way.”

When we were younger, things felt different. School, sports teams, or even work gave us these natural ways to stay close. But after college, when the group texts fade and people move for jobs, relationships start to feel like work. And let’s be real, life is busy. It’s easier to just prioritize the people nearby because proximity makes it easy.

But proximity isn’t the same as connection.

I think we’ve forgotten how much effort relationships need. Or maybe it’s not that we’ve forgotten, pero we’ve let other things take over—work, stress, fear of being vulnerable. We tell ourselves, “Oh, I’ll call them later.” But later turns into months.