Growing up, I watched my dad wake up at ungodly hours of the morning before work to drive people to the airport. Usually, they didn’t even ask. It was a given — this is what we do for one another.

While I could not articulate it at the time, my parents’ extreme generosity taught me a valuable lesson: although community can be inconvenient, it is overwhelmingly worthwhile. Humans are inherently social creatures, constantly seeking to mitigate feelings of loneliness and isolation by connecting with others.

But recently, we have seen the erosion of solid communities, whether it’s tightly knit neighborhoods, groups with common interests or goals or religious or spiritual centers. We have also heard complaints of social isolation and a “loneliness epidemic” through sources like the National Library of Medicine and Vivek Murphy, the former surgeon general.

Older generations are quick to blame increased technology usage, and people across the board cite the COVID-19 pandemic as a potential cause for decreased meaningful friendships and increased self-seclusion. While these factors certainly play a part, we must also examine how we choose to opt out of community, from the words we use to keep people at arm’s length to the ways we assert our individualism to avoid emotional discomfort.

One aspect of how we do this is through “therapy speak,” or the everyday use of psychological and mental health-related language. If you’ve heard phrases like “I’m protecting my peace” or “I’m just asserting my boundaries,” you know exactly what I’m talking about.

However, as it becomes more common, it is clear that this rhetoric is easy to misuse. These phrases were originally intended for use in therapy settings but have been co-opted to avoid discussing emotions authentically with friends or weaponized to make oneself the eternal victim.

On social media specifically, the phrase “protect your peace” constantly circulates, a testament to the attitude that we must always be on the defensive, protecting our resources and emotions. It’s almost as if culturally we’ve decided to conserve our energy as a finite resource, and as if the energy and attention we pour into others will not return to us. Isolation has been marketed as a necessary tool for personal development to the point where people believe emotionally intimate relationships will just drag them down.

While there are situations where this kind of language is valid, on social media it is often used as an excuse to abandon others — emotionally and physically — simply because we “don’t feel like it.” The rhetoric of “emotional labor” becomes a convenient shield, allowing us to pick and choose when to engage while avoiding the uncomfortable work of sitting with others’ feelings and offering genuine support.

I fear that people are creating impenetrable boundaries of protection. Brick by brick, they build with phrases like “I’m not responsible for your emotions,” turning friendship into something we choose to invest in, rather than being there when needed.

The negative effects of these boundaries appear in minor ways, like being told your friend doesn’t have the emotional bandwidth to hear about your especially painful heartbreak or loss of a job. Or when no one has the mental energy to show up to your birthday despite it being planned ages in advance, or getting a two-dollar Venmo request from someone you consider a close friend. It’s emotionally distancing, a deviation from “what’s mine is yours” and into the realm of “my time and energy is for me to hoard, not share.”

Instead of investing in community, we live in a culture of networking. We achieve the illusion of kinship with superficial and entirely transactional relationships. The beauty of community and friendship lies in their nontransactional nature — they are a labor of love and a display of humanity.

Networking, in contrast, is a way of building up contacts that may be of use later for the express purpose of advancing professionally or socially. This is further facilitated by our workaholic culture, where financial and professional success are paramount.

We want to lean on each other. We know that “it takes a village” and that life is simply better with the embrace of supportive community, yet we refuse to be villagers. We’ve made friendship transactional, rather than intimate — a subscription that can be canceled rather than something we commit to.

Caring is costly and at times inconvenient. We repeat the refrain “I don’t owe anyone anything,” so we don’t have to care. But all things considered, we do owe everyone everything.

Shefa Stein-Talesnick is a sophomore majoring in philosophy, politics and law.

Views expressed in the opinions pages represent the opinions of the columnists. The only piece that represents the view of the Pipe Dream Editorial Board is the staff editorial.