A few weeks ago I caught myself rewriting a text three times before hitting send. Not to a client. Not to my wife. To AI.

I noticed what I was doing and laughed out loud. I was "performing" for a machine that had no opinion of me. And it still felt like it mattered.

That moment stuck with me, because it pointed at something I think a lot of us are quietly dealing with right now.

We are starting to find ourselves through algorithms.

Not just our preferences. Our identity. The Harvard Business Review's 2025 report on how people actually use AI found that the top three uses are no longer productivity tasks. They are therapy and companionship, organizing your life, and finding purpose. We have moved from asking AI to help us work to asking it to help us figure out who we are.

And the data on what that is doing to people is hard to look away from.

A recent study (still under peer review) tracked nearly 2,000 AI companion users. Compared to control groups, users showed a 105 percent increase in expressions of loneliness. A 28 to 38 percent increase in suicidal ideation. A 15 percent rise in depression symptoms. Even while receiving constant emotional validation from their chatbots.

Read that again. The thing that was supposed to make them feel known is making them feel more alone.

Here is what I keep coming back to. An algorithm is built to mirror you. It learns your patterns and reflects them back, polished, and tells you that is who you are. That feels like being known. It is actually being studied.

A friend can interrupt you. A friend can say, "You're being weird about this, and I love you, and here is what I see." A friend can tell you the truth when the truth costs them something.

A chatbot will never do that. It is engineered to keep you talking. The more it agrees, the longer you stay. The longer you stay, the more it earns. That is not a relationship. That is a feedback loop wearing a relationship's clothes.

This is the part I want to sit in for a minute, because the people in our lives are inside this loop right now. Quietly. The coworker who seems exhausted. The neighbor who looks distracted. The cousin who just went through a hard breakup and is talking every night to "someone" who is not a person.

They are not lazy or aimless. They are tired of performing for an audience that never claps loud enough or at all. And the algorithm has offered them an audience that does it on command. BUT It is making the loneliness worse.

For most of my life I assumed sharing my faith meant having the right answers ready. The clever counter to the hard question. The verse for the moment.

I think the moment we are actually in calls for something different.

It calls for presence that costs us something. Time we do not get back. Attention without an agenda. A friend across the table who is not optimizing for engagement and is not going anywhere.

That is a deeply Christian posture, and it has almost nothing to do with apologetics. It has to do with showing up.

When Jesus told a group of ordinary people, "I have called you friends" (John 15:15), he was not running a feedback loop. He was offering a verdict. I know you. I am for you. The answer about who you are is already in.

That is the offer underneath everything we get to share. Not a better mirror. A real one, held by someone who loves you.

Pick one person in your life who feels a little distant lately. Not a project. A real friend.

Send them a text that is not about anything in particular. Ask them how they actually are. Then, if they answer, do the harder thing. Put your phone face down and call them. Or invite them to coffee and ask the second question.

Be the audience that does not need anything from them: a friend.

Who is one person you could show up for this week in a way an algorithm never could?