From midnight group chats to Friday video calls and memes that double as welfare checks, people are finding new ways to remain present in one another’s lives. But as we grow up on each other’s screens, is digital closeness really enough?

The majority of the people I care about now communicate with me by phone. My sister is abroad. My closest friends live in three different countries. Every evening, a call goes from Dhaka to Jeddah, where my grandmother and uncle speak simultaneously, sit in the same chair, and ask the same three questions: “Have you eaten? How are things going at work? When are you coming? He provides the same answers. She hangs up and remains silent for a while.”

We all do a variation of this. What keeps us together is a lively group chat. Someone sends a meme at midnight, someone responds at dawn, and by the time I check in the morning, I've got 40 messages to read like a small newspaper.

I know who is stressed, who has got a haircut, and who is fighting with their flatmate. I have seen apartments I will never go to and met people I will never sit with. Most days, that feels like enough. Some days it does not, so I close the app and do something else, trying not to think about why.

My mother engages in her own conversation with her cousins. They are close enough to visit each other's homes, but they rarely do so. Instead, they send three-minute voice notes that say the same thing as a thirty-second message at the door. Technically, they are conversing more now than when they visited. I mentioned it to her. She shrugged. "We are all busy," she said, which is correct but not the real reason.

Aman, a friend of mine, has a different idea.

His brother left for Australia last year, and they do not talk or text often. They send each other Instagram reels. There is no caption, comment, or conversation, only the reel.

"If he sends one and I do not respond, he will message me to see if I am okay," Aman explained. "That is how we check in on each other now. Through memes." He said it like it was funny. Then he went quiet for a second and added, "It works, actually." I believed him. I also noticed the pause. I notice it in myself too when someone asks me the same question.

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Shihab, a friend of mine who lives in Dhaka away from family, video-calls his mother every Friday. He props the phone on the kitchen counter, and they cook at the same time, in different cities, not saying much.

He tells me it was the closest thing to being home. I thought that was beautiful and also sad, and he would probably disagree with the second part.

Everyone I talk to has found a way to carry the people they love through a phone. Everyone has a ritual, a chat that stands in for a room. And everyone will tell you it is fine. Good, even. We are lucky to have it.

They are right. We are lucky. My grandmother would have had nothing 50 years ago. No evening call, no familiar voice, just letters that took weeks. I know this. I asked her once if the calls helped. She looked at me like the question made no sense. "He is my son," she said. And then she went quiet again, the way she always does, the look of someone who got exactly what was available and is not going to complain about it.

I am not going to complain about it either. None of us is. We just texted, and it is fine. If you asked me whether it is enough, I would probably say yes and mean almost.