Communication
with a smartphone is disembodied
and without a gaze.
Community has a bodily dimension.
Because of its lack of corporeality,
digital communication weakens community.
The gaze stabilizes community.
Digitization makes the other as gaze disappear.

The absence of the gaze is partly responsible
for the loss of empathy in the digital age.
When a parent stares at a smartphone, the infant is deprived
of the gaze.

The gaze of the mother in particular,
provides an infant with stability, self-affirmation and community.
The gaze builds primordial trust.
Without the gaze,
a disturbed relationship to self and others develops.

-excerpt, Non-things by Byung-chul han, p. 21

At what cost — this device, a wizardry of technique, a portal to an infinitude of images from around the world, but without the substance of face to face gaze? 

Am I alone to inwardly shudder? 

Without substance are we not becoming —  gossamer, diaphanous, evanescent?  Another way of putting it: Are we becoming “see-through” people?