That question felt abstract until I came across new research co-led by Newcastle University that struck a chord. The study found that many lonely people would actually rather deal with a robot than another human in everyday situations such as a hotel check-in, a shop, a restaurant. Not because they dislike people, but because robots offer something different, an interaction without pressure, and without the vulnerability that human contact can sometimes carry.  “Lonely customers with a reduced need for interaction with other humans are more likely to use service robots as a means of avoiding human contact and conserving emotional resources,” explains the researcher Dr Qionglei Yu. In other words, sometimes we want the function without the feelings. But is that really what we want our future to look like? 

The Age Assumption 

This is where age often creeps into the conversation. Too quickly, robots are framed as a solution ‘for older people’. The idea that ageing automatically means loneliness or social decline is as stubborn as it is false and yet it still drives much of the debate about ‘robotic companions.’ 

Loneliness is not confined to later life. In fact, 16–29 year olds report the highest levels of loneliness in the UK, according to the Office for National Statistics (2025). Loneliness is a global issue that cuts across generations. It’s less about chronological age and more about circumstance, confidence, and the vulnerability that comes with being seen. 

Technology adds another layer to this story. A 2024 study in BMC Psychology found that for shy young adults, social media use actually increased loneliness, while for older adults it sometimes reduced it. The tools are the same, but the impact differs. 

And then came the pandemic, a moment when people of all ages re-evaluated their relationship with technology. Research showed that many became more open to social robots as companions. For younger people, too, robots offered something appealing: a safe, controllable way to ease isolation without the risk of rejection. 

If loneliness can shape how we use technology at any age, it leaves us with a bigger question: are these tools helping us move closer to each other, or quietly making the gap wider? 

A Paradox of Connection

Here lies the paradox; when we most need one another, loneliness makes reaching out harder. We retreat, conserving emotional energy and choosing the path of least resistance. Increasingly, that path may not lead us to people at all, but to robots. 

Thinking of Ishiguro’s Klara, the Artificial Friend, she is no perfect companion, yet she is steady. She turns up and you can rely on her. At times she even seems to care more than the humans around her, perhaps because she is programmed to be straightforward, while we humans are tangled and messy. It is as though we are losing the patience to manage one another’s complexities.  Will we reach for the comfort of machines that never disappoint, that never forget, that can know so much about us. but, as Ishiguro’s Klara reminds us, never quite know us?

The Real Question 

Perhaps the real question is not simply whether robots can or should replace friends. It’s what our openness to robotic companions reveals about us: how vulnerable it feels to be truly seen by another human, and how easily technology can offer a protective shell and a way to live without the risk of rejection. 

But can withdrawing into that shell ever answer one of the most urgent social determinants of health? The World Health Organization reminds us that loneliness contributes to more than 100 deaths every hour worldwide. That’s over 870,000 lives lost each year. 

As This Curious Life, alongside NICA + Voice, steps into a global conversation on friendship and loneliness, these are the questions we must keep at the centre. Technology may soothe, but on its own it cannot substitute. The real opportunity is to design tools that don’t shield us from the risk of connection, but help us lean into it, that make us braver, more open, and more capable of being together. 

And for innovators, the challenge is not to take the easy route, building companions that protect us from risk, but to design technologies that strengthen our courage to connect. 

Maybe what we long for is not a perfect friend at all, but the chance to be imperfect together.