Workplaces are scrambling to redefine what humans do best in the AI Era. In this moment, we need people to think boldly and collaborate courageously. However, Americans are currently facing devastating levels of loneliness, anxiety, and disconnection. According to former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, loneliness now carries a mortality risk comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
While AI transforms everything from schools to boardrooms, we are ignoring the one human advantage no technology can replace: our capacity to connect.
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Across classrooms, workplaces, and online spaces, we see a troubling pattern of brilliant minds constrained by systems that leave people unseen and pitted against one another. Students arrive on campus carrying extraordinary talent alongside profound doubts about whether they belong. Workers collaborate across distances without the structures that help trust grow. Online, algorithms prioritize outrage rather than understanding, turning differences into divisions and disagreements into identity. The consequence is unmistakable: any system, whether a classroom or a social media platform, built on isolation will fail us.
More than 60% of young adults report persistent loneliness. Over half of American workers say their workplace lacks real community. Teen depression has nearly doubledover the last decade. Men face soaring rates of suicide, overdose, and isolation.
This isn’t just a socio-emotional crisis. It’s a talent crisis, an innovation crisis, and yes, a democracy crisis.
And in STEM, the field responsible for solving humanity’s hardest challenges, disconnection is slowing innovation and narrowing who participates in shaping a better future.
Connection sounds soft and is often treated as a “nice-to-have,” but in fact it is a competitive advantage. Teams with higher trust, psychological safety, and belonging consistently outperform those with more raw talent but less connection.
This is the power of connection: it rewrites what’s possible.
Yet today, many programs which have expanded opportunity and strengthened community are under pressure. In education, workplaces, and government, efforts designed to foster belonging—mentorship programs, community-building initiatives, equitable STEM pathways—are being scaled back, renamed, or removed. In some states, new regulations seek to limit or eliminate programs that were created to help students feel seen and supported. Even some Girls Who Code programs may now face regulatory uncertainty.
These changes reflect a broader pattern. When we reduce investment in connection—dismantling community programs, narrowing access, or reducing the structures that help people trust one another—the result is the same: more fragmentation, more doubt, and more people left to navigate challenges alone. Disconnection does not fuel progress. It only strengthens systems that benefit from keeping us apart.
So where do we go from here?
We need to redesign our systems for connection. That means treating emotional intelligence as expertise. Creating classrooms and workplaces that value collaboration as much as competition. Establishing real strategies for caring for people, teams, and ideas. Leading with empathy.
And it means asking a new question before we build anything, from a company to a curriculum to a piece of code: Does this strengthen our capacity to connect? If it does, keep going. If it doesn’t, start over.
Similar to how doctors take the Hippocratic Oath, “Do no harm,” technologists, engineers, and institutions need their own version to consider connection. Because today, harm shows up as isolated students, fractured communities, disengaged workers, and technologies that divide rather than unite.
If we are serious about rebuilding connection, we must act with the same rigor we bring to any major innovation. That means making five commitments: Fund connection; design for belonging, not just efficiency; measure social cohesion as seriously as productivity; audit algorithms for their impact on trust; and teach collaboration as a core competency in STEM and beyond.
These are not soft goals. They are choices and they are entirely within our power.
If we can engineer technologies that reshape the world, we can also engineer systems that strengthen the bonds between us. The future depends on us doing this work together.
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