Digital communication can never replace in person, face-to-face, contact in building relationships – personal and professional. As a study by Harvard Business Review found, team performance went up 50% when teams socialized more and limited email for more operational only issues. But whether loneliness leads people to the Internet, or the internet to loneliness, it seems that many of us turn to the internet to avoid simply being with ourselves. As Sherri Turkle author of Alone Together wrote, until we learn how to be okay with solitude, we are not going to be able to connect deeply with others. Social networking provides a means of escaping confronting aspects of ourselves and our lives we wish were different, better, more glamorous and less mundane. It’s an all too convenient tool for avoiding sometimes harsh realities and playing pretend (to ourselves and others) with our life. Online websites promise avatars that will allow us to love our bodies, love our lives, and find the true romance we dream of. But at what cost to the real life (marriage, body, friendships) we have to face when we close our computer down? Even the most brilliant and mesmerizing avatars cannot compensate for what is missing in real life.