Sure, there’s some research out there that points to no. A recent study found that people had higher levels of depression and lower levels of relationship satisfaction if their partners checked their phones while they were supposed to be spending quality time together (a.k.a. “ phubbing ”). And it isn’t just partners who can feel brushed off — a 2014 study suggested that the mere presence of a cell phone or smartphone reduces the quality of IRL convos by diminishing the amount of empathy exchanged between friends. But couldn’t there be people for whom technology builds, rather than destroys, intimacy?I posed the question to Leora Trub, PhD, a psychology professor at Pace University who studies how technology affects relationships. She explained that it all comes down to how you use social media. "There’s some research out there suggesting that, with social media, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer," she said. "In other words, people with lots of friends have even more social gains, while those with fewer friends or social skills may experience the opposite."People who are doing well on the social front may benefit not because they lack social skills that allow them to forge deep connections in person, but because their lives are busy, she explained. “When you have no other connection with a good friend who’s living abroad, if you know about their life but don’t talk for two years, when you finally see them, it’s a much more connected experience,” she said.I like checking social media and finding out what my faraway friends are up to and I like sharing snapshots of my own life, knowing that my followers who are friends from grade school, a long-ago trip, or that year I volunteered with an education nonprofit will be able to keep track of me and maybe even “like” my updates. I’m sure there are degrees of narcissism there, but Trub’s research suggests that our social feeds aren’t just vanity projects. When she and her colleagues studied bloggers in 2014 , they found that people with an anxious attachment style — those who feel less confident and safe in their relationships — tended to reveal the most about themselves online. Why? Because they got an emotional reward from it.“One person talked about how she has a hard time regulating her affect when talking about intense things,” Trub said. “So in her life, she avoids talking about things that are going to upset her, because she doesn’t like how she sounds. When she’d get into fights with her husband and feel like she was gonna lose it, she’d actively not talk to him about it.” Instead, she’d head to her laptop, blog about it, and get support from commenters. Only then did she feel comfortable enough to go back to her husband and talk through the issue.