27/07/2025

ON SUNDAY JULY 27, 2025 theSunday Special IV

How pets keep us human in a hyper-digital world

As our screen time rises and real life gets blurrier, be one of the last honest things we have I T’S 2025. Your screen time has increased by 23% this week. You’ve reviews and a friend’s dog’s birthday party – all before breakfast. You’ve BY SIMON VELLA ence and zero interest in your phone’s battery percentage. Y a Zoom call before asking for a walk. Your cat doesn’t care about your unread emails when it wants to nap across your room demands you look away from your screen and into something bubbling, real and alive. It’s not glamorous. But it’s grounding.

opened six apps before brushing your teeth and replied to a work email from the toilet. Somewhere along the way, real life started to blur with pixels. And you’re not alone. In a world where we now spend more time with screens than with people, our pets are quietly drawing us back to some thing real. They don’t care for algorithms live fully in the here and now – just by being themselves, they remind us how to be ourselves, too. The more we curate our lives, the more we seem to unravel. We’ve grown used to carefully worded captions, perfectly timed emojis and conversations that exist entirely in blue ticks. But beneath the hyper-connectivity, many of us – espe cially in fast-paced, always-on cities like KL – are quietly exhausted. Mental health data backs up what people have been whispering for years. More young Malaysians report anxiety, more parents feel disconnected from their children and many workers feel like they’re performing even after they’ve clocked out. It’s not just a matter of stress anymore – it’s a disconnection from the physical, tangible world. Then, like a glitch in the system, your pet comes in. A creature of instinct, pres

Your dog doesn’t ping you, but they still notify you in the ways that matter.

hashtags at all. They don’t buzz in your pocket or slide into your DMs, but they still notify you. A slow wag that says, “I missed you.” A paw on your leg when you’re spiralling. A long blink from across the room that says, “We’re okay.” In a world screaming for your attention, pets simply invite it. Presence over productivity Here’s the irony. The most wholesome and emotionally satisfying content on the internet right now is pet content. We love it. We share it. We collectively sob at videos of dogs reunited with owners, kittens playing with shadows and birds saying the weirdest things. These tiny, unscripted moments cut through the noise because they feel like truth. But watching a dog on TikTok isn’t the same as sitting with one in real life. A video might warm your heart, but it won’t nudge your hand for a walk or curl into your side when the world gets heavy.

They don’t rush, judge or scroll and somehow, they help us feel human again.”