Studies show that our ability to empathise has greatly diminished over the last 30 years. It’s due in part to the uptake of smartphones and social media – we’re all too busy thinking about ourselves. But while it might be part of the problem, could technology also be used to make us more empathetic?

Voice recognition tech is becoming increasingly advanced, leading more people to use it in their everyday lives; the virtual assistant market is set to be worth $3.07 billion by 2020, and Amazon expects to sell ten million Echo devices in 2017 alone. But do people really want to chat to their devices?

From live-streaming platforms to messenger apps, social media connects people with thousands of ‘friends’ on a daily basis. But while a scroll and a ‘like’ might satisfy some, Airtime is gearing up multi-party live video. Is this the return to intimacy that the connected generation is hungry for?

With seemingly little effort in a smiley or thumbs up sign, emojis might have once been dismissed as the lowest form of communication. But as more human interaction goes digital and eliminates nonverbal cues, they're becoming a powerful vessel for people’s feelings and personalities.