I've been dating someone online for the last two months and I agree there is something missing, perhaps something chemical, that can't be transmitted over a screen and a speaker. But your viewpoint seems a bit too myopic. Humans are exceptional at adapting, and our brains are brilliant at filling in the blanks. I have no doubt that people can have deep and meaningful interpersonal communication without being face to face. I know I have many times, and I have certainly experienced intense emotion with people remotely, and built trust, and felt my social needs sated (if not my physical needs, specifically sex).
Maybe reconsider the idea that it is a problematic simulation, because it's really no more a simulation that how our brains translate vibrations and light waves into sounds and pictures in the first place. If video chat is an illusion, then so is face to face communication, as neither one is an unfiltered experience. The filter of standing two feet from someone is only marginally different than the filter of a video chat. The real filter, the one doing the heavy lifting in both cases, is our brains translating the raw data of the physical world into our lived experience.
> Humans are exceptional at adapting, and our brains are brilliant at filling in the blanks
This is exactly the problem. Our adaptive machinery can adapt to the wrong stimulus and get stuck in that. This is called "reciprocal narrowing" and is the mechanism that sustains addiction. I'm not saying videochat is necessarily the wrong stimulus or has an addictive potential, but being able to adapt doesn't mean it is the right thing for us in the long term.
> felt my social needs sated (if not my physical needs, specifically sex). ... because it's really no more a simulation that how our brains translate vibrations and light waves into sounds and pictures in the first place
This sounds like a reductionistic, cartesian model of what is going on. It assumes something like "Stimulus gets in through my senses, interpreted through my consciousness in my mind and I get what I need" or "my relational needs and my physical needs are mutually separable". Cognitive science experiments show us existence of phenomena like "blindsight", in which there is stimulus processing without possibility of conscious awareness; "implicit learning", in which there is learning without conscious awareness. In other words, our conscious awareness of what is going in is not necessarily a good indicator of what is actually going on, nor if our long term needs being actually met. We don't know if we can delineate relational and physical needs (here by physical I mean physical presence, not necessarily tactile stimulus) or to what extent we can reduce relationality to vibrations and light waves going through our auditory and visual systems.
I want to make it clear, I am not saying videochat is bad, I've spent my whole week videochatting and feel like I've met certain relational needs. But it is nonetheless a simulation, and I actually can feel tired and lonely even after a day full of videochat. I don't intend to equate both, and I want to be careful not to displace the real thing with its simulation when the opportunity arises to be present in person. Just like I need to be careful about diet coke and hyperpalatable fast food not confusing the hell out of me to the point of replacing real, long-term sustainable nutrition.
Maybe reconsider the idea that it is a problematic simulation, because it's really no more a simulation that how our brains translate vibrations and light waves into sounds and pictures in the first place. If video chat is an illusion, then so is face to face communication, as neither one is an unfiltered experience. The filter of standing two feet from someone is only marginally different than the filter of a video chat. The real filter, the one doing the heavy lifting in both cases, is our brains translating the raw data of the physical world into our lived experience.