While valid, this argument can only apply in a different information reality than our current world.

The pace of interaction and information has simply overwhelmed the ability of human one on one interaction. Most of our actions are with a mobile phone near us, meaning that the social sphere is directly with us and only a twitter/FB/Reddit/HN glance away.

Doesn't even help that the sites are designed to be competitively addictive on top of it.

IF that is the case - no matter how much you listen to someone, a few seconds after they return to their phone they are part of the new outrage cycle.

Do note that the whole thing above is doable with cable television as well. IF your uncle goes back home to listen to X TV channel day in and day out, your one on one interaction is going to only have a tiny impact.

The saddest part of what tech has created is a faster pace of communication that is orienting itself inimically to slower one on one human interaction.

Even this para above is built with the idea that parts of it will be broken off by people who read it and then reused later on. It's not a conversation with just the person I am responding to, but to everyone else reading it.

Of course, some people can't be reasoned with and others will just go off the handle because they're crazy. There's no point in being nice to those, but people forget about all the others that are not far gone and we could help them to understand. That's never going to happen if we start every sentence by calling them idiots right off the bat.

This misses an important fact: not everyone is acting in good faith and what should have been a discussion on public health policy has been turned into a political football.

Good on you if you can help people who are struggling, but recognize that when people push back against the lockdown there are often ideological factors in play.