Digital life makes contact easy, but not all contact is equal. A message thread, a short video, and a face-to-face conversation use different layers of attention.
Real social time is expensive because it requires presence. It competes poorly against apps that are available instantly and never need the user's full attention.
That is why social contracts should be explicit. A 30-minute family block or a deliberate conversation may look ordinary, but it protects one of the most easily displaced parts of daily life.
Treating social time as a contract does not make it transactional. It makes it visible in a system where invisible values are often the first to be lost.