Well one point is that information exchanged through a screen is always mediated (in contrast to the physical world). Screens have a form factor, screens usually have a third party organising the content that is being exchanged. Screens are flat surfaces. You operate through screens in a sort of purely functional input-output rather than spontaneous way.

So the screen being a technological and commercial artifact, imposes a lot of rules on how we interact through it, sort of like an API. And that's noteworthy compared to the time before we were interacting through screens.

Every medium of interaction, even human to human has rules and limitations on the interaction.

In-person human to human interaction also has some significant negatives. It's very low bandwidth as information must be transmitted mostly via voice which is lossy and prone to misinterpretation on either end. Attempts to terminate interactions early may have negative effects on future ability open an interaction with that individual. The in-person protocol also forces you to transmit visual sidechannel information, including biometric details. Other individuals can and will judge you throughout the interaction based on these biometric details.

We have an amazingly beautiful world, from lush forests to deep blue oceans, with billions of wonderful humans, yet we choose to spend the vast majority of time on a virtual world we’ve created.

That’s how you’ve interpreted the light that has bounced onto your retina.

Ultimately we all live in the virtual worlds we create in our minds through interpreting our senses, it’s not immediately obvious to me why I should generally prefer one over the other.

Technically, that virtual world is still part of this world. Wonderful humans created those virtual worlds where you can probably find more wonderful humans.