Changes in technology use and adult attachment orientation from 2002 to 2012

• We have lived in an age of ever-increasing connection this past decade.
• Technology may have increased the perceived availability of close others.
• Attachment anxiety decreased from 2002 to 2012, particularly among young adults.
• Anxiety was negatively associated with higher rates of technology usage.
• These findings are consistent with the proximity–enhancing effects of technology.

We have lived in an age of ever-increasing connection this past decade. Although technology and online social networking may not have increased psychological closeness, as some researchers suggest, it may have increased the perceived availability of other people in our social networks. The current study measures changes in comfort with closeness (attachment avoidance) and perceived availability of others (attachment anxiety) in a large Internet sample (N = 123,554) from 2002 to 2012. Attachment anxiety decreased from 2002 to 2012 and attachment avoidance exhibited no changes over the same time period. Further, these decreases were primarily driven by younger adults, presumably due to their heavy technology use. Attachment anxiety was negatively associated with mobile phone subscription rates and the number of Facebook users over this time period. Results from the current study suggest that the perceived availability of others has been increasing over time—perhaps because technology has increased the accessibility of close others.