TITLE:
Reconstructing Interpersonal Ethics in the Digital Urban Society: A Perspective on the “Familiar Strangers” Phenomenon
AUTHORS:
Zihao Jiang, Haixu Yu
KEYWORDS:
Digital Urban Society, Familiar Strangers, Interpersonal Ethics
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.14 No.8,
August
4,
2026
ABSTRACT: With the rapid development of information technology, urban interpersonal interactions have gradually shifted from face-to-face engagement to virtual interactions mediated by digital media. In this context, “familiar strangers” are becoming increasingly common in digital urban society. These relationships are often marked by superficial and fragmented interactions, making it difficult to form stable emotional bonds and ethical commitments. Through normative ethical and comparative analysis, this paper examines the underlying logic of this phenomenon from four dimensions, namely virtue ethics, the structure of modernity, traditional Chinese ethics, and the ethics of science and technology. First, the speed of information transmission and the expansion of communication do not necessarily improve the quality of interpersonal relationships. Rather, platformization and the logic of capital have contributed to the instrumentalization and superficiality of interpersonal relations, as well as the erosion of trust. Second, the decline of situational communities has weakened the mechanisms through which virtuous friendships are cultivated, thereby reducing the ethical role of friendship in interpersonal life. Third, the modern transformation of Confucian and Daoist thought can provide a framework and paradigm for rebuilding deeper social connections. Fourth, a technology ethics grounded in “restrictive design,” understood as design that limits addictive, manipulative, or excessively immersive platform mechanisms, and “protection of subjectivity,” understood as the preservation of users’ agency, attention, and capacity for self-direction, can guide platform operators to observe “people-centered” ethical constraints. Based on these discussions, this paper proposes a path for reconstructing interpersonal ethical governance in digital urban society.