How true is our judgment of another based on visual cues.
Artificial masks have a frozen expression which strips our visual assessment of another persons emotional voice.
Lacking facial cues makes us uncomfortable. We are missing too much information about another person to form an opinion so we are left with a slight feeling of fear.
From that moment of birth outside influences are guiding us to read and mimic facial expressions. We learn to read facial masks to communicate emotions of happiness, loving, sadness, annoyance, anger, fear and so on. For those of us with sight reading facial cues is the most developed of our 5 senses.
Social media visual/text (friendship) interactions add another layer of separation to personal interaction. Users create a marketed version of themselves and openly share the edited version of themselves. Most facial photos are pleasant and inviting, artificially edited so the fear factor is not prevalent, it is a bit like an interaction with a TV character.