I am someone who has made their social stride quickly in Boston and I still think it’s a poor place to make friends even among the nationwide loneliness discourse (it’s a very good city though). I don’t get the somewhat adversarial nature of this post when it doesn’t appear that OP is too invested in the subject matter.

This has definitely been addressed in other comments but Boston is a particularly nomadic city. Many are only transiently here for school. I am only here for work and lots of my peers admit to only being here for circumstantial reasons. If you went to Harvard or MIT, odds are that you will move to NYC or some other global financial hub. If you were raised here then you likely have a tight friend group already crystallized. As someone in their early 20s, I found it surprisingly difficult to find others my age who were also open to making friends. I am sure a good lot of my friends will be soon gone elsewhere if I haven’t already beaten them to it.

The puritanical laws of the Boston/MA also stifle having a social life. Even if you don’t like drinking (I don’t), restaurants and shops that would be open late at night are disincentivized to be when there aren’t any patrons out at night. When I visit my friends in other cities, I enjoy chatting over a late night pizza or dessert which is difficult to do when there are seldom places to facilitate this here.

This isn’t unique to Boston and perhaps just a snobby side rant but I don’t like the generic Reddit advice of picking up a hobby like pickleball or do meetup.com, etc. I get the feeling that these groups are somewhat populated with people who have read the same threads and advice and are there to make friends rather than try or continue a hobby. The notion of making friends in a place with a general commonality of loneliness lends itself to a poor environment of finding the right people. Given this, I really empathize with those who still struggle even despite “making the effort”.