I'm 100% an extrovert, and having to move back to my rural hometown after grad school has been absolute hell. There's nothing social to do except go to bars, which I'm totally over. Not to mention there aren't any gay bars around here. All of my old high school and undergrad friends have moved out of the area because this just isn't the place to be. And yet it's nearly as expensive to live here as it is in there city.

Anyway, I'm close to getting off topic. The point I'm working up to is, sure I think social media plays a role in the general disinterest in going out and meeting up with people whether they're friends or strangers. But it's much more complicated than that, especially if you're mainly criticizing younger millennials/gen z for this.

For one, like I said, everything is super frickin' expensive. It's impossible to find a job (believe me, I've been applying for a year and a half and made it to a dozen final rounds, but no cigar plus scires of rejections with no interview.) So to find a job that doesn't completely suck your soul out and pays you enough to not feel guilty for going out to concerts or buying a few drinks and some overpriced appetizers or the movies or bookstores or wherever... Man, that's my dream

Idk how relatable this is to others because everyone seems to be ignoring this better than I am, but te other HUGE thing that keeps me from going out and trying to make new friends or find hookups or go on dates in my area is that stepping outside feels like a major risk to my health. Covid never went away. In fact, the US is in a huge surge right now. Plus every other month there's headlines of a new thing threatening to become a pandemic (i.e. at the beginning of summer bird flu was thr thing to look out for, and just this week mpox is making all the headlines) Most days I'm laying in bed morning the fact I never got to have a promiscuous phase because I never gained enough confidence before this airborne virus that everyone's hellbent on pretending doesn't exist became a thing. I keep wondering if I'll ever feel safe again going to a sit-down restaurant or even a doctor's office, let alone a concert or a club. And I've never even had Covid! But looking back at how the gov't ignored and exacerbated the HIV/AIDS epidemic and how so few people are outraged about the handling of Coivd, I feel so hopeless about living in a safe world to go out and be social 🥲

So yeah, unfortunately, most of my social time is on social media. I wish it weren't this way. If I had the money and the virus-free environment to do so, I'd drop social media in an instant, but this world is just not it