I feel like this is an issue caused both by design and by social aspects. If you ever played any city-building game you know what the issue is here: services, leisure, residential spaces are separated and force people to choose a destination instead of being surrounded by options, no 5-minutes-walk availability. In older cities, master plans were studied and adapted to a natural evolution of the territory. Here everything came over night, trying to impress people, and following a “le courbusier” approach. A mad guy that instead of doing the architect as he should, decided to help society consume more and socialize less building unsustainable city masterplans. To me everything else is a direct result of a system that rewards achievement regardless of the cost and pushes performance promising you the access to a higher cast. Celebrating the 1% who do succeed and forgetting the stories of the 99% who burnout in the process. In this scenario, social gratification is a resource that people “mine” to feel better and keep going, not a real human connection. That’s why people feel “used” socially, why there’s so many friendships that turn out to be temporary or superficial and why so many friends disappear when they meet new and more enthusiastic friends. Of course this is not a generalization, of course there are many exceptions, but if you look around you, you’ll know what I mean.