Not sure why others are downvoting, this is really great advice for people who have social anxiety - low risk, real enough to be meaningful, usually narrowly focused on a shared interest, prepares you for the real thing. Downvote me as well if you like, but I’d be curious why people don’t agree
It's not at all clear to me that it does prepare you for the real thing. I think one could very plausibly argue the opposite: it's so massively easy-mode that it gets you used to social interactions being easy and low-friction, and through habit it raises the barrier to practising the real thing.
Agree, I think a simpler example of how this happens is remembering names. Everybody had zoom names on screen so had "easy mode" doing this for over a year, and most people I've talked to had some difficulty remembering names since.