[Smaug123]

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.

[collegeburner]

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.