[SecretDreams]

Do you actually want to make friendships/connections? If so, the park is probably not the play.

Identify your hobbies/interests and figure out which ones have budding local groups. E.g. sports, bird watching, hiking, camping, volunteering, etc.

It takes a ton of energy to form and grow new friendships, but once you pass the critical phase, it's much easier to keep them.

I don't think what we're seeing is late stage individualism. It's more like forced/bred isolationism invoked by modern technology. Newer gens are more trapped since they were bred to be on a screen. It's pretty evil, albeit unintentionally (by their parents, at least). Tech giants absolutely love it.

[ddr123]

This sounds the most legit to me out of any comment so far. I think there's a tendency to want to either 1.) innovate our way out of this with a novel solution, or 2.) be really passive like "this happening to me and it's hopeless." I think the way out is less profound, less complicated, and ultimately more fulfilling and efficacious than people imagine. Virtually everyone who is researching/writing in the friendship space talks about finding common interest groups, regularly occurring interactions, consistent effort (supposedly 200 hours to form a close friend), candid conversations to strengthen commitment, etc. Honestly, it's all the same stuff that a romantic relationships requires, just with a couple significant variations ;)

A helpful corollary (from writer Shasta Nelson author of "Frientimacy") is that we all understand that working out requires some amount of pain and struggle (also fun, enjoyment, accomplishment, etc...) in order to get a great bod. We would do well to expect the same experience in friendship. It's not a question of access to people, like Facebook, or even Bumble BFF would have us believe. Again from Shasta "We don't need better friends, we need better friendships."