I went to high school in Vancouver but left for college to Waterloo, which is on the other side of the continent. The only way I could have kept in touch with friends from high school who went to college in BC was through virtual mediums like Facebook, online gaming and voice chat.
Now that I'm back in Vancouver again, we naturally started hanging out physically again, but I'm fairly certain we would all have had a much more difficult time doing that had it not been for all the time we spent together virtually over these years.
So the standard reply to this is because we are fine tuning our meetups we are missing out on serendipity.
Travelers stay in touch with home so much they don't need to meet people.
We are connected on the bus and at a restaurant such that we are not pushed to meet people.
Then when we go to the fine matched event there is too much pressure to make friends.
I would say I'm the same, I'd need harder evidence that we are not getting lonelier.
Without a doubt we are changing, so it is troubling we don't know for sure if it's better or worse, I doubt such a big change is neutral.
But you need to look at this from different perspectives.
The very fact that people from around the world can meet so easily virtually today is in itself a value regardless of whether it's better to meet in person.
In other words, being able to meet virtually isn't about replacing actual physical visits it's about allowing you to meet a much larger group of people and perhaps find more likeminded people and at much greater distance.
So I am not sure I buy into the premise of this study.
I also am not so sure that I believe we are getting more lonely. I would need to see harder evidence than the typical qualitative studies that are done to determine this. Would love to see how they are actually getting to that conclusion.