More time alone has definitely reduced my stress load, but I've noticed it seems to amplify tendencies towards depression and anxiety.
This touches on a topic I often struggle with -- the advice to push yourself out of your comfort zone. At least with social anxiety and social ineptitude, my results seem to indicate that pushing myself results in a huge spike in stress, with maybe a tiny uptick in social savvy, whereas isolation drastically reduces that stress, but with no headway on becoming less socially awkward. The tradeoff seems very lop-sided (if becoming a social butterfly requires swallowing that much stress, I'm not sure it is worth it).
I'm starting to think the "push yourself" is a piece of advice which seems universally applicable at first glance, but upon closer inspection you find it doesn't always fit.
Personally, I'm a micro-social-er. I joke with my son (and now, girlfriend) that we have an empty restaurant habit. I see and interact with people in my (admittedly) pretty regimented lifestyle (gym 1 or gym 2, daily trips to grocery stores 'cause i cook most of my foods, etc), movies alone, etc.
I find socializing to be kind of like carbs... they're free and plentiful in the world. You can usually find someone to do something sometime in the next two weeks.
Where people seem to fall apart on this is when they get a sense, on a Thursday, that they NEED to socialize the next day and can't lock in a participant. But that seems like poor planning more than, "I've been abandoned".