Nah. My father and grandfather's generation had regular community and social groups to attend - usually very regularly. Lions Club, Rotary, Townswomen's Guilds, Women's Institutes, Working Men's clubs - often tied to the ship yard or other major works. Dozens of others, some tied more to place, church or community than others, but all roughly performing some combination of social and doing worthy works.

They were hooked into the fabric of society enough that they contributed to social care, elder care, welfare, special needs and a whole selection of other roles that modern government have placed on the individual. Spun as giving "choice", the intent was to remove that bedrock foundation.

The removal of that foundation was as much part of 80s monetarism/neoliberalism as deregulation or privatisation. We gained individualism and private everything, and lost all the community resources that glued those individuals together.

Someone inevitably mentions Bowling Alone in these threads: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone

My first suspicion upon reading this was that some writer or editor observed that they weren't getting together with friends as much as they used to and spun a story with some plausible theories and anecdotes out of it.

The real answer may be as simple as they got a bit older, people they know got busy with partners, family, kids, etc. and tend not to be available on random nights and weekends.

I'm willing to believe that there are meta-trends which have caused shifts in how and how much people socialize in addition to this but I'd need to be convinced.

No, I come from a country where having friends is not strange at any age. The US are weird and can't put my finger on it but I never felt so detached. I will definitely leave when I'm done working, I hate the lifestyle here, it's so hollow and boring.

The US is a big place. You would have a different experience in Georgia than you would in SF.

I lived in California and Michigan. In most of the ways that matter it's not that different.