I'm about to be 41 and likewise very distinctly remember a time when cell phones were a vehicle for organizing the evening or weekend's plans, quickly making a connection with someone you met ("let me get your number"), whatever, buying weed or something. The point was to make friends, get laid, network without calling it that. The idea was that some of those random people would become your crew of friends, one of those girls would become your wife, and you'd end up settled down to kick off the next generation. And I know some people who did end up settled dowm...but not that many, not like the generation right before mine. Kind of hit or miss in my cohort.

Near as I can tell that was still roughly the model on paper if less and less until COVID and lockdown and all that. Something snapped, you can see it walking down the street of any city you knew well before. People never came back outside with the same vigor.

I don't claim to understand the causal structure between all the various factors: the bleak economic prospects, the decline in institutions, the increasingly rapacious and cynical Big Tech cabal, there are a ton of factors.

But COVID before and after, that's when it collectively became too much to easily bounce back from.