I spent an entire year living on my own, never inviting a single other person into my home and only entering the home of another person (save for immediate fami

I spent an entire year living on my own, never inviting a single other person into my home and only entering the home of another person (save for immediate family, during holiday) once. Having chat apps made that experience much more bearable and actually did lead to a handful of real-world, albeit mostly long-distance, friendships (in that I host them in town for one week out of the year and they host me for one week out of the year). At this point, I think chat apps can improve things in some ways for some people. But that year alone mostly just made me hungry for more real face-to-face bonding. Apart from the people who are well-enough off to travel, but poor enough to have no friends, I’m not sure any chat app really has a place in your social life unless creating real-world friendships is one of its primary goals and it’s designed to actually achieve that effectively.