What if - dating apps are not the answer? We are irreversibly addicted to various forms of information consumption that keeps us isolated with our attention gl

What if - dating apps are not the answer? We are irreversibly addicted to various forms of information consumption that keeps us isolated with our attention glued to a screen. Pretend for a moment that you could live in a time pre-television. How would a 20 year old spend his/her time after work? From reading classic english literature - it seems like going out and socializing and interacting with other people was the norm (or, society of that era was often portrayed like this in their popular literature). Now, we can't go back to that era - However, for the people who choose to break out of this addiction, literally the only option out there is meetup.com That option isn't even a very good one. But a lot of people actively use that platform (myself included) despite several obvious flaws because there is nothing else like it out there. It's the most effective way to meet interesting people. My hypothesis is that there exists a market for an institution that serves as a meeting ground for socialization. A place where you would dress up to go to, a place where you would go to socialize with like minded people from similar demographics and a place that provides meaningful ways for strangers to share a long dialogue together. A place that isn't home and isn't work. A place where you can grow to know people really well over time. A place where it is socially acceptable to present a friend as "being single" in polite conversation to a group of people. I don't know what such a place would look like. In my head, I think of a library-coffee shop with a tennis court in the back yard - but that's probably not it. My point is - dating apps try to solve an absence of IRL human connections with the screentime addiction that caused the isolation in the first place. The answer should probably be some brick-and-mortar business that serves a community around it. If dating apps really were the answer, why not go all the way and build an app that permanently matches up two people as their virtual spouse - you only interact with each other by updating your digital avatar and sending text messages. Think of an anime girl/guy on your phone that you can interact with - but that person maps to a real human somewhere in the world. You can pretend-love each other all you want till you decide you actually want to go and meet real people in the real world.