This advice is generic and sanctimonious. Spending time on social media on your phone leads nowhere, but so does shallow socializing in person. Thanks to the fr

This advice is generic and sanctimonious. Spending time on social media on your phone leads nowhere, but so does shallow socializing in person. Thanks to the free market, we now also have a wealth of resources to fritter away time "socially." I spent two years in a shared house saying yes to all the board game nights. There are board game groups on Meetup and board game groups at startups. Board game nights are a dead end. They offer a structured and safe way to spend time around others without needing to open up or be vulnerable. You can spend years playing board games with someone and have no idea where you stand with them. (Believe me, I've done it!) You know how to really build a close-knit circle fast? Join a church. Yes, there's a cost. You have to accept Jesus and let him dominate your day-to-day thoughts, judgments, and sensibilities. Jesus will dictate who you feel good hanging out with and what you should and shouldn't do, how you should think and what you should say. And people will reach out to you, and open themselves up, and be intimate and vulnerable, and you will grow into a community of mutual support together in the church. Or go to college, if you haven't yet. Live a student's meager life in a tiny room. Share a shitty house with five roommates. Breathe the same air. Depend on each other. Get a job as a retail slave or fast food employee with other people your age. Share the constant anxiety of running out of money for the basics of life. Join the armed forces. Live in an artists' commune. Get involved with polyamory. But for the love of god, don't believe that you can eat-pray-love your way to a rich social life by putting down your phone and smiling at people more in the supermarket checkout line.