1. time spent in front of screen means you aren't in a face to face interaction with someone, but the same can be said of books. When many people still connected to a local BBS it was another way to get to know people around you and meetups were common.

2 & 6 & 7. access to airlines (and travel in general) was a net positive for meeting new people. Suddenly people could meet and get to know far more people than the handful of folks in the town they grew up in. Travel is probably on the best ways to meet new people and gain relationships and being able to pack up and move to where your new friends/love interests are is a good thing while communication tech lets you keep in touch with people who are in different cities/states/countries and maintain those relationships

3 & 4. People have to depend more on others to do their farming for them, but if you're working the fields you can't be out meeting real people face to face either. You're much more likely to have a social encounter at a grocery store than a grain silo. the hours you aren't spending growing your own food means you have more time to be with the people you love

5. independence is good and learning new skills means going out to new places to practice them or for supplies and equipment where you can meet other people with similar interests. It's the parasocial aspect of youtube that's most harmful.

Hmm so it seems technology is empowering the individual to the level of killing society? I mean it in the sense that we came to this development over millennia of social fueled evolution, and now technology allows us to get rid of all this "legacy". I'm only thinking loud here, but it seems conservatism should have a better target with this, or at least more close to reality, instead of only attacking the consequences with magical thinking.

Thanks for your replies. I understand the worldview. We differ on a few points of view.

Large scale farming releases hands for more specialization. Specialization leads to interdependence and (in my naïveté) peace. ‘We’ did get a very large part of the world out of poverty. That was part of my optimism. And I thought we would reach peak oil faster and go for sustainable faster (batteries are still the major future potential upside for me).

Perhaps in a ‘might have been’-scenario 9/11 and the end of the end of history (Fukuyama), plus the antisocial tech are the turning points. Haven’t thought that shift from techno optimism to political, social and cultural negativity (in me, but it seems a trend as well) through enough. The whole bitcoin shebang, the return of the 80s American Psycho capitalism and consumerism, the wars just rub me the wrong way. I might be turning hippie in my second half of life.

As a child of the 80s I’ve never felt technology reducing social interaction. But that might have been a temporal sweet spot. Massive amounts of screen time, massive amounts of outside time (friends, sports).