After graduating highschool, I lost connection with all my old friends. I put in a reasonable amount of energy maintaining contact. However, I felt that this was not being reciprocated so I gradually gave up trying too.
After all, why should they or anyone waste energy maintaining a relationship over long distances? Most of us will probably never see each other again.
Isn't that weird?
Historically, the connections you made in childhood lasted for the rest of your life. Yet today, they do not outlast your teenage years.
The cause of this is a combination of modern capitalism (people moving around multiple times in their life for work, being unable to establish roots), modern parenting (the culture of evicting your son from the home as soon as he reaches 18), and to lesser extents: College and internet.
"Going to college" has, for decades, been effectively forced upon children by literally every authority figure they will ever encounter from their parents to their teachers. And being removed from the place you grew up for 4-6 years is certainly a factor in destroying the many, many great relationships that you built up over your teenage years. However, I would rank it lower than parenting and capitalism due to its ostensibly temporary state. If college were localized or a temporary place you went to and then returned to your home and your family, then it would not be as destructive.
Social media is similar.
I don't believe that this was intentional. But if it was, the elites are galaxy brains. This constantly uprooting and destroying relationships among the peasant class would be the most insidious plan ever devised by a ruling class. Not just uprooting people, but even splitting apart families and scattering them across the country. Do you live within easy driving distance of your cousins, aunts, and uncles? Probably not. Your family is broken into a dozen disconnected units who call each other up sometimes. You'd be much stronger and more important in your community if you stuck together.
But even this is being destroyed further through divorce. Now, even the small, isolated family units are being split up and scattered further.
Every last shred of networking and organization available to normal people is being destroyed. We unironically had more power as peasants in the middle ages than we do today. And we certainly had more friend.
80% of responses will either be people who only read the title, or an argument over someone using the word "based"