[johnnyanmac]

>I guess my tangent meant to point at the need for both general, or specialized, "social hubs", where regularly appearing people silently agree to, eventually, getting talked to.

Those are called "3rd places". Those have sadly been on the decline for the past 30 years.

It's easy to point to phones as the problem, but few can point to proper solutions. Because they don't exist in the same way the previous generations had it.