I think it’s because we’ve “solved boredom”. Sometimes with heavy, hectic, stressful events that come one after the other, sometimes with passive media, or algorithmically generated media, or doomscrolling: shows, clips, or posts designed to engage or entertain, other times with little clicker, distraction-style games; all of it seems to just drain every last drop of dopamine anyone can muster until there’s no room for anyone to have volition of their own. It tends to put a damper on the amount of time and energy one has for more longer meaningful interactions, and you end up almost, but not quite, completely content to microdose human interaction with single-serving friends by making comments on posts like this one (or the various parasocial interactions with internet micro-celebrities, or much worse, hallucinating a meaningful conversation with a statistically probable paragraph generator like the ones in the post).