That's a good question. I can try to answer in the space this input box provides but probably won't capture all of it.
In German, there is a word, gemütlichkeit, with no precise English translation but which can be approximated as "the coziness and lack of anxiousness you feel among people you love and trust". There is simply no way to achieve that as a social animal except in developing deep friendships.
In particular, I think there is immense value in knowing and being known, concisely, "intimacy". Not having to hide any part of yourself, and being every bit of you that you can be, can be hard in settings where you don't have a persistent support network of close friends who are willing and able to accept you as you are (feelings which you would reciprocate, because you love those people). Feeling accepted by your community is the only antidote to loneliness.
Building a network like that takes a lot of time and a certain amount of effort and good fortune. I would be dreading that effort necessary to build new connections from scratch to feel welcome in the communities I wish to be a part of. Keeping up online really doesn't achieve that kind of intimacy unless you're a certain kind of person who can easily bounce between many different social settings/relationships and can get by with a certain shallowness in the "how've you been lately" arena. And flying back and forth all the time goes against my ethics with respect to carbon emissions, not to mention the expense and routine hassle of it all.
In German, there is a word, gemütlichkeit, with no precise English translation but which can be approximated as "the coziness and lack of anxiousness you feel among people you love and trust". There is simply no way to achieve that as a social animal except in developing deep friendships.
In particular, I think there is immense value in knowing and being known, concisely, "intimacy". Not having to hide any part of yourself, and being every bit of you that you can be, can be hard in settings where you don't have a persistent support network of close friends who are willing and able to accept you as you are (feelings which you would reciprocate, because you love those people). Feeling accepted by your community is the only antidote to loneliness.
Building a network like that takes a lot of time and a certain amount of effort and good fortune. I would be dreading that effort necessary to build new connections from scratch to feel welcome in the communities I wish to be a part of. Keeping up online really doesn't achieve that kind of intimacy unless you're a certain kind of person who can easily bounce between many different social settings/relationships and can get by with a certain shallowness in the "how've you been lately" arena. And flying back and forth all the time goes against my ethics with respect to carbon emissions, not to mention the expense and routine hassle of it all.