I mean, most often I see my friends online, and they are likely equally or more interesting than my neighbors who I did not choose (but you never know, of course). It also takes less time, and the time is more convenient; if the only option to see my friends were a Saturday 6pm party, I would interact with my friends a whole lot less.
Ball games — well, at least they exercise the body. For that, I can go to a park.
I'm not saying that having online friends is bad, but being friends with your neighbors is a mutually beneficial. Pretty much for the same reasons living in a society is beneficial to all players.
You should really have both.
If I couldn’t spend time shooting the breeze with my actual friends on Discord, maybe I’d be more inclined to spend time with my neighbors. Even if we didn’t really connect a deep level, at least we could converse for a few hours.
I have no interest in that though. I have no need for that kind of interaction. If I want to be social, I can contact people that I feel a deep connection to at any time.
Like Steve Jobs creating a corporate building layout that forced random and disparate people to bump into each other in order to have random conversations and create innovation, friendships of convenience due to geographical realities also enabled for innovation, diversity of thought, and an interesting sense of community in its own way.
My 2 cents
I don't know how to better describe why, other than mentioning Stewart Lee's standup-comedy "Content Provider" sums it up brutally. it is a meta comedy about making comedy content but also about out modern connected life compared to our grandparents.
note: It's not something you'd watch while doing something else. Miss 1 minute and you won't get a 15 minute long bit 20 minutes later. It gets more brilliant with repetitive viewing.
It's pretty widely argued now that we are losing empathy for people who are not just like us because of this.