My anecdotal experience is once kids get to around 5, they start really wanting to form consistent social relationships. Also, if the child has younger siblings, generally they crave some “alone time” but not to be by themselves, to be with other kids their own age without their siblings.
Basically what I’m trying to say is parents do what you’re talking about, but the older kids get, the more they need and it’s not as simple as you’d expect.
She also google meet expert now, she pins her friends to see what they are doing. It was quite amusing the first week where the teacher taught a bunch of 4 and 5 years old how to use google meet and the IPad with large print outs of all the icons.