I see my generation has no value of 'friendship'; friendship as a serious commitment which has benefits and responsibilities. People want a convenient way to not feel too lonely, without giving up an ounce of personal convenience.
I've begun to have a conversation with new people I meet at the first or second meeting, beginning with "what does friendship mean?". Then you can set your expectations at the beginning rather than setting yourself up for disappointment. This will also scare away people who don't want a commitment, so prepare for that.
Aside: I recently noted that Germans seem to have a real value of friendship. I have two german friends who check-in, and plan things on a regular basis, and clearly have a place in their brain reserved for considering how they can build their friendships, and I've heard the same anecdote often. I'm from Quebec originally, and there also saw the huge gap between anglo relationships and francophone ones (francos keep in touch).
I've made friends through shared experiences and often these were based around online communities. For many years I raced mountain bikes, putting a face to a forum username up and down the country every weekend.
I've experienced wild nights partying with strangers from Reddit; hosted people around the world via Couchsurfing (and still remain in frequent contact with many); even made friends through mentoring at a coding group.
What evidence you have for that claim?
I've met several friends through Meetup. I'm sure there are other apps that help as well.
Perhaps you are not using apps correctly for your location and context, or are not served by them well there.
Relationships can easily be initiated with a mutual interest in meeting someone to sleep with. Both parties accept there is an undiscussed mutual goal and a powerful motivational factor of getting laid, and if it doesnt work, then no worries. Additionally, people are FAR more relaxed on mutual comparability in this area. Liking coffee can be enough of a jump start, particularly if you are younger.
Friendships have far more prequesites and far less motivation. They also seem to flourish sometimes in direct opposition to external interests and personality. I dont really want many IT guys as my friend, so mutual interests isn't going to hack it. (No pun intended)
It's called going to the pub mate. Not sitting playing with your fondle slab.
......Though being British, this usually involves us all going for a piss-up at some point or other. (Typical example: what's the point in going mountain bike riding if you don't all cycle past a pub on the way home?)
Nice point about being British. Apparently, I only have that when I'm skiing :P
I can sit in 1,000 pubs for 1,000 hours and not even talk to someone, let alone make a friend.
For some of us, it's just not that easy. The few friends I do have, I somehow acquired 20 years ago, and for some reason they've not got bored of me yet.
People often make friends with people that they work with, or play sports or games with, or do hobbies with, or take classes with, take shared transport with, or some other shared, repeated experience.
Dating services work, which is sort of similar, but a friendship service would be kind of weird. If you want to make friends, join a sports organization, take a class, meet with hobby groups, etc. Maybe your local parks organization has some classes that are more of fun activities to do. You can do online discussion groups etc, too. I made plenty of friends on IRC, and I still talk to a few of them.
They're tiny data points, but I don't think there's a problem with the apps in that respect. You can still find like minded people online and over time form friendships - used to be the way to do it was newsgroups, then forums, now it's probably MeetUps and Discord.
I don't think things have changed, but as I've gotten older (I suspect you're getting older too ;) it has become harder to make friends - which by all accounts is normal.
“The app says to tell you thanks and tell you my name is Steve.”
“The app says to tell you you’re welcome and that I was thinking about a pair like that myself and also my name is Bill.”
People need incentives to make friends, not an app.