If you imagine living in a time before high-speed travel and big cities, the people you interacted with day-to-day were basically the same throughout your life. Maybe you weren't "friends" with these people, but just in order to live your life, you would inevitably be bumping into people that you had known in some capacity for years.
Nowadays when we go shopping or for a haircut or whatever, we are mostly interacting with basically anonymous people that we are unlikely to remember even if we do ever see them again.
The level of loneliness we can manage to achieve now seems quite a bit higher than when no matter what you do, just to get food to eat, you're going to have to go see someone who've you known for a decade and make small talk.
Probably not saying this well, but when I imagine day-to-day life in a small village, this seems like one of the most significant differences. It seems like it would be hard to ever go a day not interacting with other people that you knew in some capacity. Now it's so easy you might not even notice when you do it.