I’m from the US. “How are you,” is indeed a very shallow question that expects a very shallow and prescriptive response. I’ve seen where people answer it honestly, and when they walk away the person asking says something to the effect of, “god, I didn’t need his whole life story.” Experiences like this make me more hesitant to answer honestly.

The better you know someone, the more this rule starts to bend, but that doesn’t help with establishing new connections.

Even with people who are close, there is some expectation to keep things pleasant and not unload bad news on them, or seem like you’re bragging about good stuff, when asked how you are. This is why you’ll often see movies where someone asks, “how are you,” and then after the generic answer they follow it up with, “how are you really?”

In other situations, especially with good stuff, people feel like they need to be invited to talk about something exciting in their life. If they have something fun planned for the weekend or did something fun last weekend, they’ll ask someone else what they did, hoping to get that same question back, so they can have an excuse to talk about what they did. No one ever really told me this and it took me longer than I’d like to admit to figure it out.