Covid definitely sucked for a lot of people. I work with a lot of teenagers and college kids and 2020/2021 school years really messed with their lives. It ruined prom, it ruined spring sports, it ruined graduation. It kinda of made everyone anti social and depressed and I’m not sure some of them have fully recovered.
I was fortunate to not be impacted much other than getting off 3 months from work.
But in terms of the friends thing - outside of work, I almost never make new friends, it’s really hard in your 20s, I’ve basically just kept a group chat going with some of my HS/college friends for about 10 years and we try to multiple times a month just hop on a FaceTime, or in an Xbox party and shoot the s***, talk Sports, play MLB the show and do whatever else. That definitely helped me during covid.