Part of it is the difficulty of the spread out suburban living situation. Growing up, most of my parents friends lived around 15-30 mins away by car. If they lived on the opposite side of town, an hour drive or so, we basically never saw them outside of big events like graduations or weddings.
In college, it was easy for me to maintain a lot of close knit relationships. No one was any farther than a 20 minute walk, usually half that, which made drinking pretty painless too. Bars, movies, food was all in between, and cheap.
Now I live in LA for grad school, and getting people in my classes to hang out on the weekends is like pulling teeth. As dense as the city is, it basically functions as one massive suburb from back east. Everyone is at least 20 minutes by car in every direction, there is zero parking, one of the worst bike lane networks in the U.S., and rarely a transit line. There's also the costs of doing literally anything. A night out could be $30 in ubers alone, and it doesn't help that I've yet to find a well drink in LA for under $10 that wasn't watered down. It's a recipe for apathy. At least hiking is free.
In college, it was easy for me to maintain a lot of close knit relationships. No one was any farther than a 20 minute walk, usually half that, which made drinking pretty painless too. Bars, movies, food was all in between, and cheap.
Now I live in LA for grad school, and getting people in my classes to hang out on the weekends is like pulling teeth. As dense as the city is, it basically functions as one massive suburb from back east. Everyone is at least 20 minutes by car in every direction, there is zero parking, one of the worst bike lane networks in the U.S., and rarely a transit line. There's also the costs of doing literally anything. A night out could be $30 in ubers alone, and it doesn't help that I've yet to find a well drink in LA for under $10 that wasn't watered down. It's a recipe for apathy. At least hiking is free.