Friendship and socialising

In my country an evening with friends almost always revolves around food. People gather at a street-side hotpot place or a grilled-meat stall, order far more than they can finish and stay for hours; the eating is really an excuse for the talking. Younger groups might move on to karaoke or a late coffee, but the pattern is the same: cheap, noisy and outdoors. As for why friendships get harder to maintain in adulthood, I think it's mostly a matter of structure rather than affection. At school you see your friends every day without making any effort, whereas a working adult has to plan a meeting two weeks ahead and then cancel because a child is ill. People don't stop caring; they just run out of unclaimed evenings. That said, I've noticed the friendships that do survive tend to be deeper, because both sides have chosen to keep them. Will socialising move online? Partly, and I don't see that as a disaster. Group chats keep people in touch between meetings, and for friends living in different countries a video call is far better than silence. But I doubt screens will replace the real thing, because what people remember afterwards is a shared meal or a ridiculous journey home, not a message thread. If anything, I'd expect face-to-face time to become rarer and therefore more deliberately valued.