My son has a group of friends at the Uni, some of them in his same school, some of them in nearby schools, some of them are in the neighbourhood... half of them are from high school, the other half are from Minecraft discord groups.
They have a weekly meeting in a Uni cafeteria and use indistinctly Discord or Instagram as chat. Instagram has replaced WhatsApp as the regular phone chat.
All of them have wider net-only groups of acquitances.
Teens/young adults surely have far more opportunities to make real life friends than working age adults. They are at least required to attend school.
I would say that this is more the lifestyle of adults after being out of education for a few years. They are the group that can ignore all real life interaction if they want, Covid has increased the likelihood of this.