I miss having pen pals, social media really ruined that for me as well. I still remember when my, then, close friend moved over to Facebook. Our usual bi-weekly exchanges slowly changed into her posting updates and dozens of followers writing simple replies. No longer having the time to write individually. I still don’t know how exactly, but we just drifted apart after that. Still hurts a little when I think about it.

Anyway… That was about 15 years ago and until now I haven’t really been vocally active online, just spend my time lurking like so many others. I really had to make a conscious effort to get more interactive and I took the move to Lemmy as my excuse to do so. People were already complaining that no one commented and only upvoted, so I’m trying to be the change I want to see :)
It’s not like the old interactions I had with my pen pals, but I do like the human connection I sometimes get with others.