Throughout the last 15 years I made many attempts to make telephone and later Zoom friends. Very little success.
I am a 53 yo man, I have Asperger's Syndrome, and I am overweight. Of course I am not looking for any romantic partners.
Not everyone has someone to zoom/skype with, and not everyone is comfortable doing a video call with a total stranger. For me, there would have to be some feeling of connection and TRUST through text and DMs first, before I even contemplated a video call with someone.
Not everyone finds that a video call, or audio, eases the loneliness. They are still over there. You are still here. There is still that huge gap in between.
I'm not saying that a connection can not develop online, because obviously it can (even romance). But these days there seems to be an assumption that just a video call, or a phone call, will magically make loneliness vanish. And for some of us, it just doesn't. For some of us, we need to see, and feel, that person next to us, or sitting across the other side of the table ... or, at the very least, feel like they are genuinely open and interested in having that with us too.