I think you may have missed the point I was making though— clubs and other pastimes didn’t make people less lonely; they only distracted people from their loneliness. Today the same distractions can be found via social media, so instead of all those other activities, people just need a phone.
But the anonymizing nature of social media means people feel more free to discuss their loneliness when they do self-reflect.
Take that money you were saving for university and buy Apple stock. Still move to the university town and hang out on campus, but skip the tuition fees and going to class; spend the time while others are in class working for a few years and putting more money into Apple stock.
Cash out some of that money a few years later and use it for a cheap bachelor’s degree; leverage that to get into the field you want to be in.
Then later, cash out some more to buy property… say, around 2008. But keep feeding more money in.