> Except back then we had stuff like religion, church, village, common communities etc to bind people.

And in cities, more pubs, clubs, general social events where you can find people whose actual interests you share.

Most of us didn't go from Renaissance village churches to dating apps in one lifetime, let alone one day.

> Statistics show urbanites to be lonelier than ever, so that take disagrees with you.

Most surveys only started about 10 years ago, i.e. after social media and dating apps were already around, and the few longer surveys disagree with each other, but even they only go back to the 80s AFAICT; we've been living in big dense isolating cities for a lot longer than that.

> Massively depends on what the social life is like in the city you live in and what age you age.

So the focus should be on that, then. As in, not a dating app.

> While dating apps are more of a sure thing because most people are there to date.

Everyone I've heard talking about dating apps since Match Group cornered the market, says the only "sure thing" about them is how mediocre they are, at least for straight couples. Women get all the low-effort displays, men get no responses and spiral into low-effort displays.