Ultimately no one agrees 100% on the answer. But we can say there are two major reasons.
Demand is significantly higher than supply, thus raising prices. It basically costs more to buy the same thing because it’s scarce.
Or prices go up because raw materials cost more. Tariffs are an artificial way to add costs of production. But lack of the basic materials causes prices to go up thus lowering purchasing power.
To a lesser extent, public sentiment can drive inflation. And printing money as well.
All of this is exacerbated by the dollar not being tied to gold anymore.
It ain’t easy. I’ve found this quote from CS Lewis to be true
“Friendship … is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
In other words, friendships are often about or around something. Work friends. Gaming friends. Etc. it’s 100000x easier to talk about something with a stranger and allow more personal things to trickle in.
I was just at PAX West and was waiting in line for an hour. The guy in front of me cracked a joke and I laughed and played along. I asked him if he attended cons a lot. Which led to ones he’d been to and favorite ones which led to the developers who had the best booths to favorite games to favorite movies. We chatted for an hour about stuff we liked. We had lots of similar interests in gaming, movies, etc.
This is where you need to have some interests to talk about and if you don’t, then you need to find some. Hiking, gaming, puzzles, whatever.
Don’t discount online friends too. Find a discord about something you like and just start participating