I mostly wanted to provide a countervailing anecdote rather than any sort of fixed rule.
I would say that I definitely had success, by your definition of social. I've never had a problem making friends, but socialization as a kid didn't benefit me long term because being social with pre-teens and teenagers is useless training for being social with adults in a professional environment, which is where I now spend most of my time. I basically had to learn to be social all over again.
So I guess I take issue with the idea that people need to be around their peers to learn to be social at all. I agree that social skills are not formally taught, and that they need to be learned, but I think all that is required to accomplish this is that children are around people who interact with them. If they have that, I think the cost of them not being involved in whatever kids these days are doing is not that high, and definitely not as high as they might think it is in the moment.
I mostly wanted to provide a countervailing anecdote rather than any sort of fixed rule.
I would say that I definitely had success, by your definition of social. I've never had a problem making friends, but socialization as a kid didn't benefit me long term because being social with pre-teens and teenagers is useless training for being social with adults in a professional environment, which is where I now spend most of my time. I basically had to learn to be social all over again.
So I guess I take issue with the idea that people need to be around their peers to learn to be social at all. I agree that social skills are not formally taught, and that they need to be learned, but I think all that is required to accomplish this is that children are around people who interact with them. If they have that, I think the cost of them not being involved in whatever kids these days are doing is not that high, and definitely not as high as they might think it is in the moment.