Well, not everybody. I have many "on-line friends"...some even overseas...and I have met in person many of them...but always as friends. See, one of my parents' hobbies was ham radio so to me to have faceless friends is in my blood. You could say is easier -specially because Covid- to meet people on-line and, then to take the next step. To me this is not only dangerous but lends itself to disillusion and pain.
Yeh, I'm not interested in it, either. I'm sure we're in the majority. Regarding ham radio...my mother was a WW2 bride, and a friend's husband was a ham radio operator. So she would go to their house, the guy would radio a friend in England, and the friend in England would call my mother's relatives on a land line and patch them together. She could chat all morning for free. Obviously, this was back when long distance calls were prohibitively expensive.
Phone Patch..........my parents did this all the time for people who couldn't afford to pay a phone call; they made friends in most countries on America (continent) as well as in Europe. My father, also, was a volunteer LU to pass info. during catastrophes such as earthquakes, floods and avalanches; he spoke three languages. My mother was an LU on her own right.
Now as a single senior on senior forums, I find it the last way I would want to start a romance if I was looking. Be that as it may, I am no stranger to making friends sight unseen. I have been a licensed amateur radio operator for 60 years, 45 as an extra class earned the hard way with 20 WPM Morse code. I quit operating and sold off all my equipment in the late 1990s'. I grew up in an amateur radio family. My dad and several relatives were all hams. With the advent of the internet, it was scary for a female to use ham radio as anyone can listen in, get your call, and find your address online. Back in the day when callbooks were the only way, it was out of the eye of the general public. I agree with Lon that senior forum romance makes no sense to me. Neither does romance in senior chat rooms where the chatters have never met. The commercial made gear in a corner of my ham shack back in the day.
Faye Fox, I wouldn't be surprised if you chatted with my parents on the ham radio sometimes up to the early 80s. The Morse code......gee, my father made us all learn it as if we were taking the licensing exam. LOL ...---...
I did mostly vintage-style AM and CW using the equipment I built. The only time I used SSB was for emergency and emergency net check-in and that setup was on solar-charged battery power and also made mobile easy for being away on jobs. Possible I might have run across them on the 40 meter High Noon SSB net that I checked in at least weekly during the late 70s' and early 80s'.
My father built his own equipment and used it until my mother bought him a PATO (USA) as their 25 years anniversary.
I had an FCC First Class Radiotelephone License when I worked for Boeing as an Electronic Lab Test Engineer. I also had a Ham Ticket: N6CEY, but used it only on the 2-Meter FM Repeater Mode. Real hams who had General, Advanced, or Extra-class licenses looked down on me, but I outplayed them on the Piano, and was Taller!