I'm assuming that 3/4 is 3-4 hours, rather than 45 min, that could be in your case but the question is how "common" is your case compared to the rest of the population.
Many people I work with in the UK live still around why they grew up and commute to London.
Quite a few of them are N generation Londoners so they haven't really moved anywhere.
I've also done quite a bit of work in Manchester and Newcastle and the %age of locals there is even greater.
Newcastle has Sage and quite a few other tech companies and the majority of the people I met there was from around still pretty much living where they grew up and they as sure don't have 4 hour commutes to meet their friends.
So while I can see how some one from the North coming down south to study and work or vice versa, or even moving to Scotland/N. Ireland might create a pretty big social rift due to distance I just don't know if that's the only, the main, or even a major reason for it.
Might be something in our lifestyle, how we consume information and experiences and many other things that affect this. I've lost touch with most of my childhood/early adulthood friends because I've relocated to the UK.
But even in my mid 20's I could remember more than one occasion on which I could not be arsed to drive for 30 min (on a company leased car so even gas money wasn't an issue) for a meetup. What It seems to me is that all of us moving from the early 20's to the mid 20's onwards just became more "lazy" as far as the effort we were willing to put into our social interaction.
That too me is the more interesting part, I can remember orchestrating social events during highschool and late teens early 20's back when we had considerably less agency and free resources to do it. But a soon as all of us got high paying jobs and company cars it seemed like we stopped giving a damn.