If you watch Shorts, maybe. If you watch normal videos, the comments are pretty much an afterthought.

But even shorts, assuming they're like reels/stories, the "social" aspect is very minimal compared with, say, Facebook posts back in the day, where your friends would see and comment and reply to each other.

The Algorithm doesn't really want that anymore; it wants to feed you content from arbitrary people to keep you passively engaged, not to foster conversation/active engagement.

Just anecdotes, but I feel YouTube comments are the bottom of social media. Even Twitter and Reddit are better.

But if the 99% garbage is the price of the emerging of channels like 3B1B, I think it's still a pretty good deal.

I often comment on videos but never do I check replies to my comments there.

There's nothing social about it. You don't add your friends and chat with your friends on YouTube.