Does anyone else study languages to try to make friends? And is that even a healthy reason to learn a foreign language?

I started seriously studying a foreign language in high school and that was Spanish. However, the teacher was so vile and I was miserable in his class. So, I replaced it with French. Luckily, the French teacher was an angel of a person and the work load was so much less.

I ended up really liking French and becoming the best in the class. I'm still interested in French, but the language frustrates me. The spoken language is completely different from the written form of the language. Africans tend to speak French clearly, but this is a minority of the media available. I seriously think that if I had spent this time and devotion on another language, I'd be fully bilingual now.

I grew up in a really abusive family and never had any friends, so I've often had an idea in my head of going to some other place and finally finding a family of my choice. In my teenage years, I thought about studying Danish and going to Denmark, because Danes were supposedly the happiest people in the world and I wanted that. Then Finland became the happiest country in the world and I thought about learning Finnish. It's worth acknowledging that most people speak English in these countries (Denmark and Finland), but being able to speak the native language, in my mind at least. I did meet someone at a hotel from Sweden one time. I spoke a few sentences to him in Swedish. I was 18 and thought he'd be impressed. He didn't give a fuck.

Anyways, late last year I saw a video of someone from Germany who just seemed so incredibly kind that I thought about studying German. A few days ago, I saw a video of someone from Costa Rica who just seemed to have his heart on his sleeve and I am now thinking about studying Spanish for the first time since I was in high school. 😂 Also, a few weeks ago, someone really encouraged me to study Spanish, so maybe this is a sign?

However, is this really a healthy motive for studying languages? I recently met someone online who speaks so many languages, I don't know what the number is, but he's also depressed and suicidal and shares his attempts on social media. I wonder if he was on the same website that I am because he's lonely and even though he's accomplished learning languages, he probably should have invested his time and energy into something that will give him more inner value.

Then again, I'm sure people have formed beautiful relationships as a result of studying foreign languages.

I really don't have an answer. I wanted to put this out there, since it is not a discussion that I see people having.