I think one thing I really didn't get when I was like 20 is that "small talk" is often a way for people to hint at the bigger deeper things that are going on with them without overloading someone. like it can be an invitation and a chance to test the waters before launching into things that it may or may not be the appropriate time/place/person to talk about those things with.
like when someone asks "how are you," you don't have to respond with "good," but it also isn't necessarily a good context to go straight to "I keep flipping my shit at people I love because I can't regulate my emotions and I'm afraid of them dying or abandoning me," plus if someone isn't used to broaching that kind of topic at the beginning of an interaction it gives them a chance to develop the kind of comfortability to be able to talk about that stuff. some people will reach that point sooner than others, whether it's over 10 minutes or multiple years.
also, I've realized that it's a shame to dismiss talking about things besides our deepest troubles as being meaningless. human connection is meaningful even if it is just about the weather or how our family or our favorite sports team is doing, and knowing how someone feels about these supposedly surface topics tells us a lot about eachother that can be applied to topics you may consider more personal or impactful, and forming that foundation with someone is absolutely not something to be pushed aside as trivial.
Small talk is social calibration. You calibrate a system before you use it for intense or precise work.
