When Jake says that he lost his home, his identity, the people in his life, that he preferred to become someone who preferred solitude and are there still people who believe that Jake was a lonely boy with no friends in his past life?
I can imagine him having at least a small circle of friends that he trusts, but out of fear of what happened, he thought they might tell on him.
But it will always be in my mind that Jake must have a best friend who is still desperately searching for him and he does everything possible to erase his traces from the Internet every time he publishes something about him, making him suffer even more from that loneliness and withdraw into himself.
If Jake says at the time of the video call with the group that he would feel out of place, it is not because he never had friends, but because he no longer knows how to have contact with people after being alone for a long time, only with MC now he begins to feel comfortable and have something to hold onto and feel like he has something to fight for.
Maybe he won't be able to have his previous life again, but hopefully one day, if he is free again, he will recover those friends he abandoned and see who really still missed him, seeing that despite everything, he had people who loved him.
This is when I think that Eric is desperate to find Adam because he already lost another friend, which is Jake