How do I meet people/get a girlfriend?

So I’m a male 20 years old. I’ve never been remotely close to being in a relationship and I need some advice on how to do it. I’ve heard the suggested method is offering someone your number instead of asking for theirs so they can ignore it if they want but I’ve also heard not to offer to people working but that’s kind of the only time I see women by themselves. The just try to make friends approach isn’t much better am I supposed to just walk up to random people and start a conversation? I never know what to talk about. All the events I go to seem to have groups of people which seems a lot more intimidating. I think my issue is I’m just bad at keeping a conversation going so it’s hard for me to get a conversation going long enough to become friends.