How to start dating/making friends while still not out?

I've had these homosexual emotions/feelings for a very long time (since age 14 now 19) but in these 5 years I haven't met or made friends with a single person I could really talk to about these kind of feelings. I'm at a very conservative university (sadly) and it's incredibly hard to find anyone who is even open about the idea of being gay. I pretty much have no friends here and can't find anyone who is gay. So I was curious. Do people ever use apps like grindr, hornet, etc. to just meet people, rather than just wanting sex, kissing, etc? From stories I've read about it always seems even if one of the persons wants to just meetup and hang out often the other still just wants to get down to xyz. I'm really just looking for a way to make a good friend here. Eventually I'd like to experiment maybe with him or somewhere else but that is long down the road. I also fill weird using my real identity online because I feel like when I contact people I'm now coming out to someone I hardly even know. I've only came out to three or so people I've known for a very long time so the concept is very scary to me.