Yes, late 90's, AIM was a thing... if my mom wasn't on the phone, or if my dad didn't need the computer for work. Didn't help me early 90's and certainly didn't help me figure out if my friend was home before I made the bike ride over :P
And then FB came along and suddenly everything was better.
... Except it didn't go like that at all, a zillion other options came along, pagers, mobile phones + texting, email, a whole bunch of instant messaging networks, all of which worked increasingly well for the problems your FB use is supposedly uniquely solving, yet none of was addictive like FB use, a machine learning algorithm targeting flaws in the human psyche / attention-mechanism / dopamine-treadmill to keep them "engaged" and instilling the fear of ostracism if they ever dare to leave.
You can defend convenient channels of communication, but you can't defend the package FB wraps it in.
Sir_Cmpwn said,
> I'd like to point out that this thread has depressingly similar patterns compared to talking with drug addicts about their habit.