[sph]

Why not go further? It's the Internet as a whole. People socialising online, and online becoming an actual place people spend their entire lives within, free from the hard constraints of the real world, was the natural evolution of the Internet.

Plenty has been written about how any technological innovation leads to massive societal changes no one could foresee, and no one could avoid, but only analyze in retrospect.

[bel8]

Yep. Even many of our jobs became remote and less social.

[FabHK]

Indeed. When Germany unified, the birth rate in the formerly socialist East dropped by half. Certainly increasing uncertainty played a role, but there was also speculation that there wasn't much to do in the East except read, drink, and procreate, while the West had plenty of diversions.