It’s been trending this way for years, but seeing it graphed out like this is shocking.

What do you think are the effects of this drastic change?

    • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.worldEnglish
      40·
      2 months ago

      Bulletin board systems (BBS) go back to 1980. Men have tried everything to get laid since the dawn of humanity. It checks out.

      • octopus_ink@lemmy.mlEnglish
        12·
        2 months ago

        As someone who was using BBSs by 1984-ish, I can believe that people met this way. What I can’t believe is that it was at a percentage high enough to be represented as anything above zero on that graph.

        • Num10ck@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5·
          2 months ago

          agreed. the first Arpanet message was sent in 1969, the first BBS in 1978. but shouldn’t move this needle for many years.

        • Rolando@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          2 months ago

          I think this is the data collection info: https://data.stanford.edu/hcmst2017

          The data are nationally representative, as the Ipsos KnowledgePanel recruits subjects into the panel by by Address Based Sampling, and subjects without Internet access at home are given Internet access.

          …

          Response rate was 3510/6753=52% in 2017, 2107/2431= 87% in 2020, and 1722/2073=83% in 2022.

          Half of all randomly selected subjects (by address) responded to their survey? I’d need to read a bit more about what exactly is going on there.

    • basmati@lemmus.orgEnglish
      81·
      2 months ago

      University nerds with early access to early forms of Internet would definitely never utilize such serious world changing technology to chat and dawdle amongst themselves to the point a connection would form. It’s not like the entirety of video gaming was created by a nerd severely misusing an extremely expensive oscilloscope.

    • ChicoSuave@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      2 months ago

      Back when it was called “computer dating” and people printed dot matrix pages out with their interests.

    • nocturne@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      6·
      2 months ago

      Not quite the 80s, but I met my wife online in ‘93 or ‘94. Initially it was just a passing conversation a few times. We met in earnest in ‘95. She does not remember the initial meeting, we were both using different screen names.