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Notes -
I'm not saying I'd go myself, really - just that it wouldn't be in the same category as, say, answering 1917 or 1950 would be.
Also, of course, going by personal experiences, I started using Internet around mid-90s (being around 10 at that time), I'm fairly sure we had Internet at home before 00s, and was already pretty deep in the forums world around 98-99. Finnish online access was, of course, world-class from the get-go, with none of the AOL walled garden stuff. While I've had my fights with autoexec.bat and config.sys, that was more connected to (pirated) games to work than anything Internet-related.
There's a lot of charts like this showing that the time from ca 1997 to ca 2012 was basically less lonely time for teens than before and after that, and I hold that the most likely explanation is, indeed, that it was the time after it became possible to form and maintain friendships online but the online part of the friendship complimented the physical, in-person part instead of replacing it, which happened after smartphones became ubiquitous.
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