Serious answer:

If the internet didn’t exist, I’d be peer pressured into following whatever norms are followed by all the people in my physical surrounding. I’d take my cues from what my parents and family and classmates told me were “right” and I wouldn’t question outside it.

I’d probably spend more time “socializing”, which as an introvert would exhaust me. But I wouldn’t know any different, so it would just be The Way It Is.

But you asked if my social life would be “better”, and better is hard to define. Better for… general community compliance? Probably. Better for my general mental health? Probably not.

I like spending 15 minutes catching up on my Lenny communities and reading what you degenerate fucks are up to. I am less excited about “going out with friends” every night and “doing something”.

The vast majority of the friends I had in the past were met online, including the only one I have rn who I met via BARQ, so no. If anything, it’d be worse.

I’d also probably be way dumber than I already am.

Oh heavens, I don’t even want to think about me without the net!

I was a nerdy introvert raised in a moderately abusive house, in a small town with hardly any other kids. I had zero social skills.

Got internet at 16, and now I could talk to anybody with no real barrier to entry. I spent a lot of years being oblivious and a borderline incel before learning to get my act together, but I can only imagine I’d be much more socially awkward and probably still be a jerk and much more conservative if I hadn’t been able to talk to so many other people and especially with people of the opposite sex.

I still keep a small friend group, but I like to think it’s more by choice now 😅

Social life? No. But i defo don’t think society would be hindered by fewer social media or social platform sources.

There’s some social platforms that I straight out avoid due to the toxicity of the platform as a whole, while overall I think online has made my social life better, it definitely has a pretty heavy consequence as well.

I would probably have more “friends” but mostly because I’d probably still be resigned to putting up with a lot of toxic people.

The internet, while antithetical to mental health for the most part, did bring the destigmatization of self-care/boundaries and basic mental health.

I don’t know. It’s something I think about a lot, especially when I’m wasting too much time online. But it really isn’t that simple. I had lots of friends and saw them pretty regularly, but I moved countries to be with my partner and I’m very happy with that choice and our life together.

But I don’t speak the language here, I’m learning but slowly. So if I wasn’t in message groups, sharing memes and video chatting my friends back home I’d feel pretty lonely. And it would make the couple of trips home each year much more awkward. By keeping in touch so regularly it feels totally normal to spend the day with a friend, even if I haven’t seen them in 9 months because I know all the little things they’ve been up to or excited about.

On the other side, if I had none of that, maybe I would have worked harder at learning the language. Especially with the lack of distractions the internet provides (being able to watch tv in English instead of local stuff is probably the biggest hurdle to learning), but realistically we’re busy and live in the country, so if I had some intermediate language skills and was vastly more lonely I’d probably not have made any real friends. I’d just go to some more social events in the year and participate a bit akwardly and feel sad.

No.

But it would still help.

No, not really. Personally, think that friendships are very shallow these days. Only a handful of people or even less can be truly called friends that would be there for you when you genuinely them.

I’ve seen countless of times where people with several friends (or a lot) are left in the dust after two people in the friendships have a conflict or they are friends “only in the fun times”. This was also before the internet took off.