It’s been a disaster.

It sounds good in principle. And I was very excited when discovering the Internet (Usenet) and a place to discuss all my geeky interests with many similar minded people.

However, now that the Internet has so overpowered in person relationships across the board, the cost in mental health, anxiety and general unhappiness is staggering.

Agree. I think it might have been okay if the Internet had stayed in the naïve form it had circa 2003. In those days, I had a circle of friends on LiveJournal (the closer of which became AIM buddies as well) and I think we all derived huge positive benefits from having that in our lives.

The shift to the algorithmic "Feed" established adversarial incentives across the board - the platforms are incentivized to addict and enrage, the individuals are incentivized not to be vulnerable for friends, but to be viral and get approval of the public, since if your posts don't perform for strangers, the algorithm won't even show them to your closest friends.

The Internet gave us an easier way to make "friends" with no apparent downsides, only to rugpull us all as soon as most of the 'pre-Internet' places and social habits had been completely destroyed. Now we are all obviously lonely and hate the Internet mess, but whole generations are now too awkward to even speak to others in person, just from lack of experience.

>It’s been a disaster.

It wasn't a disaster until megaplatforms came alone.