I actually dislike the term "social media" in the first place, only used it above for convenience...

I (seriously) discovered that there were websites that allowed the general public to participate in the mid-2000s when I was a preteen. I immediately liked that concept and started to participate on such sites (first forums, later wikis) myself and found that fun.

Then around 2008, everyone started to insist that such sites were now called "social media" and the most important ones were Facebook and Twitter, both of which I hadn't heard of until around that time, and both of which didn't seem like very fun or appealing places at all.

Now I keep hearing about the horrible things apparently caused by "social media" and wonder, what do you even mean, what could possibly be wrong with web forums.