All these wonderful stories... mine is much sillier.
I didn't have any friends on ICQ - they were all on AIM or MSN. But I was very active on ProBoards (a non-phpBB forum service) and ICQ was the only social icon that I was missing from my mini-profile, so I signed up so I would have something to put there.
Given how vain and overly-focused I was on appearances in that context, I cannot imagine how bad my mental health would have been if social media was available for me.
I didn't have any friends on ICQ - they were all on AIM or MSN. But I was very active on ProBoards (a non-phpBB forum service) and ICQ was the only social icon that I was missing from my mini-profile, so I signed up so I would have something to put there.
Given how vain and overly-focused I was on appearances in that context, I cannot imagine how bad my mental health would have been if social media was available for me.