Yeah but...ordinary people were not dialing into BBS forums back then. We weren't "raised" online like kids now are, we were able to log off anytime and not ever need it to function in society. That started changing in the early 2000s. All my kid's school assignments are now done on a laptop on a district-owned cloud system. He hasn't needed a pencil and paper in...I forgot how long.
If you're around my age, congratulations on being the last generation to ever know what the world was like before widespread use of the Internet.