I did the same thing as you, at the same time, and had similar experiences. (Except I played MUDs more than I spent time on Usenet. Still, I made friends for life.)
The social media experience today isn’t anything like the experience on those old BBSes. I was just remarking to someone yesterday that Facebook’s process of tracking which ads stay on your screen – even if they’re not clicked – has finally defeated my policy of never clicking on anything in Facebook. I watched it slowly adapt to show me things that got me to stop and look, and now my feed is a steady stream of little dopamine hits, and very little social interaction.
I don’t know that curfews will make any difference, but clearly the social media landscape of today is way, way worse than what we were exposed to, and it needs to be regulated.
Not Lemmy, though! So far it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to the old BBSes in a long time.