Where do the children play?

I often wonder why I felt so disengaged from school, sports, and real life friendships back in the 2010s. Today, I think I can attribute most of that (and heavily relate to the article) to the freedom of online spaces and the lack of supervision; primarily, Roblox. As long as I kept good grades, no one really never peered into what I did online. It didn't help that I lived in the suburbs in the LA county all my life, so I felt both a "push and pull" toward online spaces.

Even back then, that era of Roblox felt distinct from the platform it is today. Roblox used to have their own bespoke forum page, and each forum "topic" had its own culture and regular users. Hence, it resulted in a lot of tribal behavior and personal identification with said topic label (some players would even make "bunkers" as places, where regular hangouts would happen.)

As a result, familiar faces (usernames) arose, and that's where I met my first and only consistent friend group lasting from middle school to university. Though I haven't talked to them much since.

I did get my programming interest and grew skills from such a creative platform, but I think I'm still reeling from my stunted social growth as well. As I hear about the current generation of schools, I wonder how much worse off I'd be if I had to grow up during the 2020s.