Title, for now, seems to state the entire scope of my question.
How would you tell?
I have absolutely no evidence, and that should stop me, in this forum particularly, but I won’t let it. I imagine that some of the forums, the Pit, for instance, fill a need in some peoples’ lives - they need to crab and piss and moan about one thing, or person, or another. That can be done on Twitter, for sure, and probably Youtube and Facebook, too. Other forums, such as this one, require a bit more deliberate approach. It does things that those other ones don’t do, and serves a different function for many people. So, I’d say that the answer to the OP is a qualified probably.
I don’t see why. They provide two totally different services. One facilitates discussions, one lets you keep up with friends.
Ok, how about this distinction: Some of the threads in other forums are more about “how I feel,” while this particular forum is more “I have a question,” and “this is what I think about that.” And the social media are mostly in the first category - “how I feel.” They’re about the person, not about the content, as this forum happens to be. Granted, this theory is based on some grand generalizations, but I think they’re valid in so far as the original question is concerned.
Some folks like speed, others prefer heroin. If they were here due to addictive tendencies some could very well have switched to a different drug when it became available.
To push this a little further, it seems like MPSIMS would be more vulnerable than the other forums. Maybe Cafe Society and Games to a much smaller extent.
There is a finite number of hours to be spent tooling around the internet.
I spend time on both. I probably spend more time on this forum than on my facebook account, but I prefer this type of setting. I’m not on the internet to meet people and make friends and all that. I’m here because I’m curious. There are some people that, in the past, may have used forums like this to meet people and make friends, and therefore may have left to go to sites like facebook, etc. In my opinion, those people weren’t here for the right reason and we’re better off not to have them. It works out well for all involved that there are many options/avenues for internet discourse.