How forums have changed

I was thinking about this because it Intrigues me. I've 19 but I've been around the internet for long enough that I used to post or lurk on older forums and forums dedicated to specific things, like rescuing squirrels or AVEN or even spacehey (which isn't very old but it still follows this pattern) ect. The different between older forums and newer forums like Kandi Pad (and kandipatterns) is so interesting. I remember being really hesitant to make a forum post, especially if someone else already made a post about the subject. Like if I wanted to talk about furbies, I wouldn't make a post about it, I would search the forum to see if anyone else made a furby post already that I could comment on. I was also super nervous about if the a post that doesn't fit the category it's in, or the website as a whole. On Squirrelboard.com i would Never post anything not related to squirrels, for example. Whereas on newer forums I've noticed people will post if they just feel bored and want people to talk to, or multiple people will make multiple posts about the same subject within a day or so of each other. Forum post titles are a lot more confusing on newer forums too. On older forums you had to make the title try and describe what the post was actually about. I'm not complaining about this btw!! The internet changes a lot and that's okay! although i would prefer more accurate post titles... guys please i dont want to click into every single post to know what the post is about.... I think that this has changed for a couple reasons! 1. Physical and tech limitations have changed a lot. I don't know how forums are built specifically (I want to learn so i can have a little chatroom on my website at some point) but I do know some basic programming and web design. I assume hosting forums was a lot harder back in the day than it is now, so people don't have to worry about crashing the site if they post too much. 2. The age of the average forum poster was Decreased. A lot of people on newer forums are 11-16 instead of 17-40+, and kids want to connect online in different ways than adults much of the time. There is also the fact that a lot of online chatting methods are blocked on school computers and phones aren't allowed in class most places, so if kids want to connect with their friends during school, unblocked forums are the best place to go. 3. A lot of older forums are more specific. Most forums have a random chit chat board in case the members of the forum want to chit chat but they're still dedicated to Something, and the members of the forum are also dedicated to the Something. Kandi pad is dedicated to kandi, but there's a Ton of boards for non-kandi stuff as well, which invites people to talk about non-kandi stuff. this will probably change a bit with the spring cleaning update. 4. Back to the fact that more kids are online. That hasn't changed since I was younger at all, but there were places that kids could go online specifically. I spent most of my online childhood on Animal Jam and the warrior cats animal jam roleplay forums (which was really just a wiki page back when they had forums per-page. i Miss it Dearly). The game was meant for kids and the forum was made by teens who wanted to make sure the space was safe for everyone there. Animal Jam is still around but there aren't many spaces online for young people specifically anymore. They weren't very profitable, so most of them ended up shutting down around 2019. So where are the kids and teens supposed to go? Places that are safe for them online, such as moderated forums. This post is just something I think is interesting and kind of sad. The internet was a lot friendlier to young people when I was younger.