Where I live, everyone used AOL Instant Messenger, or AIM for short. It was popular with teens because it offered chat rooms, but that meant it was also a popular hunting ground for predators. Nearly every terminally online teen from the late 90’s and early 2000’s has a story about getting groomed on AIM, by someone they initially thought was their own age.
Then Google Chat and Facebook Messenger came along, (and AOL’s subscriber count began to dwindle as people moved to broadband internet) and it was almost completely dead by 2010.
Where I live, everyone used AOL Instant Messenger, or AIM for short. It was popular with teens because it offered chat rooms, but that meant it was also a popular hunting ground for predators. Nearly every terminally online teen from the late 90’s and early 2000’s has a story about getting groomed on AIM, by someone they initially thought was their own age.
Then Google Chat and Facebook Messenger came along, (and AOL’s subscriber count began to dwindle as people moved to broadband internet) and it was almost completely dead by 2010.