Yeah there were options but they were not convenient or mainstream. When I was a kid I played online games with friends, but that involved calling them on a land line phone, logging into the Internet, which meant turning off your house phone for most people without dual phonelines, and no video call and text chat only.
Not in the same way, but I made a lot of friends on MUDs and local BBSes in the early 90s.
Yeah there were options but they were not convenient or mainstream. When I was a kid I played online games with friends, but that involved calling them on a land line phone, logging into the Internet, which meant turning off your house phone for most people without dual phonelines, and no video call and text chat only.