Traditional forums may not be as popular as they once were. The ease of access to information through search engines (and even within platforms like ChatGPT) means that people are still engaging with content just not creating it publicly through long social exchanges as before. Many topics that previously required cooperation on a forum are now readily available with a simple search, reducing the need to discuss those solutions. Stack Overflow and other small niche communities are the exception here.
This shift towards more accessible information has resulted in less visible activity if we view internet activity as the creation of original text content. The older generation of internet users may have moved on from forums to focus on real-life issues, which has taken time away from hobbies. Niche communities still exist, but the use of small public forums is not as trendy as it once was.
Many people have shifted towards using larger social networks and private messaging platforms (like Messenger, Snapchat, and Discord). Discord for example is used by a lot of communities to aggregate their documentation and user activity, despite the risk of this content being pruned earlier than it should. These platforms are still very active, but they may not be as visible to those outside of closed groups. The data and activity within these groups are not crawled, making it seem as though there is less activity on the internet than there really is.
The rise of video content has made it difficult to quickly read and crawl through information, leading to the false impression that the internet is empty of recent original content. There is actually more video content available now than ever before, but it may not be as easily searchable or accessible as text-based content.