This is a difficult hypothesis to prove by virtue of the fact that if we didn't think people were feeling in certain ways this pre-FB, then it was presumably be

This is a difficult hypothesis to prove by virtue of the fact that if we didn't think people were feeling in certain ways this pre-FB, then it was presumably because we didn't have accurate data. It follows that if we didn't have the data then it's difficult to say whether FB et al tapped in to something that had yet to manifest itself in a subset of people, or had yet to become visible to society. Nevertheless, it's an interesting point that I hadn't really heard put this way before so thanks.