> Social networking - Enabling more meaningful and greater connection between people, leading to greater happiness and fulfillment?

I don't believe that this was a serious motivation for any of these companies for a second. That might have been in the press release, but most of these social networks were either born from Geocities-begets-Myspace incrementalism, or "watch these idiots give away their personal data" egocentrism.

An abridged survey of recent history:

Snapchat: it'd sure be easier to sext if these pictures disappeared

Instagram: it's easier to take a pic than write something

Twitter: pivot from failing product to internal tool

Facebook: privacy invasion as a service

Myspace 2.0: maybe we can make money off napster?

Myspace: Geocities clone

Geocities: AOL clone for the World Wide Web

AOL: Prodigy clone

Prodigy: Walled garden for selling Usenet access

Napster: OK, this one was probably the only one motivated to enable more meaningful and greater connections between people, leading to greater happiness and fulfillment