One of the impediments to BBS'ing was the extraordinarily high cost of connection. Luckily I go early access to arpanet, uucp, and bitnet as a middle school and high school student in the 80s.

AT&T phone rates were outrageously high in the 80s and early 90s. In todays money, calling a non-local BBS would cost ~20$ / hr. Personally I could not afford and my parents would have been aghast.

I think some got involved in the phreaking and hacking scene because of the usurious rates.