I found a plug-in called “Buddypress Notifications Manager” https://wordpress.org/plugins/buddypress-notifications-manager/
This godsend of a plug-in set default notifications for new users and retroactively for existing users. A day has passed and no notifications. I hope others that go through what I went through will benefit from this tid-bit of information. I was about to have to wipe my entire site and start from scratch due to upsetting so much of my user base.