What if the Internet had been available to us as children?

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I was quite happy with teletext.

That would be horrifying. I don't even want to think about the huge amount of cyberbullying I would have gotten. And the death and rape threats.

it would have been cancelled a few times
in the fits of fatherhood
i recall the throwing away of all comic books (european) we had,
we collected them back, though

I might've gained language comprehension earlier because of playing online games earlier and the option of watching with subtitles, ideally around age of 7-8 (not around toddler age, which will be disastrous) -- which is something I gained it at age 14 instead of elementary days, I discovered the internet at 13.

I might've become more diligent at reading, get higher grades at school.
I'd inevitably get addicted to it. Will spend late nights around the search engine. I basically replaced my late night TV hours with the internet.
I might've ended up a know-it-all. I might've ended up cocky enough to dismiss teachers.

I might've opt for accelerated graduation and go to college earlier.
Would be more inclined to aim to master the computer sciences. And will specialize in computers more than I already am.


Yeah, the so-called side effect will be me interacting less people. But I'm asocial to begin with; so it's not a huge loss to me.
This also means no internet community participation; way less cyberbullying.
Worst it could ever actually happen to me is dwindling my eyesight earlier than usual.


Overall, it would've been better for me.

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The amount of information available would have been wonderful, and might have significantly improved my life. My teenage son has been researching universities and working holiday programs in Europe. Growing up in a small town in a pretty backward area, I had no idea that these options even existed.

On the other hand, I might have spent all my free time watching porn.

I probably would have been addicted to it for research, and I likely would have begged to do my education online to avoid the social part of school from a young age. I don't like reading books online so I would have read far fewer books, meaning the entire trajectory of my life and my career would have changed. I wouldn't have earned disability insurance or my pension from my employer.

In other words, it would have sucked.

It would have been absolutely terrible. A cesspool of arguments, bullying, and trolls. At least at my age I mostly know enough to stay away from that aspect of the internet. I wouldn't have known how to as a kid. I'd hate to think the evidence that would be left behind of arguments and angry outbursts that would continue to exist somewhere.

Not to mention missing the active play, with real life things, and sometimes other kids, and time with family.

It might have been a godsend to me after the real-life teaching style had become largely unintelligible. I don't think I'd have been too distracted by social media and all the other fluff, as I was rather nerdy by nature. But who knows?

I had the internet when I was a teenager. I remember finding a website about life skills for young adults which was really useful and I read through all the articles on that. Other than that I mostly used it to stream YouTube videos of songs I was obsessed with (got in trouble with parents for going over download limits). I was too shy to interact with other people on social sites so I didn’t benefit from that aspect.

When I was a kid adults thought our brains were all going to rot from watching Saturday morning cartoons and playing Atari while listening to Twisted Sister. But that was quite harmless compared to the absolute brain rotting garbage children's videos parents let their kids watch on the internet. Seriously, Cocomelon? Baby Shark? And then there's that piece of mindless garbage Skibidi Toilet or whatever. Kids are using really stupid slang words like "gyatt", or "simp" and "sigma", the latter two being from incel speak. And they have the lowest attention span of all generations so far.

Of course, much of this brain rot can be blamed on the Covid pandemic, adults just generally being idiots, and allowing the internet to babysit their kids.

I am probably too young for this discussion but I will dip my toes anyways. I was born in 2000 and thankfully I didn't get too involved on the internet until age 10. Social media was niche back in the day and I only watched kids content on YouTube such as old cartoons and LPS videos. Also played online and CD games.

I mostly grew up on physical media such as hand held consoles, VHS, DVD's, books, and Leap Frog products. Saturday morning cartoons were still around and I can remember waking up very early in the morning to record Qubo on my VCR. Aside from that I would always watch PBS Kids or wait for The Simpsons to come on around 7.

Comparing to nowadays. Digital media dominates everyday lives. There is more to choose from. No kid these days needs to wait to watch cartoons till Saturday. (unless if their parents can afford cable) Or watch the same thing everytime on DVD. But of course there is still cons to the latter. Especially on the internet where it is like a jungle.

I wouldn't want to grow up with today's internet like today's children do. They have access to an amazing amount of information to learn from, but I would bet that few kids are able to find and latch onto such intellectually nourishing things among all the attention-grabbing trash.

I have seen some notable exceptions to this, like young people with blogs about things they've learned that show surprisingly deep understanding of niche things. But there will probably always be some exceptional people like that.

I don't know if it's specifically due to the Internet, but people seem much more up in each other's business these days. I hate that now, and would also have hated it as a kid.

Considering how essential the internet has become for modern living in the western world, I feel that parents trying to shelter their kids & teens from the internet end up setting their kids up for major hardship as adults. It's extremely difficult to find & apply for jobs without going online. The internet is practically required to graduate college these days & it can be extremely difficult for some people with college degrees to get hired for minimum-wage jobs. Not knowing how to use the internet & other modern technology can make it next to impossible to obtain gainful employment. I bet a lot of the parents who sheltered their kids & teens from the internet would majorly complain & resent their kids still living at home as adults due to them being unable to afford to move out

However as I mentioned in my first post in this thread, the internet can potentially get kids & teens into major trouble & even be a factor in some getting killed or killing themselves. It seems like no matter what parents do or do not do they may end up inadvertently causing major problems for their kids. I do NOT envy decent parents trying figure out what's best for their kids.

I don't envy the parents or the kids. Some of my friends I grew up with have kids close to graduating highschool, and they've done a really good job it seems. But I consider them to be exceptionally good people.

That's an interesting point about not sheltering kids from the Internet. People like Jonathan Haidt like to argue that sheltering kids from playing out on the street unsupervised wound up making them more fragile. Maybe there's a parallel for Internet use.

On the other hand, when I was a kid my parents let me play out on the street with my friends and I felt like the neighbors would watch over us or at least could be trusted to say something if something dangerous was happening. I don't have that feeling about the Internet, really.