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.