Born in 2004, I barely used the internet as a kid. Most my video games were off of CDs, and I occasionally got to use my dad’s Steam account. In like 4th grade I played some Wizards101, League of Legends, and some flash games, and started watching Minecraft youtubers. Besides that I mostly used the internet to download Minecraft mods. I kinda eased into the internet that way so I never really was surprised at having so much accessible to me.

I didn’t get on social media until I got on Reddit in high school. I tried Tumblr a bit but didn’t like it since it was too different. I still don’t use Twitter or anything, just Reddit and Lemmy and occasionally Pinterest.

Do you understand how insane it is to have the aggregate of all human knowledge — the only comparable thing once being a physical library

I’m learning to build a house. The internet is useless. The pile of 1980s books in my FIL’s basement is teaching me the vast majority. The internet could be a wonderful thing. But, it’s primarily profit optimized bullshit. The only exception I’ve found is video-based basic computer science instruction.

Latish Gen Z here, it never really needed to click. Its been there the whole time, so it’s just a norm part of life, like it’s always been. Like, I get that it’s insane, but it’s not out of the norm for me, because it IS my norm. My parents were decently strict when I was little, but once I hit my tweens they gave me a LOT of slack.

Yo some deleted their comments presumably because you’re millennial, GenX, whatever — I still find your comments interesting!

nothing to see here :)

I’m a millennial, so I guess I grew up with the internet, but wasn’t something I really used myself until high school. I remember the “information superhighway” term pushed a lot in grade and middle school. My family only had dial-up until after I graduated high school, mainly because my parents were concerned I would spend too much time on the internet (they were 100% right lol). I wasn’t allowed on the internet at home unless I had to do research for a school project. I ended up having a do a lot of “research” for a while.

In high school, I got my hands on a second-hand laptop, so I would take it to friends houses or wherever I could get a wifi connection and screw around on the web. I spent a lot of time on Newgrounds and AIM before Youtube was a thing. I learned how to find the .swf files in the browser cache so I could rewatch flash videos when I was offline. I also learned some things about my family while browsing the browser cache, but I’ll be keeping those secrets.

I never used Napster, but did use Kazaa and similar to download music and such.

I didn’t quite understand how insane it is to have access to that much knowledge until later. To me, the internet was a convenient place to do research, play games, watch funny videos, and chat with friends.

GenX here. Got my first computer for HS graduation in 1994. My class had 70 kids in it, we had about 300 kids in total Freshmen to Seniors in a town of 2,500 people. I commuted to college to save money and signed up for a 1-hour seminar so I could get a Linux shell account through the university. From there I could fight to dial into one of twenty phone lines where I could surf the net as text using lynx at 2400 baud. I bought “The Internet Yellow Pages” because I wanted to find Archie & FTP sites to go look up stuff like the MIT lockpicking guide because search engines didn’t yet exist and knowing how to lockpick sounded edgy and cool.

I say this to set the scene for you. Because when I found out that there were people out there in the world on Usenet (when it was still a worldwide forum for discussion) just as geeked out about G1 Transformers as I was, it was something special. The same went for music, comics, books, games, movies. People hate on social media now, and yeah it’s a huge corporate cashgrab and has allowed some real turds to float up to the surface of humanity. But back then, it let rural gay kids find each other too. It let anime nerds find literally anyone to talk to about their hobby. Neurodivergent types could go post for hours with other neurodivergent types about their passions and it was ok. All of us that felt isolated and abnormal everywhere else in real life, could finally feel a sense of belonging with our “online friends.”

The realization “I’m not alone” was a life changing feeling. Like all the pressure being let out of the instapot. It rapidly changed how I viewed people different than myself. It opened my eyes to a reality so far beyond the tiny town I grew up in with its tiny town ambitions and tiny town ideals.

And as its evolved, its changed my learning. I don’t know how to explain the effort necessary to learn new things before search engines. If no one in your small circle had the answer to your problem, it required sitting at a computer and trying things over and over and over until you figured out the answer, for sometimes days or weeks. 2 days ago, I needed to set up a linux box up to auto-login, and after 30 seconds of googling and typing a command, it was working. And while my understanding of why it worked is shallow, I can unwind that command to understand the nuance of it online. And it seems we just take it for granted that we have our personal creativity backed by the knowledge of the whole human race when we need to tackle a problem now.

I’m not saying “kids these days got it easy,” because they’re facing problems I never imagined. But I have an intense joy at seeing how the generations after me seamlessly integrated this thing that changed my life into a device in their pocket. How they share personal struggles unashamedly with their peers, and get instant support from total strangers. How they can find their tribe online much more easily. How it’s just mundane to them now, to the point they don’t remember the specialness of it.

And it morphs all the time. Usenet became forums, became Slashdot, became Fark, became Myspace became Facebook became Twitter became Reddit became Instagram became Tiktok. Hard to believe each of those were “cool” at one point before the Enshitification took over most of them. It felt cool again when I joined Lemmy. No algorithms, slight bar for entry, not yet on the radar of big corporations, mostly perused by passionate people who wanted something outside the reach of its forebears. It feels like we are staking our claim on a little piece of the frontier again.

I was just given a computer with unrestricted internet access and learnt it that way. Of course, the internet being unrestricted made me visit some questionable and illegal websites. Including CP and some hardcore NSFL using the tor browser. But I don’t regret it (other than the last points).

How was the concept first explained to you, or when did it click?

I don’t remember. We had classes throughout elementary school that taught us how to use computers. I learned how to read the news and use email from my mom. I learned how to play games like Silkroad and StarCraft from my dad. I don’t remember who taught me how to watch videos on YouTube. It kind of felt natural I guess.

Do you understand how insane it is to have the aggregate of all human knowledge — the only comparable thing once being a physical library or university — one search away? That it’s absolutely insane you can engage in a real-time conversation with someone on the opposite side of the world? That you can find niche communities in an instant?

No, not really. I never thougt about it that way until I was much older.

Were your parents super strict about internet usage? How quickly did you find workarounds?

Very strict. I could only use the internet if it was for school work during the week days. But during the weekends, I was free to use it however I wanted.

There were no workarounds until high school when I was free to play games and surf the web as much as I wanted any day of the week.

I’m basically as old as gen z gets, '97. At home we only had dialup well after broadband was the norm, it wasn’t really worth using. Instead I learnt what the internet is and how it works at school in computer lab classes.

I was probably 7 or 8 when I made my first web page on our school intranet, they really pushed for us to be tech literate. The coolest part about this is that I grew up so tech literate that I was fully qualified for a job as a developer despite having no formal training. I did one introductory programming class in uni for a free HD and that was basically it.

Yeah, I absolutely understand the insanity of having the internet so available. We had it in my early days on school computers, but the real game changer has been smart phones. Being able to carry that information everywhere is the insane part to me.

Parents were strict, but I got around it really easily. I just used the wifi details my dad used for my Xbox to connect my iPod touch. I grew up on YouTube and podcasts from iTunes.

I’d always been amused at the fact that boomer school librarians were primarily the ones responsible for “teaching” students how to “use computers”. It really hammered home the point early on for me that you learn primarily by doing, not by being instructed.

How was the concept first explained to you, or when did it click?

I was too young to have it explained. I was just given access to computers since as far back as I can remember. And internet-connected computers almost just as far.

Do you understand how insane it is to have the aggregate of all human knowledge

I disagree with the notion that all human knowledge is reachable through the internet. I didn’t used to have this perspective until only a few years ago.

Were your parents super strict about internet usage?

I had absolutely no supervision, aside from concern over time spent playing games (which I think they perceived differently from non-game activity, which can be equally as unproductive).

How quickly did you find workarounds?

Usurped de facto control over the family router as a by product of being the only one both willing and able to “help” “administrate” it. It remained that way until the day I moved out.

I think that millennials got to enjoy a once-in-human history opportunity of digital literacy asymmetry between immediately adjacent generations. We had unprecedented freedom.

I learned how to use a computer basically all by myself. Been using computers in some way or since I was 5 or smth like that and I can’t really say that it “clicked”. I just got gradually better at it, because I was (and still am) a huge nerd.

I didn’t really use the internet much outside of IT class until I got the iPad mini at 12. I used to play games on our family PC before that and watched TV, but no internet. And even after that it was only a couple of sites (YouTube) that I knew how to use. I guess the reason I didn’t use it more heavily was because I had no real idea of what else there was and how deep it went (didn’t really Google very much, or know what to Google). I made some YT videos and assumed people would watch them. I learnt about Google images in IT class and was really impressed that there existed a Google, but for images. And somebody told me about Reddit at 14 and I remember being happy cause I had really been hoping that an everything-forum existed somewhere.

GenX-er here, FWIW. Grew up with an Apple IIc in the 80s then a pc the 90s. the IIc didn’t have internet at first, just games, productivity apps, and programming tools. that was what computers were for. back then. work and a little play.

eventually, we got prodigy for the IIc, and eventually a pc that also had Prodigy (an online service, a precursor to the internet). this was service you dialed into with a modem (screee!) and had services like an online encyclopedia and other information resources, chat rooms, some games, and other stuff to do online. it was pretty amazing for the time. eventually, we got AOL which had a lot more features, better chat rooms and email, and which eventually transitioned to an actual ISP-- then so did my family; transitioned to a local ISP, that is. Although, that was about 1994, and when i went to university a few years later, i had a dedicated T3 line in my dorm.

i was pretty fortunate, as most kids i knew didn’t have a computer at home, let alone an online/internet connection. i stayed up late most nights connected to IRC and screwing around on a lot of usenet news groups. i started learning html and building web pages. i got my hands on a copy of photoshop and immediately knew what i would be doing with the rest of my life. (and have been).

broadband internet soon became accessible to most americans, and the world changed forever. then i discovered mp3s, and the magic of torrenting was invented… the ability to instantly access any information instantly, communicate instantly with anyone, everyone, and the ability to get any media i wanted for free, whenever i wanted it… and to create anything i wanted… what a world!

growing up to see all of that unfold and to be a part of it happening is something i never don’t feel privileged to have been a part of. it was and still is amazing. i believe that the internet is one of humankind’s greatest inventions. not only that, but it’s an ongoing amalgamation of innovations, contributed to by everyone, which continues to evolve, and that makes it all the more amazing.

For my parents, it meant putting up with me installing viruses as I tried to figure out how to play Minecraft free.