I guess I’m curious about generations (namely GenZ and Alpha) who didn’t live in a pre-Internet time. Like,
- How was the concept first explained to you, or when did it click?
- 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?
- Were your parents super strict about internet usage? How quickly did you find workarounds?
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.