I recently listened to a podcast with Zoomers talking about their experience of growing up with the internet as they came of age. It made me realize how different things were for my generation, the Millennials. Your “coming of age” years are when you transition from childhood into adulthood, roughly from middle school through high school and college. Those years are enormously influential on your development, as the core experiences during that period influence the type of person you will ultimately become for the rest of your life. I came of age during the 1990s and early 2000s, whereas Gen-Z came of age in the 2010s and early 2020s. The year 2005 does not seem that long ago, but in many ways the world then is unrecognizable to the world young people face today—at least online.
Millennials grew up with the internet, but it was before smartphones. The first iPhone came out in 2007, which I got during my senior year of college. Before smartphones, nobody had the internet with them at all times. That makes a world of difference. I didn’t even have my own computer in high school, let alone a laptop, smartphone, or tablet (which didn’t exist yet). My family had one desktop computer in the living room for everyone to share. Laptops existed back then but were relatively rare, reserved for college students and business professionals. I didn’t get my own laptop until I went to college in late 2004. Wealthier kids in the 90s might have had their own computers in their bedrooms, but most people my age had similar set-ups: one desktop computer per household.
You couldn’t really get into trouble online when the computer was in the living room where everyone in the family could see what you were doing. Plus there was simply less trouble to get into, as the internet was in a more nascent stage. You had to be a somewhat sophisticated computer geek to figure out how to access anything beyond the AOL homepage. I’m sure there were still plenty of dark corners of the internet to be found back then, but you had to deliberately go looking for trouble online, whereas now the trouble comes to you.
My parents rarely used the family computer, but I had to share it with three sisters. Four people sharing a single computer would seemingly cause a lot of issues—and it sometimes did1—but not as much as you would think. There simply wasn’t that much to do online yet. This was before social media, before YouTube, before even blogs. Just about all anybody did online was chat with their friends from school on AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) or talk to strangers with shared interests on message boards. That’s basically all the internet was during my high school years (2000 to 2004): AIM and message boards. People my age didn’t even use email. So I would really only spend an hour or so online each day, chatting with friends from school on AIM, browsing a couple message boards, and downloading songs from Napster—or Morpheus—or Kazaa—which took way too long.
The Millennial teenager’s limited internet experience had to be healthier for their mental and physical development than the ubiquitous smartphone internet experience of Gen-Z. Today, every child has their own computer, so they can be online at home all day long—and they often are. But they also have another computer in their pockets (their smartphone) that keeps them online 24/7. It’s hard to overstate how much that affects the mental state of a person. No matter where you are, you are always online, connected to the entire world, with a constant newsfeed. And on social media, people are commenting directly about you, often in not-so-flattering ways. There are obvious benefits to constant connectivity, but also significant drawbacks.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that the internet has expanded so dramatically since the 90s. There are now infinite rabbit holes to get lost in. You can spend your whole day on the internet if you want to—and I sometimes do. There is never a lack of things to do online. But there was something healthier about the way we used the internet in the late 90s and early 2000s. Back then, you would only want to go online for an hour or two before getting bored or being forced to leave the computer because your sibling wanted their turn, and so you’d have to do something else, like watch TV or go outside and play. Not that TV is that much better than the internet2, but I did spend a lot of time outside as a kid.
I don’t know that I would want to fully go back to the 90s internet, but it might be healthier for society, especially young people, to have a life where the internet is less pervasive and we are forced to spend more time outside with other people in person. To that end, the world might be better off without smartphones. We could still have the internet and all the benefits that come with it, but it wouldn’t be with us 24/7 wherever we go. Instead, the internet would be a place you consciously chose to visit for a few hours a day, as opposed to being default-connected at all times. That way, when you’re not online, you’re fully present in the real world, rather than constantly toggling back and forth between the two worlds (digital vs. physical) with every notification you receive on your phone.
The internet is one of the greatest inventions in human history, but the iPhone might have been a mistake. What if people decided to ban smartphones in the future for the betterment of society? I explored that idea in a story on my Substack, Time Zone Weird. I’m not saying such a ban should happen or will. But it might be conducive for parents to mimic life in the 90s by limiting smartphone and internet use for their children, especially during their key coming-of-age years. Do not be Luddites—let kids go online—but make sure they also touch grass.
T.Z. Barry 