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

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Given the massive increase in my breadth of experience since getting online in December, 1994, I often wonder how my life may have been different, if I had had access to the Internet (as we know it today) since, say age 8 or so?

I'll be 55 in December, so I would have turned 8 at the end of 1976.

I imagine that finding "myself" and my "people" would have been great. And being able to so easily explore my many odd interests would have likely been of great joy, too, facilitated by such easy access to the totality of the human experience and its knowledge base, but who knows?

I may have become even more reclusive than I did otherwise, if I had been identified or self-identified as a "medically explainable outsider", as I was so recently diagnosed to be, rather than just a late bloomer, as I thought so often in my real life.

I strived over and over to "live a normal life", and failed at much of it. What if I had been able to seek out knowledge that lay beyond my narrow, blinkered existence as a child, and found SOME kind of connection to others, and a path in life that didn't seem so beset with hair-trigger landmines, always ready to blow me right into the weeds, over and over?

I'm curious what the others here of, say, age 45+ think about this?

I can only answer for myself, but for me it would have been disastrous. If I’d been provided with an escape from real life interactions, I would have taken it so fast. But I was forced to push through my severe social anxiety and learn to relate to people in real life.

But like I said, that’s just my testimony. Not everybody has my particular set of circumstances, so it might not work for everybody.

That being said, it would have been reassuring to know other people out there think like me. (I don’t mean holding same opinions, but use the same thought processes)

When I was a kid the internet was boring outside of a few game sites.

Then when I was about 11 I began to find interest in dog websites.

Then as a teen I was an internet junkie.

I think I turned out ok, but I'm glad we don't have the internet we have today when I was preteen. It's dangerous for children to be on social media. Most of what was there was simply people's websites, and some forums. I was on a couple forums, starting at age 13.

I started looking at the internet when I was 18, in 1995. I was looking for Warhammer stuff for my boyfriend. Didn't find much as I recall. I used to play Windows 95 games.

If I had the internet as a kid, I would have looked at forums about sports because I was pretty active then. I don't think I would have looked up anything about autism as it would not have occurred to me. As it is, it didn't occur to me until I was 27 to have a look.

Two things happened in 1994, or thereabouts.

Al Gore invented the Internet (he actually was involved in changing laws to enable the Net to expand to the general public).

And the medical establishment expanded the diagnosis of autism to a "spectrum" that included more people including folks on this thread, like moi, who were not counted as "austistic" before.

So its really the combination of those two things that you are talking about because you seem to be asking about the Net as a way connect with other aspies/autistics. New medicine combined with new tech both happening in the mid Nineties.

Will hafta ponder it to give an answer.

I wouldn't have benefited from it because I used to play out all the time

I wouldn't have used it. I did my best to go out and wander the streets, hang with certain people or go down by the river by myself. My house was not a place I cared to be, and I doubt internet access would have changed that much. Had my house not ben so chaotic though, I likely would have gotten into it and been a total recluse years ago.

My parents didn't have internet at home till after I graduated high-school in 2001 & I was 18 at the time. Looking back now I believe that was a good thing because I probably woulda gotten myself in major trouble if we had the net sooner. I might of been the victim of a grooming type situation tryng to secretely meet up with someone I met online. Plus I woulda stayed up all night on school nights looking at porn, some of which might of been majorly illegal. I got in my 1st relationship at 20 with a girl I met online because we had a common interest & both had dyslexia & ADHD & were online best friends. We ended up having major problems after a while & I had a mental breakdown when we broke up. I imagine things woulda been a lot worse if I was in high-school at the time.

I don’t think I would have used the ‘internet’ when I was a kid. My father was an early programmer in the 70-80’s, and on the occasions I saw him he would try and teach me about computers, but I just wasn’t interested.

In regards to Al Gore, he promoted legislation that allowed funding for expanding the ARPANET internet system created by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn, and was one of its strongest proponents. But I think when we use the word
‘Internet, what we actually mean is the World Wide Web, which is what the public mainly uses. That was creating by a British man called Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

I can't remember exactly when I got on the Internet but it was mid to late 90s, i would have been 16 or 17. I had a dial-up modem and I used to use those free AOL cds that they gave away on the front of magazines.

It was so exciting to me. I used to love chat rooms because I could finally talk to people in the most natural way for me - text. And I was talking to people from all over the world, not just my dumb little town.

But the Web then was very different from what it has become. It was a haven for oddballs and I felt at home.

Now if I could hit a button and delete the Internet I would. I suppose its still early days but I see it as a net negative now in all sorts of ways.

I feel sorry for kids growing up under its influence.

I'm only 19 which for these forums is certainly young. Unfortunately I was exposed to the more modern internet at a young age. I didn't really truly start using the internet for anything outside of youtube until about 2015 when I was 10. I was diagnosed at a young age so I always knew *something* was wrong with me but I didn't know what exactly until one day a couple years later I asked my mom about it and looked it up. I was later exposed to communities like /r/aspergers which opened my eyes to why I was so weird. It was a very good feeling to finally see that there were people out there who understood my struggles to be normal. I think if I were born without the internet not much would change though. If I wanted to know more about aspergers I would have to go out and find books about it instead of using the internet. I think I was around 13 or 14 when I discovered aspergers communities online so most of the benefits such a community could have brought me had already passed.
Edit: grammar

I don't think I would have used the Internet in the 1980s. I would have been too interested in books and reading.

I started using the internet when I was 11.

I'm 63. I hated school when I was a kid. I didn't really care about interacting with anyone and since I was relentlessly bullied, I didn't much care for the daily stress of wondering if this was going to be the day that I got my head shoved into a toilet or if something else was going to happen to me.

In thinking about my experiences and contrasting them with younger people who grew up with the internet, I think that as much as I hated going to school, the process of this helped to emotionally toughen me because of all of the experience I got through daily social interactions. If virtual learning had been available and if I hadn't gone to an in-person school, I think my life might have emulated the lives of so many other young people. I would have graduated from high school and gone to college (on-line) and found myself unable to leave my home because my ability to interact with others in-person would have been sadly lacking.

Don't get me wrong.

I absolutely hate having to interact with anyone in-person but despite this, I was able to work as a teacher for 32 years. I don't think I would have had the emotional stamina to do this if I hadn't attended physically attended school.

School is after all more than just a matter of academics. Learning how to interact with others, knowing how to be a productive member of a cooperative group, understanding when to talk and when to listen - these are all valuable social skills which can only be attained in-person through face to face contact.

I can't even begin to estimate how many people I've met via reddit who are unable to leave their homes. Some can't even go on-line to interview for a job. One person I met was a Ph.D. student. He went to elementary school, high school, and later pursued a bachelor's and then a master's online. Part of the reason he became a professional student is that he couldn't handle being in the real world. He couldn't interview for a job. He didn't know how to work with others. By pursuing a Ph.D. he was creating the illusion of being active and doing something important but a good part of what he was doing involved avoidance behavior so that he could defer having to finally find a job.

Instead of bullying during or just after school it would have been 24/7. I would have been as messed up mentally as Gen Z

I thank God the internet was not around when I was growing up in the 60s and 70s.

Children grow up way too soon these days.