Life Before the Internet: A Nostalgic Reflection

Do you remember life before the internet?

I like this question because I do remember life before the internet. It was so much different from life now. There are days I wish I could go back. We’ve become so reliant on our phones and being “online” that trying to unplug from it is nearly impossible. I constantly find myself checking my phone even though I know no one is messaging me. Or if they are, it doesn’t require an immediate response.

But life before the internet? It was slower. You couldn’t just look things up. News traveled by mail or phone call. There was no such thing as email. What did I do without the internet? Well, I didn’t have cable growing up either, so my TV watching was limited. I mostly played outside or played with the toys I owned. I did have two brothers growing up so that was also a source of entertainment. Honestly, it was a magical time to be alive. You had to be there.

But I also remember when technology started to be introduced. I remember when AOL was the big thing. I remember when cell phones went from big, to small, to big again, so we could watch videos on them. I remember when a phone call would kick you off of the internet. I remember having a timer on how long I could be online. It was about an hour, by the way. Maybe an hour and a half. Two hours if I was lucky.

I remember when you had to buy ringtones for your cell phone. I remember when cell phones couldn’t really access the internet. If you wanted to listen to music, you had to turn on the radio, or own the music on CD, vinyl, or cassette. There was no Apple Music or Spotify. There was no iTunes either. YouTube? Didn’t exist. Truth be told, I’m even older than Google.

The internet has made life easier, but it’s also made life worse. The creation of social media has plagued us with living in a world that’s always polished. Rarely do we post things on social media that aren’t good or happy times. We live for likes on posts and photos. We yearn for the feeling of being popular. And I was there for MySpace when you could rank your Top 8 friends. I remember it all.

Ironically, while I was in the middle of writing this post, I paused to scroll Instagram for 30 seconds. It’s like our brains are trained to participate in social media and there’s no way to stop it. It’s an addiction. I don’t wish for social media to not exist. There are good uses for it, and it has allowed me to keep in contact with people I otherwise wouldn’t be able to. It’s just that sometimes, I just miss the when the internet didn’t exist.