while i understand where people are coming from i think its funny when people romanticize the old internet
“the internet now is so damaging to kids”
remember when it was like extremely easy to accidentally stumble upon beheading videos
i love the tags on this post because it’s a mix of people acting like im exaggerating and people being like “i watched 1 guy 1 jar at a slumber party when i was 10 years old”
Speaking with the benefit of having been exposed to both beheading videos and 2girls1cup as a tween, I don’t think anyone is arguing the old internet was some kind of halcyon age with no problems- it’s that the problems were different, and they could largely be avoided by developing good habits on an individual basis
I, for example, learned not to click links from unfamiliar sources, and that if I did, I might see weird porn. And if I didn’t feel comfortable potentially seeing weird porn, I didn’t click unfamiliar links. Also, I didn’t know a single adult who thought the internet was safe for kids. When I got left alone with the computer it was because I got old enough to sneak around
The modern internet is largely bad in institutional ways that are impossible to avoid without a doctorate in computer security or becoming a mole person. The way data harvesting and algorithms damage kids, the way parents have been conditioned to think parts of the internet are somehow ‘kid-friendly’- I think there’s a clear difference between those things, and I know which one worries me more