If you grew up without the Internet, do you think that your childhood was any better or worse because of it?

I was 9 going on 10 the first time I used it and at that age, it was just for games, I didn't get an email account until I was 13. Better or worse, I couldn't say because originally we had the dial up that you'd get kicked off after 10 minutes and lose what you were doing, so we never had too much time to get into trouble on it.

I grew up without it. I can't say whether it was better or worse, since I only know from not having it.

I grew up without even a computer, since home computers were unheard of back in the 1970's. The only technology I had was an Atari game system that plugged into the TV (of which there was no remote, so you had to get up off your ass to change the channel! )

I think I'm no worse off for not having internet/computers as a child, but I do like the convenience factor they provide for school projects--you don't have to arrange your schedule around when the library is open so you can go thumb through the encyclopedias and old newspapers, to do your research for a paper you have to write for school.

Without. Did just fine without it. Honestly, I don't think the internet is such a good thing. It has its value but I don't think it outweighs the bad.

I was in my middle teens when I first got online, so yes and no. Honestly, though, I don't think the Internet is at all essential for kids to have access to and probably causes more trouble than good.

Well, YEAH! I grew up without the Internet. I'm the first gen to even have TV, and that was just 4 channels.

I did OK without it. I was writing for publications on a manual typewriter and in 1995 at the age of 50 got my first computer, an e-mail account at Usenet or the county and started e-mailing my articles to publishers. Made it easier than double spacing for editing and we could communicate immediately for any changes.

Later, when I got more than 4 MB of RAM, I got into the graphic side of the Internet, eventually graduating from dialup to DSL, where I am today. Wasting my time when I could be doing something more productive.

In 1983 my genius bro had us online... i was 8yrs old. online with a commodore 64. We did play games, but also had chat lines... and the now non-existent personal BBS where you would dial into someone's personal computer for message boards and chat.

I think my school years were easier, because i would download from the encyclopedias online, then word process things to do reports. The teachers did not know what hit them because they never heard of such things back then. I always got A's.

however, my mom was paying a fortune! It was 10 cents per minute to be online, a monthly $30 service fee, AND you had to pay a toll call to dial in... so in all, my mom was paying $500 a month just for us to be online and chat with people! :O What i could have done with that money! lol

For the most part, but now I've been online for almost 1/2 my life.

I didn't get it until I was 14....and then I didn't start really going online until I was like 15/16. My childhood was fine without it.

Hyacinth Girl wrote:

I grew up without even a computer, since home computers were unheard of back in the 1970's. The only technology I had was an Atari game system that plugged into the TV (of which there was no remote, so you had to get up off your ass to change the channel! )

PONG!!!

I was 10 when my father bought the first TV in the extended family in 1949. Home computers were totally unheard of and actually un-thought of as well. I was about 60 when we got our first home computer. I remember reading once about a computer someone was using it took a whole room to house it.

Yeah I didn't get the Internet until I was in college.

Myself, I had a computer since I was about twelve years old; but didn't have access to the Internet until around age sixteen.