Not only bigger, but more mysterious at that. Information wasn't instant and wasn't readily available. There were tales, there were rumors, there were news, and you had to rely on those for your own worldview. Anything further you had to make an expedition to your encyclopedia or library or other means to dive deeper into it. If you made an appointment with someone, you had to rely on the fact both sides will be there; No portable means of communication (easily / cheap). Now we have portable comm devices where we even use them between rooms.

As sibling comment said, I feel privileged to have experienced that, but especially the whole transition from analogue world into digital and then online. It was quite a ride. Around dotcom boom, the second wave of internet users coming online, internet was relatively widespread,. It was also heterogeneous. Quite amazing actually. Now we're down to few big walled gardens and it's definitely different and, in my opinion, worse.

It felt bigger because of a few things:

1. The world felt farther away. It was much harder to learn current events about far away places, and talk to people there.

2. The number of websites you spend most of your time on has shrunk. Facebook/Insta/TikTok is a lot of people's entire internet diet.

It totally felt bigger because so many experiences required access to specific physical objects and getting those took forever.

35mm film processing, CDs (tapes even worse), VHS . . . these were all things deemed not exactly ideal at the time.

It was happier, with plenty of opportunity for everyone and society felt like it was held up on common ground. It defnately felt bigger, because it was.