alt Hacker NewsInternet addiction in the early millennium wasn't so destructive, because so much internet content was somehow related to quality interaction with other people. You could meet cool new people (even occasionally IRL friends) from forums and blogs, and they were a hub for discussion for real-life communities like music-band fandom or travel subcultures.
Besides the deleterious nature of engagement-maximizing social media today, I think another aspect of the problem is that there is less connection to real-life socializing simply because that has collapsed in so many countries.
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Even 25 years ago being “too online” - back then it was icq, livejournal, and forums - was already destructive as hell and always led to some pretty cringe outcomes. At least these days some people make a career out of it, back then it was purely negative
> so much internet content was somehow related to quality interaction with other people
That still exists. Except now it's not in IRC or BBSes but in Discord "servers" instead.
> Internet addiction in the early millennium wasn't so destructive, because so much internet content was somehow related to quality interaction with other people. You could meet cool new people (even occasionally IRL friends) from forums and blogs
My experience has been the opposite. The people I knew who got seriously addicted to the internet a couple decades ago were mostly not thriving online among cool other people. They were getting dragged down into swirling cesspools of the time.
4chan has been around for over 20 years. A lot of the gaming communities and forums were toxic and brutal back then. There were social news sites, content mills, and personality cults back then too.
I think there’s some glorification of the past that happens in these threads. The old internet was full of toxic and addictive things, too. It was just less common to be immerse in it because you had to go to a physical computer and, if you go back far enough, dial up and occupy the house phone line. There were natural limits to how exposed most people would get.
> You could meet cool new people
My first date was a guy with fake photos. Ten dates later I settled for a married guy cheating on his wife. He eventually divorced but then I left him.
Sorry, but teenage me, growing up late 90s, wildly disagrees with this statement.
It's always been addictive and destructive. I was staying up past 3am to talk to my American friends, knowing I'd have to get up at 7am to get to school.
Painting the past with such a rose brush does not help anyone.
Yep... back then, the internet was a way people would discuss and organize their real world interests and activities, like clubs and usergroups would organize their next meeting... and then meet, off the internet.
Now, it's all just online drivel that never turns into anything else.
This is a big part of it for me. The old Internet was full of individuals sharing deep passion--whether on a personal website or on a forum. There was a sense of connecting to another human being.
This is the only forum-style site I regularly interact with, and I must admit that I rarely try to remember another username here. The effect is that I interact with ideas, not people. And there is some deep connection between behaviors I might label as addiction and a felt sense of isolation.