Would you consider yourself "raised by the internet"?

[TheMessengerVEVO]

i pretty much consider english my mother tongue instead of russian because i got to it first due to youtube, aka internet. lol.

[halcybutton]

yeah, if not "raised by" it then definitely it being pretty influential in my life. i got an ipod touch when i was young, and then started roleplaying on instagram. definitely met a lot of really bad people on there and saw bad stuff too. hell, i ran "the gauntlet" when i was like 11 or something. i don't exactly know who i'd be without the internet, as it's pretty much the only way i can socialize even nowadays (yay disabilities and social stigmatization!); i'd probably have less baggage, but the internet was not the only thing that messed me up. i also wouldn't have met the friends that helped me get through having a shitty home, and i wouldn't have met the love of my life. i've got mixed feelings about my experiences overall.

[2010]

honestly probably :"O i dont remember life without the internet , its been a part of my life ever since i was a toddler n around the age of 10 i started to get really obsessed w/ it to the point i stopped going outside most of the time due to the fact i would just be sitting at my computer , unable to get my attention away for a second to get out til it was too late T_T when i moved from that house tho , i didnt have anywhere to be / go a majority of the time since i was in online school so i spent most of my days inside , online ! i still spend alot of time online , but i have a job now so i get out more than i used to! as for my world view n how the internet's played a part in it , im not sure honestly ? at least how it would differ if the internet wasnt such a big part in my life
for pretty much all my teens years , ive honestly have relied on it for socializing n making friends since i rarely had another outlet
upside , ive got a lot of friends online !! love them dearly :] downside , i dont really know how to make friends irl. at least ones i can talk to n see often .
as a kid i was often on youtube (still true) n virtual worlds! (animal jam, fantage, moshi monsters, etc! i was obsessseddd w virtual worlds) preteen years - now i also frequent deviantart n discord alot!
ive met alot of wonderful people fortunately , some bad - people i do not wish to be around but thats the internet for ya
ive also met my boyfriend!! he came to visit me in june :D

i remember when the pandemic started , i honestly felt at the time like my world didnt change much (which it did have an effect on everybody, including me) but when the world practically shuts down , its kinda horrific that my personal world did not majorly change
the internet can be a terrifying place , but im glad it gave me an escape / second home from my isolating teen years

[musicobsessed107]

Yes. I spent a good chunk of my free time as a child playing Flash/Shockwave/Unity Web Player games online and watching random YouTube videos on the family laptop (when videos on YouTube for the most part still had the home made feel to them, especially on smaller channels). I remember spending a lot of my online time on MMORPGs like Binweevils, which in a way felt like a safe haven for me as a kid who was excessively bullied throughout most of elementary school for no good reason. Up until the age of 10, I got to mostly experience the good side of the web, even in spite of hardly being supervised online.

However, the dark side of growing up on the internet showed itself around the time I got a smartphone at the young age of 11 and got instantly hooked, to the point where it almost became an extra limb to me. It took me until the age of 14 1/2 for me to realize that this isn't right and I started to develop a burning hatred for those addictive slabs of glass and the state of the current web and modern culture. I also never really had much of an interest for most modern social media websites (except for YouTube) even in spite of most of my peers becoming absolutely obsessed with those sites. I just didn't get why they were so into modern social media and what the hype was all about. It felt like my brain was being poisoned from these sorts of addictive devices that I'd keep staring into even while I was out in public, not truly being able to live in and enjoy the moment thanks to the slab of glass I was given so prematurely.

Since then, I've gotten into older and obscure websites (including web forums such as this one) and finally ditched my smartphone for a 4G flip phone in June 2023. I also find that DuckDuckGo makes it easier to find obscure websites from search results than Google currently does.

There are good and bad parts of the web. You just have to know which sites and search engines to use or avoid and how to continue running older games and game software via certain browsers, applications, and browser extensions/plugins. It's also good to know when to log off and go live in the real world for once.

[Audball]

I would definitely consider myself raised by the internet. I was the stereotype of "child with unrestricted internet access" growing up, for better and for WAY WAY worse. I was never a socializer and, while I had my little friend groups, majority of my socializing was online. In my early childhood I talked mainly on various forums such as RadioSega (I got banned from there for acting like a robot lol. Oh to be young...), LEGO.com's message boards, the codebreakers forums, etc.

Of course I had my fair share of traumatizing experiences online (mainly just the classic "seeing certain videos or gifs that were burned into your mind forever in a negative way"), but I also made a lot of friends over the years. Helped run a Facebook page back in the day that got 10,000+ likes which was big for us back then. I also became engrained in the old Chatango chatroom for the Vinesauce streamer group. This was after the group stopped using Chatango in favor of Twitch chat, but it still had it's small group of stragglers. Majority of my internet friends that I still talk to are from those days. The others have drifted away over the years.

I feel myself pulling away from the internet as a whole lately, but I doubt I'll ever fully leave because of said internet friends. People tell me they'll be surprised if I still use a smartphone in 5 years time lol. I think the straw that broke the camel's back for me with technology in general was both going to college for IT (dropped out because it just started making me hate computers) and also smartphones getting rid of the headphone jack. I HATE wireless headphones/earbuds.