Would you consider yourself "raised by the internet"?

[grubbyfox]

I honestly dont know, I wouldn't say so? But I guess that depends on how you would describe being raised by the internet.

I loved hanging out online, and I made like online journals and chatted with randoms, used forums etc. But it was mosly just an escape or a place to chill and have fun. I grew up before the Youtube era, etc, so I wasn't really actively watching stuff online. At best, I was laughing at cartoons, games and videos at Newgrounds and AlbinoBlacksheep. But I wouldn't really say it raised me, haha.

I think my Newgrounds account is one of my oldest online accounts (that still exists). I actually joined 30th of December 2003. Nuts to think about! 20 years in a few days, oh my goddd. 

[khaos]

oh absolutely lol. at the age of 5 i was already hooked on online flash games like the ones on the disney channel, cartoon network, barbie, polly pocket, my little pony, etc. sites, and a couple years later i joined neopets and was absolutely fascinated by not only the games and pets, but the neopian times too! i checked the comics section every single week, i'd go to the artists' userlookups and read all the stories and guides on their pets' petpages, it was so so exciting <33
i remember being excited to use the neoboards as well, i even tried to convince my parents to do that whole ordeal of faxing proof of my age to use them when i was like 8 xD unfortunately they never did but. maybe it was for the best lol

speaking of my parents, i've definitely always dealt with a sort of neglectful situation with them. it's not their fault in the slightest - my mom has chronic fatigue syndrome and spends a lot of time in bed, and my dad has always been away at work most of the time, and as an only child it's easy to see how i got/still get pretty lonely (especially after the trauma i've experienced).

i did also frequent a few forums outside the neoboards, including the ones on serebii.net and especially the sonic stadium. sonic the hedgehog has practically been a lifelong interest of mine, so i spent a lot of time there. not the best idea in hindsight tbh, the mod/admin team had some unsavory people and the general community just really dampened my stance on most of the series' games to a point of cynicism. :(
i did at least get really into deviantart and made a few friends there! and youtube ofc, while i never posted anything myself i always really enjoyed staying up late and watching videos on shit like proof of ghosts and lavender town syndrome and the tails doll existing. xD

around the age of 14 i discovered a virtual pet site that i still play religiously to this day: flight rising! the overall site layout hasn't changed too drastically from what it was a decade ago, so it's always felt like a safe haven of stability in addition to feeding my lifelong obsession with dragons and character customization. <3 also found tumblr around this time too. maybe not the best decision, but at least it was still kinda niche and it was easy to find like-minded people at the time. :P

starting in 2017 was when i began to really use social media a lot due to some sudden, unfortunate circumstances, and i'm currently still trying to break my habit of checking facebook every time i pick up my phone. at the very least, on fb i did gradually accumulate what is now my absolute closest friend group in my life and i genuinely don't know what i'd do without them. they've helped me out through thick and thin over the past 6 years and we talk daily in our group server on discord, even have voice calls on a regular basis. never scheduled, just whenever everyone is available, and we'll stream movies or games and it's always a blast. i've been increasingly happier with every day i've spent chatting with them, and finding the resurgence of the old web through places like here and neocities is already keeping my mind more at ease in addition.

in short? yeah i was raised by the internet, and honestly, i'm not sure i'd have it any other way. i experienced it at the pinnacle of the web i think.

[MrsMoe]

Oh definitely. I was born in 2001 and as long as I can remember, I've always had a computer. I was using that thing as a toddler and grew up watching the internet shift into what it is now. It's kinda wild thinking about how I discovered youtube or facebook when it feels like they've just always been there.

It's definitely led to the chronically online state I'm in now though, and that makes me wonder if I'd even be the same person if I didn't grow up with a computer at all.

There's a chance I'd care a lot less about what other people think tbh...

[freaksaint]

speaking of my parents, i've definitely always dealt with a sort of neglectful situation with them. it's not their fault in the slightest - my mom has chronic fatigue syndrome and spends a lot of time in bed, and my dad has always been away at work most of the time, and as an only child it's easy to see how i got/still get pretty lonely (especially after the trauma i've experienced).

i just want to say i relate to this sooo much - it's pretty much an exact mirror of my situation as a kid. i won't get into specifics but just know you're not alone, and i think a lot of people from our generation dealt with this as well.

for the most part, i do feel like i was raised by the internet, but i was also limited by my parents when it came to certain content, which at my age was probably a good thing lol. there were a lot of maladaptive behaviors i picked up as a teen from seeing them online which iykyk - it's a slippery slope, especially when it's normalized. but as a kid my internet use was completely wholesome. growing up online safety was drilled into our heads and because of that i was terrified to talk to anyone online outside of a moderated forum setting (ae neopets). i later got over that fear once i learned about stuff like VPNs and that kind of thing.

i spent most of my online time in my childhood on roleplaying forums, playing MMOs (i loved anything nexon games put out), on miniclip, and earlier on it was almost exclusively club penguin and webkinz for like two years straight. i was almost never exposed to anything inappropriate because my interests were very age-appropriate - however i do have a scarring memory of accidentally downloading malware via limewire as a kid that made me terrified to even use the computer for like a year straight lol.

but overall i don't think being 'raised' by the internet for me personally was a bad thing. i'm autistic and tend to be chronically isolated most of the time anyway - it's always been like that. as a kid the internet felt like this secret portal to another world that none of my peers understood. i still got out, played outside, went on walks in my neighborhood and all that, but i also had this magical device that i was so excited to use when i got home from school. i wish it still felt like that.

[aribluejeans]

Yes, and I don't regret it. It definitely (temporarily) poisoned my brain at some point and I picked up some really unhealthy habits but the benefits far outweigh all of that for me.

I grew up in very small towns with parents that didn't do much to teach me anything about my own body and personal hygiene. I don't think I would have learned much about those things without forums.

More importantly, though, I shudder to imagine who I would be if my politics came from my parents Truly scary to think about especially considering my personal experience with gender, sexuality, and disability. When I was in middle school, I learned a lot that my parents have never bothered to learn and I think I'm a better person for having put in those years of educating myself.

[zawieja]

In part, yeah. Honestly I've had a lot of weird phases in my life when comes to the internet. We've had it first when I was 6 or 7 years old and due to some family drama the PC has been quite a companion as I've slowly learned to navigate through the online world, play games, make friends... Then in middle school when family issues calmed down I kinda... Stopped using the internet. It was a pretty great time, I did a lot of fun stuff and spent a majority of my time outside.
 
Then once again I used the internet extensively for most of high school and it definitely influenced some of my worldviews for the better in the teenage years, but at the same time, it feels like the majority of my internet usage does not makes me happy...

I'm glad I could have experienced a bit of the "two worlds" though.

[Memory]

Definitely yes. I'm not an adult yet but I've been on the internet since I was 11 years old. It's shaped my world view and identity.

[petrichoran]

i wouldn't say that i was raised by the internet exactly, because i feel like that implies i was using more mainstream websites, but i was definitely at least in part raised by virtual worlds. Webkinz, Moshi Monsters, Pixie Hollow, and Build a Bear were my favorites. i still play Webkinz pretty consistently today, and Moshi occasionally. i haven't found a great Pixie Hollow rewrite yet but hope development continues on them!

my mom played Dora games with me when i was two, and i got my Webkinz account when i was three, so computers have been a big part of my life for as long as i can remember. Webkinz in particular helped me learn to read, because i knew what certain games were or what characters were saying and i could compare that to the text by it. i would have done fine without it, because i also loved books, but it was absolutely a help. once my mom told a doctor that she was worried about my eyes because the main two things i did were read and play on the computer, both of which are eye straining.

[Misanthropic Monster™]

I've been using the internet since the mid '90s and have been chronically online for my entire adult life. I'd definitely say the internet 'raised me' but TV raised me first all through the '80s.

[ralfwause]

I would not say raised by the internet, but surely raised with help from the computer ;-) Well, i was born in '83 and my dad was perhaps the first real computer nerd in the little village here in germany where i did grow up. And i am pretty sure we were one of the first private households who had an modem... a blazingly fast 9600 baud modem connected to an Atari ST. Even today i have very vivid memories logging into BBS systems, always with one eye on the clock because time online cost real money, billed by the minute! 

Later then - at first still on the Atari, later on PCs - i discovered the first websites and, to be honest, compared to the vivid and colorfull world of the BBS systems i found it a bit boring (could be the missing door games). The Usenet on the other hand, and IRC - THAT was more interesting for me back then... i spend untold hours and many Deutsche Mark on discussions with complete strangers and learned a lot by that. It was the "on the net, nobody knows you are a dog" time and i never gave away my age... so i was always treated respectfully (at least as respectfully as the other participants trated each other), it was a good time.

I am very thankful to my dad for introducing me to the wonderfull world of computing and the net.

[prismatic]

yep, for better and for worse.

i think, prior to me using the internet, my social skills were, for a lack of a better way of putting it, terrible. at the time, i didn't really socialize during my school days since i preferred to keep to myself. this ended up being a good thing since i've made many great friends that have honestly helped me for the better and i think if it weren't for them, i'd likely be in a WAY worse spot as far as mental health is concerned. like, way worse. as in, "i don't know if i'd even be here", worse. they've really been there for me during my worst days.

at the same time, though.. not all of my internet interactions were positive. sure, i've learned better social skills and even leadership skills thanks to being staff on forums, but also there were moments where like, thanks to friendships falling apart, being made fun of, just in general very negative interactions, it affected the way that i looked at myself, perhaps for good. it gave me this sort of permanent "i feel i'm not good enough/never good enough" sort of mindset.

so while i guess the internet was a net positive socially for me and helped me develop social skills and soft skills that became essential in the work force, part of me also suffered as a result of my negative interactions. it's a mix of both good and bad, but that's not to say i don't treasure the friendships that i've made, far from it. they've become crucial to my "internet raising" (as odd as that sounds lmao), if you will. they've really helped me to be a better person and i really wouldn't be who i am without them.

[georgemoody]

i'd say so, my parents are quite the workaholics and have left me at home for large amounts of the day, couple that with the fact that i wasn't the most talkative person back in elementary and the first half of middle school and you get me runnin' down the superhighway. i don't think they mind though, one of their goals for me was to learn english and what better tool for that than the internet? In terms of worldview, i'd like to think it's been a net positive, i wouldn't have known so many social and cultural aspects of the world without the web's help. Not to mention that alongside a deep love for the computer comes a deep curiosity to explore what's beyond your room through its screen

[Nickolox]

Definitely so, raised by both computers and the internet overall.
I dunno if it would be considered sad or funny, I look back on it with humour personally, but I've been invested with the internet and computers since before I was even in school. At least since I was 3.

I have fond memories of when my ma used to own a shop, I would chill at the back on our old Windows XP computer and play The Sims 2 and look up all sorts of nonsense on YouTube, usually videos showcasing cheats in the game, I even found pictures from DeviantArt I downloaded in 2007, I've even sourced where they're from after finding it, usually finding "Speed Draw" videos that were released with them and it's certainly a throwback... @_@

The internet, computers and me have a long long twisted together history, it's been with me since nearly the beginning, and while it definitely has it's downsides... I don't really regret being raised this way, I can't imagine what it could've been like without it anyways.

[moonunions]

hmm i think so? it’s a little complicated because computers didn’t become A Big Thing until i was in middle school, and i don’t have any memories of my childhood before that time. i lived with a single mom who tried to juggle working all day with spending enough time with me, and by the time the internet was more accessible to my grubby little hands, we had turned into two completely different people. so i latched onto the computer because there were so many folks there who shared similar thoughts and feelings as me, and i finally felt like i had somewhere where i belonged.

thankfully i met adults on the internet who were more than happy to give me (good) advice, listened to me whine, cry, and sympathized with my woes, even when i was soooo damn annoying lol. i think i made most of my very early internet friends in AOL chartooms, which was… such a messy place (iykyk).

livejournal was the #1 site i existed on from late middle school to my mid-20s. that’s where i was the most social, all thanks to me signing up to roleplay in every community i could get into lol. unfortunately after six apart sold it off in 2007, everyone sort of split off to other sites bc LJ became more or less unusable. :< i think i migrated to greatestjournal and tumblr after that, but slowly lost touch with my friends since it was difficult to communicate there w/a group. i still miss them and regret not trying harder to keep them in my life.

anyway, being online so much in my formative years did me more good than bad. i honestly don’t think i would be here without it. my world was so, so tiny bc my mom had an iron grip on me. the not-so-good side of religion and racism ran deep in my family as well o)-( before discovering computers, i had some pretty narrow-minded views of the world, and i am very thankful to have been given the opportunity to learn and grow via the world wide web. ^^

thanks for coming to my ted talk!

[milo]

I would say yes.

When I was around 10 (in 1997) my mom just got a job in IT, so they hooked her up with a DSL connection at home. I had been seeing commercials on TV for websites for like nick.com or fox kids and I was pretty dang excited to check out all the games and goodies there.

From there, I learned how to use yahoo search and found treasure troves of Sonic websites and forums to hang out on. My peers at school weren't as nerdy as me so it was finally great to have an outlet for that.

This was a two way street as well, because being on the Internet exposed me to all sorts of new things and I was able to make new friends at school that I maybe wouldn't have had anything to talk about with.

During summer break, my siblings and I lived on the computer. We would take hour long shifts on it and would trade off using it all day. It's amazing how quickly that allotted hour would fly by on the Internet hahaha.

My first "relationship" was a girl I met in an anime chat room who lived across the country from me. Having an "online girlfriend" definitely helped me figure out how to talk to girls and gave me the nerve to actually try talking to girls I liked in real life later on.

So yeah... While I definitely had a life outside the Internet, it was a huge formative experience for me that taught me quite a bit.