I first got online in about 1984, via JANET (the UK's Joint Academic Network). Then Bitnet, then corporate networking via DECnet, added in UUCP, finally IP in about 1987. I say all this not to show off, but to add context to what I find myself saying so often:
it wasn't better back then, you were just younger.
I think it can be both. Pop culture is never as meaningful as when you're fourteen years old, and there can be secular trends where things get better and worse.
For example, I grew up in the US during the 90s. It was a great time because I was a teenager and because the 90s were a local maximum of life in the US being good. Do teenagers in the US now have as good a time? I don't think so, in general. Did teenagers in Russia in the 90s have as good a time? Probably not Russia was having problems in the 90s.
(I hope my examples don't inflame national or generational passions; I didn't mean it that way. They were just the first examples that came to mind and they could be broadly relatable.)
Agreed. And there were plenty of ugly aspects to early Internet (and BBS etc) culture. And it was much smaller and in some ways even kind of claustrophobic compared to now.
My teens extract their own content from it. What's more curious about today is that it's not "The Internet" that is the focus -- it's so ubiquitous and not-novel that it's just a fact/part of life and blurs in with just daily socializing and consumption. Almost mundane.
I first got online in about 1984, via JANET (the UK's Joint Academic Network). Then Bitnet, then corporate networking via DECnet, added in UUCP, finally IP in about 1987. I say all this not to show off, but to add context to what I find myself saying so often:
it wasn't better back then, you were just younger.