How many people here grew up without internet or computers?

[Remobz]

First off, I am not sure if this question should be for the people growing up in developed Countries or not?

Would it be safe to say that anyone over 42 years old were the last generation to MOSTLY grow up without technologies such as computers, internet and cell phones that are common place today?

As for me, I NEVER owned my own personal computer until I was 24 tears old. Never bothered with a cell phone until I was over 30 years old. Never had internet until I was 24 years old.

However, I did use computers at school for home work and the odd friend who owned one between the ages of 20 and 24.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I'm not sure if this counts, but we got our first computer in year 2000, so I would have been 14 or so. Before that I had used computers here and there including my sister's university computer that was setup at our house for a bit, but generally did not grow up with them. It was NES and SNES that I grew up with. That and play grounds, forest and other outside stuff.

I do remember in school when they introduced the computer lab though, but it was a pretty big privilege if you go to spend class there. They were Unisys Icons. I think it ran some kind of Unix like OS, but I don't remember enough and did not know enough about computers then. I do recall they had a big track ball that was part of the keyboard. At one point we got a windows computer that had internet, that was all the rage.

 

[Iron Woode]

I was taking computer courses back in high school in 1980.

in 1981 I got my first computer: a Commodore Vic20.

 

[Kaido]

Most of my exposure to computers happened in the late 90's. I was in high school then, so probably around 16 years old or so. We had tinkered with a DOS computer & Atari before that, but we got a Win98 PC & a dial-up connection and that got us started. Really wanted to play Half-Life, learned how to upgrade a video card & RAM, and kind of went from there. So really it's probably been about 17 years of solid access to computers.

I got an iPhone as soon as it came out & have had one ever since, so about 9 years for mobile (plus a few oddball flip phones & a Dell Axim before that). Can't imagine life without one...I'd be totally crippled for communications (voice, SMS, email, social media), GPS, calendar & appointments & reminders, banking, entertainment (games, news, podcasts), authentication for secure access to different 2FA websites, and most of all, my 24/7 camera.

My 4-year-old has no idea what physical media is. Netflix & Spotify is all he knows - endless movies to watch & music to dance to. He got his first tablet a year or two ago (Android tablet with a kid's GUI & big rubber bumper case) and uses a ton of learning games, interactive story books, education videos, etc. Just upgraded him to a newer, faster 6" Kindle Fire for $79 for Christmas, which lets him play Minecraft (sooooo much cheaper than buying Legos!).

It's a crazy world. I watched a bit of the show "Revolution", where the power went out one day worldwide & they whole planet reverted back to like the 1800's style of living...horses, muskets, farming, etc. Scary to think about how much we rely on technology. Online dating is still a new & weird idea for me, but over half my friends (early 30's) have met their spouses on dating apps like eHarmony. I can't remember the last time I had to go to the bank or stop & ask somebody for directions. I even order pizza online these days! Probably at least 80% of what I buy is from Amazon, which has started to include household items like paper towels & cans of tuna.

It is interesting to see how people live without technology. I have family all over the place, and when I visit family or friends who live in the Deep South, a lot of them are definitely not caught up on the times...they still have Nokia cell phones, beige computers, tube TV sets, etc. I helped a roommate of an older friend change her lightbulb in her house (probably mid 80's) because she couldn't reach it...it was the only one in the main room of their small shared house, no idea that LED bulbs that basically last forever even existed.

Makes me feel very blessed to have access to the technology that I have...iPhone, Chromebook, Roku, e-Ink Kindle, etc. The amount of clutter in my life has been drastically reduced as well. All of my music is digital now...no records, tapes, or CD's. All of my movies have been digitized...no VHS tapes, DVD or Bluray discs. Although I do have printed photos on my wall, all of my photos are digitized on my computer & backed up online. I have a simple computer station setup in my kitchen with a multi-function printer & shredder for scanning in mail & other documents & shredding the paper copy. The scanner OCR's the resulting PDF & I drop it in my Dropbox for backup & access on my phone, so I don't have any paperwork lying around other than a small lockbox full of originals (Social Security card, birth certificate, etc.). Home entertainment furniture has been replaced with super-thin flatscreen TV's & projectors, no need to go to the movie theater unless it's a big release I want to see like Star Wars.

I learn pretty much everything from Youtube or Google & Wikipedia these days...how to do plumbing, how to fix crap that breaks in my house or on my car, how to cook, everything. The answer to any question I have is a few keystrokes away. My buddy has the Amazon Echo, so all he has to do is...ask. And we take it all for granted because that's just how we roll these days! Craziness.

 

[balloonshark]

I'm a little older than 42 and remember my parents having some sort of gaming device hooked to the tv when I was young. Later we got an Atari 2600. After that they bought me an Atari 600XL computer in the mid to late 80's. I was only connecting to local BBS's though. I remember one month I had a $100 long distance charge so I could try CompuServe.

I don't think I got on the internet until much later. I've only had a cell for about 10 years. I finally go my first smart phone in 2015.

It was nice growing up without a ton of electronics in your face. I use to love technology but now it feels like its only purpose is to enslave us.

 

[zinfamous]

Dad bought his first IBM when I was ~5 or 6, maybe, but I never used that thing for anything other than typing papers (or, rather, he or mom typing the final drafts that I had hand-written).

At the same time, we had one of those keyboards that you plug into the TV, and the magnetic tape player with those tape games--like the cookie monster game.

It wasn't until ~94 or 95, age 16ish, that we got a 8mhz Pentium and our first "real" computer that I actually used. Still, never really activated the modem or started an account with some ISP. Outside of typing papers on that thing, I used it to play WC II and Diablo, and not much else.

I didn't get onto the internet my first year of college, in 97.

 

[Fingolfin269]

I think there is probably a point where you can make assumptions based on age but there is a blurring. I was born in '77 and did have a C64 when I was around 9 or so. But that was the exception. I have no idea how I even drew interest in owning one since my parents didn't have any computer knowledge and neither of them ever touched the C64. None of my friends did either as far as I can remember. All of them had or wanted an NES and none really cared about computers.

I do remember having to explain to friends why we eventually added a 2nd phone line at the house though.

 

[ultimatebob]

I didn't have Internet access at home until 1995, when I was already 18 years old. I had a PC a few years before that, but it wasn't online so I just used it for games and Word Processing.

Ya know what? It really sucked. You had to look things up in dictionaries and encyclopedias, or go to the school library to research it further. Oh, and if your parents told you something that it was total BS, it usually wasn't worth arguing about it because you couldn't quickly refute it with a quick Google search. As a know it all teenager, that was really annoying for me

It made having broadband access in college that much more awesome.

The downside is that my kid will be a quick Siri voice search away from calling out her dear old dad when I say something stupid

 

[Engineer]

First off, I am not sure if this question should be for the people growing up in developed Countries or not?

Would it be safe to say that anyone over 42 years old were the last generation to MOSTLY grow up without technologies such as computers, internet and cell phones that are common place today?

As for me, I NEVER owned my own personal computer until I was 24 tears old. Never bothered with a cell phone until I was over 30 years old. Never had internet until I was 24 years old.

However, I did use computers at school for home work and the odd friend who owned one between the ages of 20 and 24.

I'm 47 and had my first 'computer' at the age of 14 (Tandy Model 4). My first PC was at the age of 18 (Another Tandy model: 1000SX). Internet wasn't really made very available until about the mid 90's - my first being IBM.NET dialup service.

I've had a computer in one form or another for the last 33 years.

 

[Sonikku]

Grew up in the 80's but didn't have a computer until about 93. Got a dial up modem installed in the PCI slot in 95. So happened my downward spiral.

 

[Spydermag68]

My family had an Apple ][ clone and an IBM PC, 8086, with a 10 megabyte drive. I remember going to sneaker net parties and getting games from people.

I was the first one in the family to have and e-mail address and Internet. My first computer I had was an IBM 186 XT and one of the only people in Computer Science that had his own computer.

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

Took my first computer class during my junior year of high school in 1976. It was a huge machine that used pink punch tape and couldn't do much on its own. It required time connected to a mainframe to actually do any significant calculations.

After that is was Macs in the mid-80s until the early 90s. Bought my first PC in 93. By '95 I was building my own systems. I remember buying Windows 95 at midnight and staying up until 5am to finish the install.

imo, computers were important, but not nearly as important as cell phones. If we had cell phones like we have now back in my day most of you youngsters wouldn't be here...because we all would have been fucking someone else instead.

 

[Engineer]

Took my first computer class during my junior year of high school in 1976. It was a huge machine that used pink punch tape and couldn't do much on its own. It required time connected to a mainframe to actually do any significant calculations.

After that is was Macs in the mid-80s until the early 90s. Bought my first PC in 93. By '95 I was building my own systems. I remember buying Windows 95 at midnight and staying up until 5am to finish the install.

imo, computers were important, but not nearly as important as cell phones. If we had cell phones like we have now back in my day most of you youngsters wouldn't be here...because we all would have been fucking someone else instead.

:biggrin:

LOL

 

[bbhaag]

I always grew up with some type of computer in the house. I remember my dad playing Burger Time on the Atari when I was very young. Then we got a NES, SNES, ect. We didn't get our first IMB compatible until the late '80's though. I believe it was a Packard Bell with an Intel 386SX cpu and MS-DOS 5.0

My parents didn't see the value in the internet though no matter how much I tried to convince them. I think it was a money issue. Dial up + long distance charges kind of killed it so I didn't really get online until around the age of 19 when I moved out and signed up for Earthlink.

 

[Fritzo]

First off, I am not sure if this question should be for the people growing up in developed Countries or not?

Would it be safe to say that anyone over 42 years old were the last generation to MOSTLY grow up without technologies such as computers, internet and cell phones that are common place today?

As for me, I NEVER owned my own personal computer until I was 24 tears old. Never bothered with a cell phone until I was over 30 years old. Never had internet until I was 24 years old.

However, I did use computers at school for home work and the odd friend who owned one between the ages of 20 and 24.

I'm 45 and owned my first computer in 1982. It was a Commodore 64, and I was able to connect to Compuserve (a primitive online service at the time). It was around 1982 that the personal computer craze hit. IBM-compatible PC's didn't take off until around 1987 or so when they hit under the $3000 mark.

 

[Brainonska511]

I've had access to a home PC since I was 5 or 6. We got this compudyne from CompUSA back in '93. I remember it took over 2 hours just to install Oregon Trail II. That computer ended up with several hard drives, with a grand total of storage at around a few hundred megabytes. But my dad managed to write a technical book on it. It wasn't until '98 when my parents bought a Dell Dimension with a Pentium II when we finally got dial-up internet.

 

[zCypher]

I guess you may get varying answers depending on location. I'm 31 now, and I don't really recall any computers in my younger childhood years. Towards the last few years before I moved out at 19, we had a couple of computers and eventually dialup internet access. Broadband was still too expensive and/or not deployed in our area. I remember our family getting a cell phone, and it was a huge monstrosity of a thing compared to what we have today, and would get maybe 30-40 minutes of constant use before it was burning your face and running out of battery.

phone and computer tech has come a long, long way and become pervasive in modern first world lives. it won't be too long before there aren't really any people around that "did not grow up with computers".

But so what? I won't try to do justice to all of the benefits it has had in this short post.

 

[JM Aggie08]

We had some old as hell, green texted IBM which I'd play Frogger on from time to time. Didn't get a Dell until 2000 or 2001 + Road Runner high speed interwebs.

 

[OutHouse]

I graduated in 87 and the only PC i had exposure to was the Apple IIc at the high school. i think 2 kids on my block got a commodore so mom and dad can do spreadsheets ( rolls eyes). The internet did not exist in homes then and my parents (WWII) generation had no use at all for them at the time. My dad thought it was a huge waste of money and saw no need for something like doing his finances. after all he was a expert at pencil and paper and had his system of doing it.

before my dad died in 1993 he had his HP and was before he passed a expert on how to make a pretty complicated and solid excel spreadsheet.

 

[Imp]

Got internet around 1997. We had computers since I was in kindergarten. I played craptastic games using boot disks and dual 5.25" drives. Knew like 5 basic DOS commands.

 

[Ruptga]

I did, mostly. I don't know how I managed during those dark days. Well actually I do, the secret involves a fuckton of N64 (and a fuckton of NES before we got that), some Encarta, actual paper books, a lot of bike riding, too much Lego, and a pinch of PS1. For the longest time I had a running tally of the number of times I had beaten my favorite game, and I knew how many of those times were on expert mode. I lost track somewhere around 130-150. Life is better with the internet.

 

[ImpulsE69]

I remember when my dad got an Atari 2600 - not sure when it was, but I was in kindergarten or 1st grade...then I remember using Apples in school back in 2nd or 3rd grade in the early 80's. I got my own first actual computer (Atari 800) when I was in 6th grade in the mid 80's.

Didn't have internet or anything until around 95 though.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Speaking of internet I remember in school when the internet was considered a single source. So when you had to write an essay that required at least 5 sources, you could not just list 5 websites. I'm not sure if it's still the same way now.

 

[Imp]

Speaking of internet I remember in school when the internet was considered a single source. So when you had to write an essay that required at least 5 sources, you could not just list 5 websites. I'm not sure if it's still the same way now.

I wrote an entire graduate level research project for 2 full course credits -- thesis-lite? -- using internet sources... except most of the internet sources were PDFs of technical documents provided by government agencies.

I also used the $160 textbook I bought for a related course...

 

[ImpulsE69]

Topic appropriate:

http://www.popsugar.com/tech/How-Technology-Influenced-Generation-X-37522155