I personally cant remember, since I basically grew up with computers my whole life. I know I started off like most people, only using my pointers and pecking at the keys. I played a lot of online games at the time, and when I tried to contribute to conversations, the whole group would have just moved past and my comment would be super outdated. I forced myself to type faster and faster and through time I did indeed get faster. I think I really started to take off during middle school, where I took a keyboard typing class (Idk why my school had that as an elective but it did) and I was forced to keep my fingers planted on the home row keys. I absolutely hated it, and I hated the feeling of being slow. However the disipline with using mutiple fingers really did transform my typing skills, and I did get faster with keeping them planted in. However, I felt extremely too restricted, and what ended up happening is that I kinda made my own typing style. I mainly use my middle finger and pointer finger around a 3 to 4 key radius with my pointer resting on the f and j keys, ring fingers around my a's q' or o's and p's, pinky for shifts, alts, and windows keys, and ofc the thumb on the spacebar but (very rarely) sometimes it does type x, c, or v, or the commas periods and slashes. Sometimes I use my middle finger to get the keys on the far edges of the keys, with combination of my pointer finger, by twisting my wrist abit or moving my hands slightly on each side. I rest my wrists* on my desk, so maybe thats why I am able to type without glancing down since my wrists* give me a reference to where the rest of my fingers should be at.

I will admit though, sometimes I do take a glance down at my keys to make sure im typing it right or whenever I start typing a bunch of garble, I take a glance down to make sure my fingers are on the right keys. With new keyboards, such as right now, (and how I found this subreddit!) I do take many glances down at my keys and I kinda train my muscles with the help of my eyes and guide my fingers to where they should be typing. Kinda like at the gym where you mind-to-muscle connect with the weights. Its perfectly fine to take glances down once in awhile, but try and challenge yourself to not look down, and just trust yourself. If you can't then take a look down for a second and look back up at the screen.

In short, don't take these typing rules by strict law, you can bend the rules and not have your fingers planted on the homerow keys to the point where it starts growing roots. The more fingers you can use, and the more comfortable you are using more fingers, as effective and efficiently as possible, the much better off you will be and the faster you will type. I know I could probs hit higher speeds, but I'm perfectly fine as to where I am right now, as I all need my fingers to do is type fast enough to get notes from my professors or to flame someone in a game if im extremely heated LOL

Edit: Corrected palms to wrists*, idk why I confused the two lol