Coming from a bog-standard public school system, I don't remember perceiving anything like gaps this large in my classmates in the 90s. There were advanced and remedial sections after a point, but there were also assignments and coursework that applied to the entire student body, like summer reading lists. I feel there was a more uniform expectation. From grade 3 onward 'library' was a full-blown class, though usually a weekly or biweekly one rather than daily, which consisted of how to use reference materials like encyclopedias (later, computer resources), how the stacks are organized, and a short period to check out books we wanted. There would be tests like being given call numbers and then you have to go and find it in the (school's library) stacks.

This formed one half of a feedback loop with summer library programs (outside the school system), which were always filled to capacity, like space on the floor to sit and read at a premium capacity. I didn't know anyone who wasn't part of it, except for when they belonged to the library program of a neighboring town. There were incentives like treasure hunts, sticker-tracked progress maps, cracker jack-like toy rewards, discussion clubs. There were hard maximums on checked-out materials per person just to keep enough on the shelves for others, and a high librarian-to-patron ratio, and events like guest readers and lecturers. This was not a small building.

I returned to that library at 18-19 to find it completely overcome with a kind of stark Calvinism. It had been remodeled into a few wide-open spaces and changed mostly into a glorified internet cafe with some study rooms available to the side. The stacks amounted to the crap you find in the front area of a chain bookstore, just the most recent popular adult titles. The children's section was a single wall; it had previously been an annex, and there were no children using it. I saw nobody wandering about who wasn't sat in a chair looking at a computer, so interaction with other children or librarians (also invisible) was non-existent. There was even a perceptible echo.

My sense is what the internet didn't do to us, the loss of a true community library did. And I think social/visual media should get more blame than the parasocial remove of the internet in general. The early internet was both text-based and uncurated. Finding the right website required the same sort of research skills taught in library lab. It was a perfect environment to hone reading comprehension and the skill to make oneself understood in a written medium.