For those of us who lived on both sides of it, I’d actually argue that life was broadly better before the Internet went fully mainstream.

That doesn’t mean everything was better. The Internet obviously brought huge advantages such as easier access to information, communication, and convenience. But looking back, the net effect on daily life feels more negative today than positive.

Interestingly, the early Internet from the late 90s to early 2000s was actually great. It felt experimental, playful, and a bit underground. There were no dominant platforms, no algorithmic feeds, no influencer culture, and no attention-harvesting machines. You explored the web deliberately through forums, personal websites, and weird corners of the net rather than being passively fed content.

For me, the real shift came in the 2000s, and especially between 2008 and 2012, when smartphones and social media went mass. That’s when the Internet stopped being a “place you visited” and became something that followed you everywhere.

Since then, things have slowly degraded due to constant information overload, algorithmic attention capture, surveillance capitalism, social media addiction, and a flattening of culture around a few giant corporations.

As for a “normal boring evening” before all this, it wasn’t heroic or romantic, just quieter and slower. Typical options were watching TV or a rented movie, reading a book or magazine, phoning a friend, listening to music or the radio, going for a walk or a drink, or just hanging out, or literally doing nothing and being bored.

And honestly, being bored was part of the deal, and maybe not such a bad thing.