i think you might be a bit confused. No, no 17-20 year old sat with their friends before a computer just to gaze at the internet in 2006 in the USA.
But 10 year olds still did. And so did teens in countries where the internet was still new then.
Just because you all have grown up and it stopped being a novelty doesn’t mean it was a universal shift.
I remember my entire primary school class in 2010 gathered around the one kid who had a PSP, none of us spoke English so we were navigating it completely blindly through trial and error. I also remember being invited to my friend’s home to just, use the computer, now it wasn’t as fascinating as it could be for US kids (most of the internet was in English after all) so after playing a coop flash game or two we did other things but it was still a fascinating new device we didn’t get to use much.
the phenomenon of “kid goes to a friend to look at computer for a while” was alive and strong in 2006, and well after that as well. youtube beginning most likely gave it a boost
I think I stopped going to a neighbors to hang out and look at internet shit together around when I got a Facebook account. I was in highschool. It was when we bought a mobile broadband stick from Verizon. Before that us and the next-door neighbors had dial up and it was slow as can be imagined. Like… I feel like we mainly hung out and to use the internet together to show each other the things we’d found on our own and also because you had to do something together while you waited for whatever it was you were looking at to load. I think the thing we did the most was used limewire to download morning radio shows like Johnboy and just laugh at the antics of characters trying to sell boats and whatever.
i think you might be a bit confused. No, no 17-20 year old sat with their friends before a computer just to gaze at the internet in 2006 in the USA.
But 10 year olds still did. And so did teens in countries where the internet was still new then.
Just because you all have grown up and it stopped being a novelty doesn’t mean it was a universal shift.
I remember my entire primary school class in 2010 gathered around the one kid who had a PSP, none of us spoke English so we were navigating it completely blindly through trial and error. I also remember being invited to my friend’s home to just, use the computer, now it wasn’t as fascinating as it could be for US kids (most of the internet was in English after all) so after playing a coop flash game or two we did other things but it was still a fascinating new device we didn’t get to use much.
the phenomenon of “kid goes to a friend to look at computer for a while” was alive and strong in 2006, and well after that as well. youtube beginning most likely gave it a boost
I think I stopped going to a neighbors to hang out and look at internet shit together around when I got a Facebook account. I was in highschool. It was when we bought a mobile broadband stick from Verizon. Before that us and the next-door neighbors had dial up and it was slow as can be imagined. Like… I feel like we mainly hung out and to use the internet together to show each other the things we’d found on our own and also because you had to do something together while you waited for whatever it was you were looking at to load. I think the thing we did the most was used limewire to download morning radio shows like Johnboy and just laugh at the antics of characters trying to sell boats and whatever.