Other generations: we like to pretend we had an analog childhood and digital adulthood.

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Clockwork-Armadillo@reddit

According to the ONS the share of households with Internet access jumped from 9 percent in 1998 to 38 percent by the year 2000.

So the range for "analogue childhood, digital adulthood" is a bit larger then the Xennial birth range. And then there's the large chunk of non xennial millenials who had analogue childhoods and digital teen years that blur the distinction.

It's a poor definition of Xennials tbf.

A better definition would be if you saw the end of Gen X teen culture and the beginning of Millenial teen culture during your teen years. Which would require a slightly narrower birth range then this sub uses.

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GaracaiusCanadensis@reddit

My reckoning is close to this. I say that if you just missed Pokemon becoming huge, you're solidly Xennial. Just like how we were around for LOTR and SW Prequels, but missed Harry Potter in theatres.

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ThisIsMyFatLogicAlt@reddit

Damn, that is spot on. I remember the few mixed age classes in high school, the kids one year younger than me loved Pokemon, but to me and all my friends it was just some "little kid show" our younger siblings watched.

I never read the Harry Potter books as a kid, but did get dragged to the movies because those books were what got my baby brother to finally enjoy reading.

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Clockwork-Armadillo@reddit

Mine is if you saw both the end of Beavis and Buthead and the start of Southpark in you teenage years then you're an Xennial.

Intrestingly I think both of our definitions still point to the same year though lol

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WheelOfFish@reddit

I've heard it called the "Pokemon line"

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bloodpriestt@reddit

Class of 96… we had internet the last semester of HS

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boulevardofdef@reddit

My first year of college was the first year the dorms were wired for internet access. The year before I would have had to go to a computer lab.

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ThisIsMyFatLogicAlt@reddit

Same. I actually lived in the first dorm with ethernet access at my college, all the others had none whatsoever.

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Mr_A_Rye@reddit

My first year of college was the last year the dorms weren't wired. However, that year, a couple of us had dial up and would play Duke Nukem 3D online and by online, I mean we played each other 1v1 online, that was as mulriplayer as it got.

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ForceGhost47@reddit

I graduated in 97. I took a class called “Intro to Internet.”

We learned about search engines and shit. Used Netscape Navigator. I would hang out in chat rooms

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trainwreckhappening@reddit

I graduated in 97 too. In 11th grade I took a computer programming class the highschool offered. It was all DOS based and we didn't even touch windows. We didn't even learn C+ programming because it was too advanced.

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Matty_D47@reddit

Graduated in 99. I took an electric typewriter keyboarding class in 8th grade. In high-school we had a computer lab that nobody really ever went into

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tc_cad@reddit

Graduated 99, I took every computer course I could. I found out in grade 12 that if I took the programming course again it was all the same projects, just in a different language. So I took it again. I was the only student that year that took that course twice.

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Matty_D47@reddit

I remember a few kids that were like you back then. Lost a close friend to the computer lab in like 10th grade. Last I heard he was living in a penthouse in Bellevue driving some exotic sports car. Should have followed homie to the lab instead of following blunts and 40s.

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tc_cad@reddit

I thought programming was my future. I got kicked out of college in 2001. My future changed and I went down a different path. At work in 2007, I found an issue on the network, and I knew how to fix it so I did. I was found out and threatened with termination. I found out who my allies were at that job because I wasn’t fired. It emboldened me to start programming again, but it was all small time just for fun programming. In 2017 I was hired full time as a programmer to mod AutoCAD for an engineering company and that’s what I’ve been doing ever since. Been with a few startups including my own since then but now have a much better job with health benefits and steady hours.

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MiniTab@reddit

‘95 grad (HS), and we had computer lab starting in 2nd grade!

It was with Apple IIe computers, and the “Turtle” graphics with BASIC. Jefferson County schools (Colorado) were pretty progressive and well funded back then.

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acctgamedev@reddit

I remember getting a sweet 14.4k bps modem and hoping no one needed to use the phone

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Matty_D47@reddit

Our computer lab in elementary school was like a table with 4 computers on it, in the library. My only memory is playing Oregon Trail

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Capable_Swordfish701@reddit

In 8th grade we got a computer lab at school. Didnt really have a teacher for it thou so they sent one of the gym teachers over. We basically spent the whole class playing the oregon trail or that attack helicopter game.

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_ism_@reddit

same. i learned to type on IBM typewriters and within a couple years we had computers with Mavis Beacon on them, By senior high we had internet and they were "considering" some sort of firewall or child protection software after i graduated due to.... issues ... the first year we had unfiltered internet. LOL.

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BlueSnaggleTooth359@reddit

Yeah internet during formative years is what Xennials claim not remotely analog to digital transition which was too early.

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kinetic_cheese@reddit

I can distinctly remember the first time I saw the Internet. My math teacher was a tech nerd, and she was the first person in our entire high school to have Internet access because she was the only one who knew how to hook it up. She showed us various webpages that were all text, and I thought it looked super boring.

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Spamberguesa@reddit

I remember when I first learned what the internet was, ('95, at school), and when I first used it ('97, at school). I remember the concept of e-mailing absolutely blowing my mind. The idea of sending an actual letter to someone on the other side of the world, instantly, just felt like Star Trek to me. (Yeah, I knew telegrams could do that, but e-mailing was this exotic thing that anyone could do if they actually had access to the internet.)

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sahurley@reddit

In middle school in the early '90s, there were a couple of guys who would talk about messaging each other with their computers. They seemed like the biggest nerds (or the richest guys, since they actually had computers in their homes). Within a decade, email has already given way to instant messaging as the cool thing.

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HIs4HotSauce@reddit

Close to same age.

As a young person with no car or reasonable transportation, I didn’t have “easy access” to the internet until about 1998.

After 98, it was prevalent in most libraries and home services were starting to become popular.

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LosVolvosGang@reddit (OP)

I was going to an Internet cafe in 2004 fam.

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Current_Working_2103@reddit

Damn. Yep. I remember going to my friend's house to watch her go online the summer we graduated...and getting .99¢ burritos at Taco Bell.

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icanhascheeseberder@reddit

Chalupas used to be 99 cents, those were about half my food intake for a while.

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buttery_nurple@reddit

And tacos were on the $.59 section of the 59/79/99 cent trifecta

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acctgamedev@reddit

I hear the ad in my head as I read this

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TryTwiceAsHard@reddit

Hold up i don't think we could order food online till at least the early 2,000s, maybe even later. Am I crazy?

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Haunting-Public-23@reddit

I had these electronics growing up:

Platform	Release	Usage
Betamax	1975	1982-2000
Atari 2600	1977	1980-1985
LaserDisc	1978	1990-2001
Commodore 64	1982	1984-1987
Family Computer	1983	1985-1992
S-Video
Game Boy	1989	1994-1999
SNES	1991	1992-1997
Sega Genesis CDX	1994	1995-1998
Dial-Up	1994	1996-2000
Nintendo 64	1996	1997-2002
DVD
Game Boy Color	1998	1999-2005

So an analog childhood isn't really that accurate. Maybe a offline childhood is more apt?

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banjo215@reddit

Betamax is analog. So is VHS, cassette tapes, vinyl records, AM/FM radio, and cable tv before the early 2000s. At least for me PCs and video games came in around the end of my childhood, even though someone whose parents were on the bleeding edge of technology might have had access to it.

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HalfFrozenSpeedos@reddit

Laserdisc is also analogue (Came up in various comp sci modules in highschool, college and University - computing was one of the few areas my high school excelled at, mainly as one of our teachers had come from industry so she knew her shit. Tough as nails, most hated her, I liked her and doubly so as she didn't know I was related to my asshole of a cousin, who got SO much shit from her over 3 years "for someone with such nice cousins and brothers, " oh he hated with a passion, I was trying not to laugh (he deserved it though, he was just a shit....accused me falsely of stalking a girl, his own DAD told me a few years later that "should have bust his jaw for that, someone fucking should, that's for sure, he's got it coming to him" My highschool had a laser disc player in the library and Increasing numbers of computers - first with a cdrom drive had a caddy for the disc (due to error correction concerns and durability worries initially )

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drewbaccaAWD@reddit

I agree. My speak and spell wasn’t exactly “analog.” we may have grown up during a transition, but there was always digital in my life and some form or another.

Being off-line during childhood is what really sets us apart.

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Haunting-Public-23@reddit

Indeed.

If I had kids in 2007, 2011, 2015, 2019 & maybe 2023 then they'd never experienced a world without

100Mbps fiber
4G phones
iPhone or Android
Intel Macs
Windows Vista
YouTube
2K Blu-ray
PS3
Xbox 360
Nintendo Wii

Unlike me I'd have wanted them all to learn how to code and be as proficient as I am with business English and maths.

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tlmz99@reddit

What if you were from a dirt poor family and didn't have a computer until you had your own place in 2002

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Haunting-Public-23@reddit

Everyone's speaking about themselves. So I spoke about my personal timeline

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joshhupp@reddit

Class of 95. I messed around with BBS's for the first time

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Unsteady_Tempo@reddit

There was a HUGE advancement in the mid 1990s.

I graduated high school in 1994 and never had an email address or turned in an assignment completed on a computer. We had a computer lab and they'd take us in there and run through some instructions on programming or playing a game. It was totally independent of our other work. The typed papers I turned in during high school were from a Brother electronic word processor that took the small floppy discs. My college applications were all paper-based and signing up for classes was done by standing in line at the registrar's office or using a touch tone system on a landline phone with a printed newspaper-style catalog of course numbers.

However, literally a couple of years later in 1996, I had an email address in college and was typing and printing papers from a Windows based PC. By 1997-1998 I was surfing the web and doing internet-based research, signing up for classes using a web portal, searching and reserving books at the library without needing to be at the library, shopping online, and had my own internet connected computer in my apartment.

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Themoosemingled@reddit

Same age. My grade 10 typing class was the last with actual typewriters.

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FrozenOcean420@reddit

The information superhighway

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BomBiddyByeBye@reddit

Class of 98. Only got to use it assignments at the very end lol

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dracrecipelanaaaaaaa@reddit

I mean, at a pedantically technical level, we did not.

This does somewhat come down to where you were and how much money your parents had, but I think a great demarcation point is when cell phones and text messaging started reaching a wider audience beyond company-paid devices and the upper middle class.

I feel like that happened in 2001 in the US... it was wild how "nobody really had a mobile phone" and then, suddenly over the course of about a year, almost everyone you knew had one (at least the adults and some older teens).

That is when "freedom", in the way we and our forebears knew it, really started to die. We started carrying the leash/tether and we could always be reached.

In parallel, computing really started to change from "needing training and/or skills" to make something work and/or fix what might be slightly broken, to starting to be more auto-magic for the regular person once Windows XP hit on the PC, also in 2001.

It took until 2007, when the iPhone released, for a similar effect in making smart phones far less miserable, and powerful, for the average person.

So ya, many of us had a PC at home, true, but I would claim that there's a significant fraction that didn't have any form of internet, and most of us that did have it before we graduated high school still had dial-up that wasn't always even 56k bps. Acknowledging the existence of BBSs, these were for enthusiasts and nerds (myself included), and also maybe some people with one of those in the family lol.

So, yes, I would argue that nearly all of us had analog childhoods. That said, they weren't entirely free from the early bits of what digital kids would become.

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Overall_Falcon_8526@reddit

I held out on a cellphone until 2005 :-)

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CheapBreakfast1104@reddit

I understand what you are saying and I disagree. Your experience does not match mine. My childhood was almost entirely analog and compared side-by-side with how my father grew up, not too different. I still remember watching black and white television at my grandmas. There were only 3 broadcast channels, that came in fuzzy, and went off the air in the evening. We had a single, wired, rotary phone. I learned to type on an actual typewriter. We played outside most of the time, road bikes, and fought with sticks (swords and guns) and pinecones (grenades). I had bits of exposure to new technology, such as computers, but we didn't get our first hand-me-down computer until my late teens. My first exposure to the Internet was a highschool class. My first cell phone was in my 20s; a brick. Then I lost my cell phone and didn't replace it for years, because I realized I didn't need it. When I was a young enlisted man I literally had no bills and lived on base. No phone, no Internet, no subscriptions, no car, no insurance and I still used cash for almost everything. My ATM card was used to pull cash out. I was serving during 9/11 and I saw a lot of changes, but many of those were related to the Patriot Act. I think you're correct about picking 2001 as a major divide, but for different reasons.

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dracrecipelanaaaaaaa@reddit

I remember! We still had a black and white TV too, and I was lucky enough to have that in my room as a teenager. :-)

My life was very similar to what you describe above, with the exception that I was fortunate enough to get a PC in the house in early 1995, and my school had a mandatory typing class for half a year in my 9th grade.

My friends and I beat the hell out of each other with stick-swords and such. We were in a rural area, and we lived outside. We had an Atari, but the well-off catholic asshole neighbor kids had a nintendo lol.

I remember when winters had meaningful snow every year! I also remember swarms of butterflies, and fields full of fireflies like.

I was in basic training on 9/11.

We are not the same, but not that different either.

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BlueSnaggleTooth359@reddit

You are taking it even more in the wrong direction.

Xennials were already in the digital world of new tech either literally from or nearly so from birth.

late 70s/early 80s brought us: video games, home computers, office computers, word processing for papers, hand held electronics, digital music, digital watches, portable music, laser scan checkout, music videos, home video, video rental stores, online, etc. The actual analog world was like first half 70s and somewhat later 70s. By early 80s the world felt radically different. And the press had been going on about the new digital and computer and new tech revolutions.

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dracrecipelanaaaaaaa@reddit

I don't think that we're actually conflicting.

My dad still had an 8track player in the garage, and we listened to vinyl records all the time. We had both rotary and dial-tone telephones with cords. Everything official was mailed.

We lived dual-lives; half in the old world, half in the new as you indicate. It was a time of transition! The world didn't go analog to digital overnight. :-)

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HalfFrozenSpeedos@reddit

Iphones were behind the tech curve though - touch screen yes but they had 2G connectivity when other phones were already using 3G They also broke a LOT, which for someone used to invincible nokias that was a nope ...

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dracrecipelanaaaaaaa@reddit

They weren't trying to compete with "a Nokia." That would be suicide.

They were making smart phones approachable, and even usable, by a layperson.

They were bumpy and fragile in their early days, and I admit that I never had one, but they brought "the internet" and usable "apps" and games to the masses in a way that Blackberry never wanted to and Windows Mobile completely failed to. They changed the handheld game completely.

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LosVolvosGang@reddit (OP)

You’re right. I meant we were the first to get dial up as teenagers. We used VCRs but were the Napster generation.

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RowdySuperBigGulp@reddit

I got the internet when my wife was in her 2nd year of college. Before that we were hand writing letters because a long distance phone call on a weekday was like 25 dollars an hour. Instant messaging each other was crazy.

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tomqvaxy@reddit

I was the first group of freshman at my uni to register for classes online.

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LosVolvosGang@reddit (OP)

This is exactly what I’m talking about. These kind of Hallmark moments that happened when we were having our coming of age stories.

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tomqvaxy@reddit

It is a bit "Hallmark". lol.

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inko75@reddit

Except so did Gen x, millennials, and even younger boomers (not to mention most boomers ended up online mid career as well). This whole trope is kinda 🤷

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LosVolvosGang@reddit (OP)

Simply not true. We were 15-22 years old when most people adopted dial up modems.

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inko75@reddit

Sounds whiny bruh. I’m just a tad older than this community probs wants (b1975). My hs did not have internet when I graduated in 1993. My college had internet for several years to a decade plus when I started as a freshmen. It was a massive overlap. Gen x dominated the dot com era for a reason.

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BlueSnaggleTooth359@reddit

Because it's not remotely true and every major publication already ran stories about leaving the analog world for the new digital in the earliest 80s?

Xennials were already in the digital world of new tech either literally from or nearly so from birth. Xennials claim internet in their formative years but not analog to digital transition which was too early.

late 70s/early 80s brought us: video games, home computers, office computers, word processing for papers, hand held electronics, digital music, digital watches, portable music, laser scan checkout, music videos, home video, video rental stores, online, etc. The actual analog world was like first half 70s and somewhat later 70s. By early 80s the world felt radically different. And the press had been going on about the new digital and computer and new tech revolutions.

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HalfFrozenSpeedos@reddit

And the net was WAY better when it wasn't filled with someone's "Uncle Dave" - the family loudmouth and conspiracy theorist, "aunt Peggy" who can't understand why things aren't the way they were 50 years ago, the single mothers with 5 kids before 21, who dropped out in the first couple of years of high school but who thinks she knows it all and coalesces around similar others to push some nonsensical narrative online

Also better before all the bots, behavioural tracking, advertising, dark patterns, manipulated search results, algorithms designed to stoke engagement aka addiction while making the users angry and/or miserable

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OkGeologist2229@reddit

Why would anyone not believe this? It is not hard to search the technology changes from 80s to 00s.

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BlueSnaggleTooth359@reddit

Because it's not remotely true and every major publication already ran stories about leaving the analog world for the new digital in the earliest 80s?

Xennials were already in the digital world of new tech either literally from or nearly so from birth. Xennials claim internet in their formative years but not analog to digital transition which was too early.

late 70s/early 80s brought us: video games, home computers, office computers, word processing for papers, hand held electronics, digital music, digital watches, portable music, laser scan checkout, music videos, home video, video rental stores, online, etc. The actual analog world was like first half 70s and somewhat later 70s. By early 80s the world felt radically different. And the press had been going on about the new digital and computer and new tech revolutions.

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OkGeologist2229@reddit

Yes, you are correct

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ACorania@reddit

I'm older end of xenniel, yet I had Internet back in middle school

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LifePedalEnjoyer@reddit

My first computer class was in a room full of Apple II's.

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CheapBreakfast1104@reddit

We had Apple IIs in elementary school as part of a computer lab and played learning games such as Oregon Trail. I also remember one about ant colonies that played like a text-based roleplaying game.

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sahurley@reddit

Don't forget printing off huge dot matrix banners. The paper was perforated, so the banner could be exactly as long as you needed it to be!

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CheapBreakfast1104@reddit

I remember the sound and tearing off the little strips. Printers have always been my bane, though.

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_gonesurfing_@reddit

One TRS-80 was all we had.

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detourne@reddit

Yup! We had BBS access in 1993. My dad is a nerd so our family had a computer ever since I was born in 81. I had just as much of a digital childhood as an analog one growing up playing lode runner, hunt the wumpus, and dark crystal.

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Darkling_13@reddit

There was a Dark Crystal video game?

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detourne@reddit

Yup, had one on Apple IIe. Kind of a text-based adventure.

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mandress-@reddit

My dad was a tech forward guy too. Our house had BBS in 1984. Went away for a few years, then back in 94 and never went away again.

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AtFishCat@reddit

Same, AOL in '94. I started learning photoshop in '92. It's different in different households and parts of the country. I was born and raise in San Jose, so computers were everywhere.

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ArticulateRhinoceros@reddit

I’m 42 but had AOL back when you had to pay for minutes. I think that was in 1994 or so.

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DreamsAndSchemes@reddit

I’m on the younger end (1985) and I didn’t have Internet in my classroom until 6th grade. The district I was in was poor as shit too.

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LosVolvosGang@reddit (OP)

You were ahead of the jump. I think middle school is co soldered past childhood.

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kaest@reddit

HS class of 95. I would get on AOL at my friends house in the early 90s. First semester in college was my first email account and introduction to online chats other than AOL, and to multiplayer online gaming.

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TappyMauvendaise@reddit

We didn’t have dialup in my household until 1999. I was 17.

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col_akir_nakesh@reddit

I remember when we got dial-up in 99. Some of these people on reddit will be like "people had internet in 1994!"

Not me lol. I don't even remember it in school until 1997.

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TappyMauvendaise@reddit

I never once used the Internet in high school at the physical school and I graduated in 2000.

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col_akir_nakesh@reddit

Wow, that's impressive. I grew up in a small town and we even were looking up South Park audio clips in class in 1998.

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HalfFrozenSpeedos@reddit

Yep same here

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Orleanian@reddit

Heck, my house didn't even have caller ID until 1999.

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LosVolvosGang@reddit (OP)

This is exactly what I mean. It came around when we came of age!

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radicalhistoryguy@reddit

Same, age 15. I was mesmerized by the internet at school, so I took every opportunity in junior high to get online or mess around with computers, but my parents resisted getting a home PC for quite a while.

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Appropriate-Bid8671@reddit

My dad still doesn't have internet in his home despite a co-op running fiber out there about 8 years ago.

My mom had a dedicated phone line for internet from 99 to 2007 ish when she switched to dsl.

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New_Stats@reddit

We got dialup when I was about 15 or 16 I don't count that period of time of my life as digital because it was one computer in the living room, and all I ever did was go on NASA's website to see nebulas

I didn't really understand the world wide web back then. I couldn't figure out much of anything until Google's search engine was released in 98 when I was 19

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Malicious_Tacos@reddit

Same here.

My mom kept telling me that internet was too expensive and she wasn’t going to have me take up the phone line.

I had a few friends with AOL earlier though.

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No_Cartoonist981@reddit

This

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ManateeNipples@reddit

I had an Atari from the time I was born, a Nintendo when I was 8, a gameboy, a sega when I was about 10, plus my face was glued to Nickelodeon for multiple hours a day.

My childhood isn't the same as my kid's, I didn't have the internet but it wasn't fully analog either lol

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BlueSnaggleTooth359@reddit

exactly, by 1982 we already went through the analog to digital transition

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StillhasaWiiU@reddit

Everyone talking about computers, but we also saw in real time the fall of vinyl records to CDs and were college age when the iPod took over the world.

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BlueSnaggleTooth359@reddit

records were already way way fading in the early-ish 80s

and CD become pretty big by early late 80s (and arrive in 1983)

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BlueSnaggleTooth359@reddit

The irony is insane here LOL.

Xennials were already in the digital world of new tech either literally from or nearly so from birth.

late 70s/early 80s brought us: video games, home computers, office computers, word processing for papers, hand held electronics, digital music, digital watches, portable music, laser scan checkout, music videos, home video, video rental stores, online, etc. The actual analog world was like first half 70s and somewhat later 70s. By early 80s the world felt radically different. And the press had been going on about the new digital and computer and new tech revolutions.

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TheJokersWild53@reddit

The library is a good example, we learned the card catalog in elementary school and by the time we finished HS, it was a computer search, and you could look at other libraries.

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CheapBreakfast1104@reddit

I'm nostalgic for the card catalog system. I tell myself if I retire ultrawealthy, I will build a retro library with an optional card catalog system.

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Allureme@reddit

I’ll never forget the day I walked into the library, went to the card catalogue and it was empty. Oddly the high school librarian ended up at the public library. I looked at her and said that she told me for four years that it would never go away and it did.

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LosVolvosGang@reddit (OP)

Exactly. Excellent example.

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Jahaangle@reddit

Class of '98 (Scotland).

We were given a demo of the Internet in Higher Computing but weren't allowed to go on ourselves.

I played a couple of LAN DOOM death matches on the school PowerPCs, my friend was (and now works in IT) a guru who set it up.

Other than that, we had zero exposure to the Internet in high school.

Same with mobile phones, I got my first when I was at university, no one had them at school.

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LosVolvosGang@reddit (OP)

I’m American but hold a UK passport with tons of Scottish family. The “you can see a demo of this but you can’t touch it” feels so culturally Scottish to me. Were they a wee bit irate about this point?

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Jahaangle@reddit

Honestly, I've no idea where it came from. I was so untouched by the Internet as a high schooler as a result of this. We all thought it wouldn't catch on.

Even as an adult I was surprised to read how Americans went online years earlier than we did.

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HalfFrozenSpeedos@reddit

Sounds familiar to me (I left 99, sixth year would have been 00 though) Got the same demo in higher computing, though I do recall last few months I was there our school library was given internet access (might be wrong)

Do remember in college they gave the tutors a kill switch and a screen viewing app, that felt so fucking intrusive. College management refused to provide student email addresses as it "would take up too much disc space" - heck our allocated disc space for work was 10 Megabytes a year in 1999-02, which our computing lecturers had to go and argue with the self taught greybeards who ran the IT systems that we NEEDED more space for the project work we were being issued.

After much arguing back and forth, they agreed to an extra 5/10 Megabytes in EXCEPTIONAL circumstances but they would monitor the contents and claim back the disc space as soon as they could (place was oppressive and many of the staff were on a power trip).

Retaliation was we would find ways around their Internet block in classes - everything from different browsers to packages snuck in on discs (windows 98 so security was.....non existent frankly)

University (02-04 skipped a year due to having done courses at college) we had wifi in the computing buildings but the rest of the university were stuck using it suites.

Last year I was there the university library were rolling out wifi and came and asked us to bring down our laptops and let them know what problems if any there was (smart move as they would have gotten useable feedback vs "it's broken" from the rest of the university)

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CheapBreakfast1104@reddit

I learned to type on an actual typewriter.

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LosVolvosGang@reddit (OP)

This says it all

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hurtinforasquirtin77@reddit

Class of 2002. I’d never seen a computer until we got one for Christmas 1998.

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HalfFrozenSpeedos@reddit

Interesting - UK also, the UK govt pushed the BBC B microcomputer into many schools, like my primary school had at least one per classroom from about primary 3 or 4 and I started primary in 1987.

I remember being in primary 6/7 and the first pc being wheeled in, wasn't impressed as it had to be "parked" for a while before moving it after turning it off.

Highschool computer labs were 1 - mixture of PC generations from Research Machines, 2- half and half BBC Bs and 286 PCs, 3 was all BBC bs until my 4th year where they phased out the BBC Bs from computing classes.

Languages we learned were COMAL and PASCAL. I knew more about coding in my first year of college than any of the other students on that course did (as PASCAL is really quite close to C)

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hurtinforasquirtin77@reddit

Wow that’s pretty cool. We didn’t have anything like that at my school unfortunately :(

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WheelOfFish@reddit

That's wild to me, it was much earlier in my area but I've also certainly noticed that the Internet and computers did not broadly penetrate into all regions at the same time.

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hurtinforasquirtin77@reddit

Yeah that’s true. I’m from the UK originally but by this point we had immigrated to New Zealand so for the first few years money was pretty tight so I remember the computer being a pretty big purchase. Probably why I’m so useless with computers these days is because “computer class” at high school was 1hr a week for my first 2yrs of high school & that was all

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WheelOfFish@reddit

Meanwhile I knew how to type already by middle school and was very annoyed at having to take typing classes (this would probably have been 93-95 range).

I remember how much faster our Pentium system in '95 seemed compared to the 386 I had previously tried to play DOOM on, and getting a faster dial-up modem was amazing too. By the time I graduated high school I'd had my own PC in my bedroom and we'd had DSL for a number of years at home.

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hurtinforasquirtin77@reddit

Yep it’s wild. And it does hold me back a bit work wise cos I’m pretty useless on them haha

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Atillion@reddit

I miss the wonder and excitement of early internet. Scouring AOL screennames for people who had a birthday today to message them a happy birthday and find out they lived so far away. Getting punted from the Spice Girls chatroom for saying they suck. It was such an experience no one will ever see again.

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CheapBreakfast1104@reddit

I agree. I remember learning HTML and making my own webpages on geocities.

This page under construction. You are the 0134 visitor.

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Atillion@reddit

Page counters!! 🤣

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HalfFrozenSpeedos@reddit

Bolt.com ( where it was mostly fellow older teens but even then you would get some 50 year old creep posting looking for young girls to groom.....yuck) Icq Lycos

I miss that internet, before it became tech bro douche capitalism

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LosVolvosGang@reddit (OP)

That was the utopia age.

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Equivalent-Pride-460@reddit

Class of 95’.

We clowned this guy endlessly for having an internet girlfriend. Still don’t know if she actually existed.

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whiskeytown79@reddit

My Gen Z / Gen Alpha kids are always so astonished that I know about memes and pop culture references from the internet as if I haven't been online since like 15 years before they were born.

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shadowsmile667@reddit

Class of 2002 but dad was a tech nerd and really adopter of any new tech so had AOL when it was pay by the minute so pre 96. Had teachers still telling us we won't have calculators with us everywhere while I already had the nokia brick phone in my pocket lol.

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LosVolvosGang@reddit (OP)

Amazing to think aol was pay by the minute then.

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International_Link35@reddit

Prodigy, anyone? Any Terris players from AOL? My peeps. ♥️

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phunbaba13@reddit

Hell yeah

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TrustAffectionate966@reddit

I used a typewriter in high school. I ran outta ribbon and they didn’t carry it anymore, so I had to either hand write everything or type things at school.

In 1997, I got a word processor with a tiiiiiiiny screen that only showed three lines at a time. I could save things on diskettes. I used that until 2002 when I went to university and got a PC with Internet access at that time. Before that, I would go to the college and public libraries for Internet access - I had to reserve a computer on an hourly basis.

🧉🦄

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Orleanian@reddit

To be fair, I used an electric typewriter through 2000, despite word processors being available. I just hated the sound of the printer, and was proficient enough at typing not to screw things up enough that it mattered.

Plus my typewriter had a white-out erase function (not exactly pretty, but it worked in a pinch)!

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TrustAffectionate966@reddit

The local Office Depot stopped carrying ribbon or I had to special order it… I forgot. I had ribbons, but they didn’t have the corrective tape, so that every time I made a mistake, I had to use LIQUID PAPER. One time, I forgot to blow on it to allow it to dry and it STREAKED the little typing window. It was then I bought the word processor.

💀

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SlavaSobov@reddit

We had the same kinda word process or, my mom was doing on medical transcription with it.

I wrote a paper about WWI on it.

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melikecheese333@reddit

Class of 2000. I definitely did and you others within a few years did. It’s a small window!

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IP0@reddit

Grad 2000. Got a Computron (a toy learning computer that spoke) at age 3, NES at age 5. Used archie and veronica to explore gopher in 94 at my middle school and then on the web in 95 trying to find out who shot mr burns. Fall of 95 we learned some web development in class, and I got my first computer with dialup at home. Got broadband in 1999 at my HS, and taught people how to download music from napster and movies off of IRC. Born in 82, but I don't remember not having tech.

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Unknown-714@reddit

Graduated elementary 1998. In HS they had just gotten internet to the computer lab semester before we started

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seamonkey420@reddit

I was on the internet in 1992.. ;) yup... i still remember when you could use blink tags.. hehe..

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LosVolvosGang@reddit (OP)

Well hello, early adopter.

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seamonkey420@reddit

🤓 setup from early 2000s

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CalgaryChris77@reddit

I tell people that when I started computer science at university for the first 2 years we worked on non color terminals with no mouse and they look at me like I’m talking about the day me and oog discovered fire in the cave.

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munchonsomegrindage@reddit

I remember getting taught how to use a keyboard in kindergarten and then all I remember about computer class is playing Oregon trail and using the word processor. Prodigy in middle school, AOL in high school. Learned about Webcrawler freshman year and by the start of college, everyone had at least one email address, even if it was a school issued one.

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TryTwiceAsHard@reddit

Class of 98, I think we got the internet our freshman year of high school. But in 93, 8th grade, next door we used typewriters for typing class.

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--Quartz--@reddit

I remember the first guy that had Encarta and a printer at his home! We were in our senior year I think, and he made a super long paper with figures and all (copy pasted, obviously).
Also the first time I downloaded a game from a BBS, it felt like magic, haha.

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Freakin_A@reddit

I downloaded a 26kb game called Jumpjet that took hours on my 2400bps modem and was truly terrible. It was amazing.

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cellrdoor2@reddit

Also class of 98 and had a very similar experience. The school had a computer lab by 96 and kept it cold enough to hang meat in there. By the time I got to college everyone was changing over from hand drafting to CAD. I started out learning how to hand draft and make copies on this beast of a machine that used ammonia and finished up by learning 2d CAD programs. As an adult I draft 3D models on the computer and generate my drafting packages from those. I still make real world scale models for a few places but almost everything is on the computer these days and it’s much easier.

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checkpoint_hero@reddit

As others pointed out, we were pretty digital but definitely "offline" as young kids.

But where I can't relate is using the term "bro"

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thejunkmanadv@reddit

I know most people think of "the internet" and the PC when the whole analog/digital thing comes up. But I like to think of how many of us grew up riding & driving in carbureted cars or better yet, ones without electronic ignition. Anybody here remember driving cars/trucks with breaker point ignitions? I drove a mixture of both.

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gfkxchy@reddit

I started with computers in the late '80s, we had a lunch room/computer lab full of Commodore 64s. I bought some magazines and even a Scholastic book fair book on making games in C64 BASIC.

We didn't get our first computer at home until summer of '94. It had a 2400 baud modem which I used to dial in to local BBSs. The following year I tried CompuServe but didn't really get it. Later in '95 I found a disc included with a computer mag for Internet service which I easily burned through my first 30 hours. Got a 14.4Kbps modem for Christmas that year.

I was "pretty early" to Internet access in my area and helped a lot of folks get online at the time. There was a short stint in '98 where I was installing cable Internet for a local ISP when I was fresh out of college, including my own service.

It was good times, but I wish I could go back to the Internet being a place you went to instead of being something you were always connected to.

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SensibleBrownPants@reddit

Class of ‘95.

I was assigned an email address (my very first) the week I started college.

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Sarah_Femme@reddit

One of the earliest Christmas gifts I remember getting was the 1982 Ktel mini pops albums with "Video Killed the Radio Star" as the opening song. Listened to that thing on repeat for years on my little fisher price record player, lol.

Very early childhood involved playing Pong and Atari.

I remember going to the library and playing Oregon Trail and Lemonade Stand on the computers in the children's library in my podunk hometown in the mid 80s.

It was there, but it was new and clunky, hooking up game systems required messing the the tv, so they weren't always on, or were relegated to a tiny black and white tv in an awkward location at first.

Internet was what my rich friends had to find out about raves by late high school, but I wouldn't have it in my own home until I was in my mid 20's. I did hop on the dial up at friends' houses to look at weird things a few years before that, but again, dial up, limited minutes and the like made it an activity, not a way of life.

We saw things go from sci-fi to reality at pace only rivalled by those who went from Wright Brothers to Neil Armstrong, though. No doubt there. (tablets, smartwatches, videocalling etc)

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Confident_Win_5469@reddit

Graduated in 97 - I remember taking part of a new program and we were on the earlier version of the internet in grade 8 (roughly 13) it was just a large message board.

It was 95 when I had gotten my first hotmail email address along with my beeper.
Cell phones in cars were literal bricks and only the rich had them.

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Xennials-ModTeam@reddit

No insulting other generations, gatekeeping, disparaging current slang and pop culture, generational superiority or making unnecessary complaints/rants.

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dka2012@reddit

Graduated in 1994. First day I was ever online was day after I graduated.

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Tsunamiis@reddit

The first phone I used was rotary at gran grans house. I was the tv clicker.

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Haldolly@reddit

My first year of college (Fall 99) was the first year they required students to have their own computers.

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Unable_Apartment_613@reddit

Class of '01. Internet hit in our rural era around sixth grade for me. I really did have a fully analog childhood. But was digital from adolescences

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TheLeathal13@reddit

The year I graduated, we went to the school library to see the 2 computers that had the internet. Nobody really knew what it did but it was going to be important.

By fall of ‘96 in college, full computer labs with access. Things moved pretty fast.

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PatchworkGirl82@reddit

I graduated high school in 01, but my mom ran the computer labs in our school district from about 1990 to 2002, so I saw the full PC evolution (and going back further, I have fond memories of the Commodore 64 at my daycare center)

The best part was getting my hands on all the sample games companies like Broderband would send to schools.

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bikeonychus@reddit

My class was the first to be offered IT classes (then called ICT) at GCSE level (age 15). I thought it was going to be about learning HTML or coding databases. No. It was how to use Microsoft Office products.

I had been teaching myself HTML and started teaching some of the other kids, because none of us wanted to learn how to make wedding invite databases using Microsoft products - we wanted to learn how to make scrolling marquee banners with images on, so we could troll each other with pages of scrolling arses/butts.

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Character-Ad-5943@reddit

Class of 2005- I didn’t have my first cell phone til I was 22

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no_clever_name_yet@reddit

I had dial-up in 1996. I was 15 years old. It was AWESOME.

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Quixotegut@reddit

I, born 81, HS class of '99, Mid Atlantic, Upper Middle Class, had dial up by '94/5, and my dorms had T1 lines installed in my freshman year at college.

I use those qualifiers not to brag, but to show that location and SES play a major part in the "window" for how we use tech to determine our generational window.

I work with a guy who was born in Alabama, 5 years after me in '86... a time frame we wouldn't consider Xennial... and because they were so behind down there he had a similar experience childhood-wise to ours: analog then digital later.

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97runner@reddit

I live in the south and just got reliable, high speed internet a year ago.

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Canesjags4life@reddit

Late Gen X for sure had it but we grew up with the change.

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AdjacentPrepper@reddit

I'm not sure we truly fall into that category ourselves. I'm on the young side of Xennial, but most of my childhood was spent with a computer.

My family got our first computer when I was in 3rd grade, a Tany Sensation 486 SX 25 with a 100 MB hard disk, a 1x CD-ROM, 4 MB of RAM, and a 3.5" 1.44 MB "high density" floppy drive. We got internet at the house a year later, AOL dial-up, and we were one of the first to sign up for "Highway One" (i.e., cable internet) when it became available.

Facebook didn't come out till I was in college and my first smartphone was several years after graduation so I wasn't subjected to the 24/7/365 connection to social media that the later Millenials suffered through, but I still spent most of my childhood in front of a computer. I even got hooked on an MMORPG, Ultima Online, back in high school.

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Sufficient_Turn_9209@reddit

Our house got a new windows computer with internet access in 95 when I was 16. I'll never forget some kids at school talking about this site called hotel chat, and I went straight home and found it it. We didn't screw around with AOL. 😆 I jumped head first into the debauched world of internet, search engines and web browsers of my choosing, learning html, using irc, building my own web page with Angelfire, and using my email as chat when the chat server was down. Considering my elementary classes already had an established computer lab class right after music I'd honestly say I had a digitalish childhood, but nothing compared to my first adult years 2000/2001 when I got my first cell phone, then an iPod (autocorrect literally didn't know what that was and kept changing it to iPad 🤣), and started shopping on Amazon. It was a whirlwind of digital emersion from them on. So yeah. We are squarley the generation that moniker belongs to.

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