There is a problem known as the multi-armed bandit problem[0]. The problem deals with situations where you have to chose between different options you could take, but you don't start off with full knowledge of the options. You can spend time learning the options (exploring) or you can spend time using the best option you already know of (exploit). Importantly, you can't do both at the same time.
In general, good strategies start with a phase of exploring followed by exploiting.
Humans follow this pattern as well. For us, it seems we spend our late childhood, thru our teens, and into our early 20's in a heavily explore-biased state then switch to exploit biased for our 30's and later.
So the thing that happened to "exploring the internet" is you got older. Exploring for the sake of exploring is no longer as innately desirable to you know as it was when you were younger. You can still do it now. In many ways there are new tools that make it easier (see other posts) but it will likely feel more like work in a way which wasn't true when you were younger.