Consider yourself lucky. I had a 2400 bps modem in 1995, my first year on the internet. The ISP recommended 9600 bps but everything seemed ok for 14 year old me. IRC was fine and most websites didn't have too many pictures.
I catapulted headlong into CompuServe, found it largely boring, found a copy of the 313 BBS list in some file area, and started calling local boards.
I was "that bastard tying up the line for too long with his slow-ass modem" once in a while, but mostly I was tossing QWK/BlueWave mail packets which only took a few minutes anyway, and I tried to do my long file transfers in the middle of the night.
As soon as I got on the internet and discovered alt.binaries, I scrambled to upgrade. 28.8's were out but still quite expensive, and they had pushed 14.4's into affordable territory so that's where I landed. I think that must've been around 1995.