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Comment by l33t7332273 | Hacker News Reader

I think by middle school it’s probably okay to not turn off the router.

Maybe I’ve got brain worms because I had more or less unrestricted internet access since the time I was able to use a computer, but it feels like it wasn’t overly harmful.

I spent far more than an hour behind a screen and I think I’m better off for that time. I spent a lot of time learning to program, learning mathematics, and consuming general knowledge content via things like vsauce, scishow, minute physics, cgp grey, crash course, etc.

However, I also spent a lot of time on reddit which I’m certain wasn’t ideal for my social development. I understand this case may not be typical and maybe not even reproducible given the addictive content machines like tik tok, reels, and shorts, but I think having the freedom I had was a net positive.

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I had unrestricted access to the internet too from maybe age 10 or so, but it was a different time in the late 90s/early 2000s. Massive social networks, YouTube, etc were not much of a thing until I was in my mid teens. No smartphones, and PCs were clunkier to use than today. Playing videogames, hanging out on forums and reading news & Wikipedia were about the most engaging things I could do at the time.

I saw plenty of violence and sex earlier than I should have, but like you said I feel the internet is a different beast these days. At the time, it was merely an unrefined double-edged sword of time wasting and free information. Now it is more addictive, filled with experiences designed by morally degenerate PhDs to prey upon our basest psychological weaknesses to make money for megacorps.

> I had more or less unrestricted internet access since the time I was able to use a computer, but it feels like it wasn’t overly harmful

I have the opposite experience.

  - I've been addicted to pornography since I was 12.
  - Late computer use caused me to never get enough sleep.
  - Programming early started my career, but it also isolated me socially.

YouTube and Tik Tok scare me; as a grown-up, I can still waste hours just swiping and swiping. I suspect that getting this behavior early on will make you more docile. My siblings raise their kids with tablets, and it impacts their learning ability and sociability tremendously.

or maybe its like other easily abused substances: having a social circle navigating the same thing makes people not be maladjusted and have moderation

different set of norms but just different

abstinence only education doesn't work, no need to become your parents just because of a new thing to have a knee jerk reaction to

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