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Comment by marcus_holmes | Hacker News Reader

Anyone remember the media stories from the mid-90's about people who were obsessed with the internet and were losing their families because they spent hours every day on the computer addicted to the internet?

People gonna people. Journalists gonna journalist.

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Why do you think those stories weren't true? The median teenager in 2023 spent four hours per day on social media (https://news.gallup.com/poll/512576/teens-spend-average-hour...). It seems clear that internet addiction was real, and it just won so decisively that we accept it as a fact of life.

I agree completely (and I wasn't saying that either this story or the other stories weren't true, I think they're all true). We decided that the benefits of The Internet were worth a few people going off the rails and getting in way overboard.

We've had the same decision, with the same outcome, for a lot of other technologies too.

The journalist point is around the tone used. It's not so much "a few vulnerable people have, sadly, been caught by yet another new technology" as more "this evil new thing is hurting people".

Heavy use isn't the same as some of the scare stories they are referring to like people gaming so long in Internet cafes they die when they stand up or parents forgetting to feed their screaming children because they were distracted by being online.

That being said I agree with your point - many hours of braindrain recreation every day is worth noting (although not very different than the stats for tv viewing in older generations). I wonder if the forever online folks are also watching lots of tv or if it is more of a wash.

Or the people who watched Avatar in the theatre and fell into a depression because they couldn't live in the world of Pandora. Who knows how true any of this stuff is, but it sure gets clicks and engagements.

Society started to accept it. It's still a major problem.

Someone spending 6 or so hours a day video gaming in 2025 isn't seen as bad. Tons of people in 2025 lack community/social interaction because of video games. I don't think anyone would argue this isn't true today.

Someone doing that in the mid-90s was seen as different. It was odd.

In my generation, it was the World of Warcraft stories.

And now people remember that time with fondness and even nostalgia. "Back then we played PROPER games! Good old Blizzard" and all that. So, yeah. People will remember ChatGPT and TikTok with nostalgia, if we will survive.

That really doesn't sound at all comparable to what the article is describing though.

The tone is exactly the same: "This new thing is obviously harming families!".

And the reasons are the same: some people are vulnerable to compulsive, addictive, harmful, behaviour. Most people can cope with The Internet, some people can't. Most people can cope with LLMs, some people can't. Most people can cope with TV, or paperback fiction, or mobile phones, or computer games (to pick some other topics for similar articles), some people can't.

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