The other day, I stumbled upon a pop culture relic entitled “The Kids’ Guide to the Internet.” Produced in 1997, the video follows Peter and Dasha Jamison as they introduce their friends Andrew and Lisa to the joys of cyberspace. The sites they visit are static affairs filled with low-resolution images and text in Times New Roman. They’re relentlessly utilitarian and often devoid of interactivity (though Peter does send an email to President Clinton at one point!). Fast forward almost 30 years later, and the Internet looks very different. And it’s not just a matter of aesthetics, either. The modern Internet is a far more collaborative place where engagement and interactivity reign supreme. 

How did we get here?

To understand the present, it’s helpful to learn something of the past. Although the video makes the Internet seem like a shiny new toy, it had been around in some form or another since 1969.  For the first few decades of its existence, it was little more than a tool for boffins, and commercial ISPs didn’t emerge until 1989. 

The Internet's quiet early years 

Even then, the Internet was slow to catch on. According to the US Census Bureau, only 36.6 percent of American households owned a computer in 1997, and only 18 percent of households had Internet access. With that in mind, it’s little wonder that the writers of “The Kids’ Guide to the Internet” felt compelled to explain concepts like ‘downloading’ and ‘web pages’ to their audience. Still, the Internet was about to take off. In 1996, the Web had just 257,601 sites, but by 1997, that number had grown to 1,117,255.  

From kilobytes to zettabytes: quantifying internet growth 

Today, the US Census Bureau reports that 95 percent of American households owned at least one computer in 2021, and 90 percent had access to broadband Internet. Worldwide, 5.35 billion people (or 66 percent of the global population) have access to the Internet. Meanwhile, the Internet itself has grown to encompass over 1.5 billion websites. To find these websites, people make an estimated 99,000 search queries on Google every second, adding up to 8.5 billion searches a day and 2 trillion searches each year.

How smartphones reshaped the web 

The tools we use to access the Internet have also evolved over time. Back in 1997, computers were the only way to get online, and smartphones were in their infancy. A decade later, Apple released the now-iconic iPhone, and the smartphone became increasingly popular over the course of the 2010s. And they have indeed become popular. According to the Pew Research Center, just 35 percent of people had a smartphone in 2011, but that number has now grown to a whopping 90 percent. It should come as little surprise therefore that 94 percent of people from across the globe now say they access the Internet using a smartphone.

Web 2.0 and the social Internet: from spectators to creators 

It’s not just the way we access the Internet that has changed–the things we do online have also evolved over time. The utilitarian vision of the Internet outlined in “The Kids’ Guide to the Internet” was likely reflective of how most people used it at the time. 

The social aspect of the Internet was far less prominent than it is today. You could send someone an email, but you obviously had to know their address ahead of time. Chat rooms and  bulletin boards offered a degree of anonymity while facilitating the expansion of one’s social circle, but their use was often limited.

The rise of user-generated content 

Web 2.0 changed all that. Despite the name, it wasn’t a formal change that happened all at once but rather a gradual evolution that was rolled out in a piecemeal fashion. The end result was that the static approach to content that is vividly displayed in “The Kids’ Guide to the Internet” gave way to something more dynamic.

Before Web 2.0, video content was a rarity on the Internet because slow download speeds meant it took forever and a day to watch them, but the growing availability of broadband removed this hurdle. As a result, sites like YouTube and Vimeo allowed people to publish their own video content to a wide audience and, in time, generate money from it. This, in turn, fostered the emergence of entirely new types of content. Meanwhile, Netflix and Hulu established themselves as serious competitors to broadcast television. 

User-generated content was a key component of Web 2.0. Sites started allowing visitors to leave comments on individual pieces of content instead of corralling it all in their guestbook. At the same time, the rise of accessible blogging platforms such as Blogspot meant that publishing your own content no longer required a working knowledge of HTML. 

How social media transformed connection

Social media took this to the next level by offering people entirely new ways to connect with one another. Sites like Facebook and MySpace provided an unprecedented level of interpersonal intimacy. People could now freely broadcast their thoughts to their entire social circle, and they could do it easily. Most of us probably aren’t going to email everyone we know to let them know that the cute barista smiled at us when we picked up our Starbucks order. But with social media, the barrier to sharing is much lower (for better or worse!). However, this type of sharing is a two-way street. If people think the stuff you’re posting is funny/cringey/alarming, they can tell you. It’s also led people to quantify engagement in a way that was once the sole preserve of marketers. 

Fact vs. fiction: the challenge of online truth in the social era

One of the downsides of this is the rampant spread of misinformation/disinformation. When we see something that plays on our emotions, it’s only natural that we want to respond, and social media has made it easier than ever to do so. It doesn’t help that we often cocoon ourselves with like-minded individuals. This kind of groupthink provides fertile ground for false information. Luckily, digital literacy can help us fight back–to find out how, check out “Digital literacy and the mastery of evaluating information online.” 

Time and technology march onward

“The Kids’ Guide to the Internet'' reminds us that the Internet is always changing. In 1997, it was a static medium with little to no reactivity. That made sense in an era when people generally logged onto the Internet to accomplish a specific task before logging off to get on with the rest of their lives. But the rollout of Web 2.0 in the early 2000s ushered in a new, far more dynamic era. User-generated content assumed greater importance, while video streaming helped create entirely new art forms. At the same time, the increasing prevalence of broadband and smartphones served to facilitate these new methods of digital living. And the web is still evolving with emergent technologies such as AI or the blockchain offering us tantalizing opportunities. The Internet of 2024 is vastly different from the Internet of 1997, but the Peters and Dashas of the world will always have exciting new things to show their friends.

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