Almost half of young people would prefer a world without internet, UK study finds

35 comments

1. Tbh I much prefer a world with internet but it needs to be used responsibly.

2. This is unfettered capitalism. Takes the greatest revolution since the industrial revolution and makes 50% of people wish it wasn’t a thing. It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better (if it even does at this point, AI and robots means they won’t need people for much longer)

3. I love my internet time (aka all the time) but I do think we would all be a lot happier if it didn’t exist

4. This must be the typical idealism and maximalism typical for young people, I remember experiencing it myself with these sort of radical world changing ideas. Only when I was young I already lived in this “world without internet”, and I don’t remember it being all that better really than what I read about today, people still had addictions, obsessions, got radicalized, all that without internet/social media.

5. There’s no need for a “digital curfew”. Just have some self-discipline.

6. That would have been a world without Runescape whilst growing up, and that is a step too far for me.

7. Sounds from the article that they’d prefer a world without social media rather than the internet, which would be the best of both worlds.

8. Social media ≠ the entire internet.

   Not a chance anywhere near half of young people would say they’d prefer a world without internet.

9. I don’t think they know what they’re asking for. Though to be fair I’m biased because technology is everything to me

10. Completely agree. I haven’t used the internet in years.

11. can we just keep streaming sites, online shopping and wiki’s but get rid of the rest

12. They think they would prefer it, but their behaviour suggests otherwise

13. Im just old enough to have had a childhood without the internet.

    For all it’s faults (and there are many) the value of being able to talk to anyone anywhere, work out of an out of an office and stream/download movies, TV and music do outweigh the downsides. 

14. That world wasn’t that different we just think it was because we don’t remember all that well or at all what it was like. Kids still killed themselves because they got bullied. They got groomed and radicalised. People still spread lies. Not that different from today.

15. The 2020s internet is a far cry from the 2000s internet.

16. Forget Twitter etc., return to web rings and forums.

17. I bet that proportion is much smaller among people who remember a world without the internet.

18. There’s so much more to the Internet than social media and mindless distractions. The improvements made to the public sector (like the nhs), to education, to industry are gargantuan and shouldn’t be so taken for granted.

19. so much of this is related to self-control and taking responsibility for your own actions, there is no reason in this world for 16-21 year olds to spend 4 hours A DAY on a social media site, none, but of course when they can’t put it down its the internet or apple or google’s fault. Take some personal responsibility and switch the fecking thing off.

20. I am in my 20s.

    I wish there was no internet and I also do not.

    I like that I can access gov sites. I like using AI for writing, some research, ext.

    I don’t use social media that much apart from Reddit… But it is addictive and I don’t like it.

    I like podcasts, audio books, I like the movies.

    I am not fond of the media bombardment and constant news speculations and speculative articles – even if I like podcasts about politics and current news (but is that too different from my grandpa in 1950s when he had a radio?)

    I don’t like the “shorts” on medias. I don’t like the memes. I don’t like the constant commenting and Pickering.

21. The internet is incredible, one of humanity’s greatest achievements.

    But I truly believe that social media has been a net negative for the public.
    Meta in particular is just a cancer on this world, I cannot think of a single company that has done more damage to our society than that one.

    I would definitely be in favour of a ban for under 16s, but honestly if I could just push a button and make it all disappear and never come back, I would.
    This has been the year that I’ve really broke away from most of it.

22. That’s what they say – but take their phones away from them and they’ll squeal.

23. It’s such a shame because these tech giants really ruined the whole thing by going public imho.

    In the early days …even up to about 2014 this space was _completely_ manageable. Screen time was a problem for some, sure, but it wasn’t the crack-addiction we see today. 

24. They wouldn’t.

    Even google maps alone is such a benefit to every day of our lives it’s hard to quantify. Being lost on the way to a date or your mates wedding isn’t fun.

25. So get off the internet. Nobody is stopping them from doing so.

26. I agree, as someone who just about experienced both to the point where I fully remember what life was like before and after, I can safely say that this is shit by multiple magnitudes of shitness.

    However, when I was about 18 the internet was just really properly getting into its stride and it was incredible. MSN Messenger, multitudes of small forums of about 100 – 1,000 likeminded people all of which you formed real bonds with(some of which im still friends with), no egragious corporate bullshit, no fake lives, no influencers. It was amazing. Even the advent of kazaa, ares, or other virus infested p2p was great, without them I wouldn’t have gotten into so many bands, or even watched a single episode of any anime. TV was special, I remember watching 24 and Lost, it was an event. Getting online to talk to your mates, sharing theories, actually having to wait episode to episode. Things felt just better, no more 5 minute fads and things being made to pander to people with no attention span.

    I’d kill to go back to the old internet, but we never can, it sucks.

    My small hope is that AI/bots become so gross that the internet in its current guise just becomes completely untennable and unuseable. That forces us to have to re-create the internet again, there would be a small hope that the small sites could come back, we could fully sack off social media and get back to small interactive communities. However, the realist in me sees the ai/bots making the internet unuseable as a corporate wet dream as they remake it in their own image, full of shit regulation.

27. This really bugs me. If you don’t like a film, book, TV series, Music or the internet don’t use listen or watch them.

28. Okay, take the internet away from these young people, see how well they take it…

    At lease we wouldn’t have to read their faux rage on social media.

29. No, they would prefer a world without social media. Not internet. I’m a young person and I’m also a software engineer. My job wouldn’t exist without the internet in modern times, just like the vast majority of jobs.

30. If they feel that way can they stop using it so much so I can suck up all the bandwidth in my local area? I’m 25, I’ve suffered because of technology but it’s all been my own fault where it’s happened. Limit your social media use to your degree to handle it.

31. Imo it’s the smartphone that changed everything into what it is now rather than the internet. The Internet used to be in 1 place in your house and now it’s just everywhere all the time

32. I’d like to introduce the 50% to this new invention … it’s called an Off Button. Works 100%

33. I miss the old days of the internet tbh. Youtube was amazing, completely creator driven, minimal ads, tons of community. Now everything is about views views views advertising advertising advertising and who can make the most money and get the most engagement by any means necessary.

    Pretty much every comment section I see, here on reddit as well, makes me depressed. Most of the time I won’t comment because it just invites unhealthy interactions that in the end serve no purpose.

    I want the internet to be fun again.

34. I bet most of them have never experienced a world without the Internet. I have and it sucked.

35. I have been using the Internet since 1997, since I was 17 when I got into creating games for Quake and would download tools and play Deathmatch. The difference between then and now was half the morons weren’t online/born and you could ‘turn it off’ as you needed a PC/Laptop to access.

    There was a balance between online and physical shopping.

    Smartphones changed that balance and Social Media became your online persona and with you 24/7. I think that is the problem. You can no longer escape it and ‘turn off’.

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