Welp I hada bried time in elementary school to middle school like right before the smartphone era began (think like 2012-2016), there was nearly zero phones in school at that time, I can assure you I still had near zero friends and everyone I only considered to be an “acquaintance”. Everyone talked to each other, I was the loser making origami stuff and being a loser in the corner by myself with barely anyone to talk to. So yea I kinda hated my life during that time period. Perhaps seeing tv shows portray pre-internet era triggered these subconcious memories and cause those fears to resurge?
Twitches@lemm.ee 3 days ago
You would naturally have more friends because you’re not on the internet all the time. You would probably have a third place. Go to parks and what not. I’m an introvert as well and I grew up in the 90s, you’d be fine. Lol life finds a way. You would be surprised what you would be willing to when there is nothing else.
throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
Stillwater@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
Not having anyone to talk to for a few years in grade school doesn’t mean you wouldn’t have managed in a world without the internet. Its perhaps unfortunate that smartphones enabled you to be insular and never develop more socially (in regards to your original question)
Halosheep@lemm.ee 1 day ago
Interesting you consider the “smartphone era” to begin 2012. I’d say more like 2009/2010. Around my first year of highschool most students had some form of smartphone.
nemo@piefed.social 3 days ago
90s kid introvert here.
I would hop on my bike of a Saturday morning, explore the town for an hour, hit the library, come home a few hours later with as many books as I could fit in my backpack.
I'd stay up late learning to code from paperback manuals, save my games to floppies and swap them with friends at school or make my brothers play them.
I ran a year-long pen-and-paper fantasy wargame with my friends from the Scouts, I'd spend an hour every week tabulating the results of everyone's orders and updating the map.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I’m you from the previous generation. I lived too far away from the library to reach it on bike, but parents worked near it so they’d bring me books on their way home and returned by read ones at the same time. For me those games were written in BASIC for Commodore 64 along with rampant game piracy. Our made up pen-and-paper games were also made up but were mostly based on Cold War and Middle East scenarios.
nemo@piefed.social 3 days ago
yisss I was also jamming on the C64, a hand-me-down from a cousin
Eventually I had read all the books I was interested in at the local library, and the second nearest library, and the downtown library, and I was riding eight miles each way to get to the far side of town. As long as I was back by dinnertime!
sexual_tomato@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
90s kid here, but in a poor and rural area. I would play in my yard all day and couldn’t leave because it bordered a highway, and the nearest business was 5 miles away. Libraries were special trips. I had no neighbors, and no friends aside from school and church.
I played a fuckload of super Mario and read everything in the house whether I enjoyed it or not. Got halfway through the encyclopedia before we got free dial up Internet through AOL trial CDs and NetZero, but even then time was limited because phone line time was expensive.