Jimmy Nicholls

No, Zoomers: life wasn’t better before the internet

(Getty images)

Almost half of 16 to 21-year-olds wish they had grown up without the internet. A similar portion are even calling for a social media curfew, with a quarter wanting phones banned in schools, according to research from the British Standards Institution. Really? The truth is that Zoomers – those born between 1997 and 2012 – don’t know how lucky they are to have come of age during an era in which they had access to the web.

The truth is that Zoomers don’t know how lucky they are

While my own generation of Millennials were early guinea pigs for Facebook, Twitter and – for the connoisseurs out there – MSN Messenger, much of our teenage lives remained firmly analogue. Having first snuck online to the sounds of a dial-up connection, my recollection is that life before the internet was often quite dull. Many teenagers today blame their woes on social media and smartphones.

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