The Internet's origins lie in around the 1950s, when during the Cold War, Americans realized they needed some sort of communication system that could not be affected by Soviet nuclear attack. 

Yet, its official “birthday” is considered to be January 1, 1983, as about then it started to resemble the Internet we have now. Still, it was way less capable than the one we have now. To talk about the early Internet and its influence on the one we have today, Bored Panda reached out to cyberpsychologist Mayra Ruiz-McPherson, PhD(c), MA, MFA. 

At first, the Internet was mostly used by institutions and universities rather than regular people. Then in 1989, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web (WWW), which fast-tracked the public’s usage of the Internet too. 

As our interviewee pointed out, compared to the modern Internet, the beginning of the World Wide Web was painfully slow. Plus, it was capable of way less than it is now. As an example, she gave photo and video sharing: “These activities and behaviors ‘were possible’ back in the ’90s but were quite challenging depending on connectivity, file sizes, limited tools, and limited hosting.” 

Still, people were eager to use it and pretty soon a bunch of websites and chat rooms started being created, which brings us to our main topic. It was inspired by a Reddit user, u/milamccormick7, whose account is currently suspended, asking the question “What ‘early internet’ website did Gen Z really miss out on?” on r/AskReddit. 

People didn’t shy away from answering this question and the post on the platform got over 15K replies. So, we picked out the most interesting ones and compiled this list. In it, you can find people being straightforward and naming the sites that in their eyes Gen Z missed out on. 

Like MySpace, which still technically works, but it’s way past its peak. Or various forums where people would go when they needed advice on something, like Yahoo Answers, which was shut down back in 2021. Of course, Reddit or other social media can be used for that nowadays, but the vibe is not the same. 

At the same time, some people didn’t name specific websites, just the concepts of the internet they miss. 

For example, when people created sites for fun and not to make money. Ms. Ruiz-McPherson also indicated that the ability to monetize content used to be initially non-existent, which is a very big contrast to today’s social media.

She voiced that “Modern social media users are inundated, in between clicks, posts, shares, swipes, and content consumption with a tsunami of targeted ads, based on their user engagement patterns.” 

Granted, she said that these ads are what make social media look free, as they work as the price we pay for it. “It would make the early internet almost unrecognizable to many social media users of today.” 

Others said that the early Internet was filled with people who genuinely were interested, which made building bridges way easier than with the modern Internet. Again, our interviewee added some insight to this observation too. Back in the day, people could use anonymity to communicate and exchange ideas, while today users tend to have more visible and branded personal identities. 

So, it could be said that the Internet culture has drastically changed since its early days. Due to the increase in speed, in the 2010s social media and smart technologies flourished, and e-commerce and streaming services disrupted the areas they were in, bringing the service itself to the online world. All this led to over 5 billion people being connected to the Internet in the 2020s. 

This led to something Ms. Ruiz-McPherson referred to as a “weight loss” journey of the Internet. New features and trends started making the web more and more user-friendly. 

She said that "The internet became far leaner, more agile, robust, and much faster than its previous versions. With each milestone, processes became streamlined with increasingly frictionless UX journeys whereby it took far fewer clicks to get to your online destinations. And an exciting array of content options and commercial possibilities." 

Unfortunately, all these advancements also led to many websites being taken down or simply getting stuck in time. The cyberpsychologist mentioned that people who used to become hosts of these sites had the required technical knowledge of HTML and FTP servers, and sometimes even had to know CSS and understand SEO.

Now, some of them are still keeping up their creations as archives rather than as working sites, while others closed them for many reasons – from copyright issues to simply not seeing the point of keeping them up anymore. 

Well, it’s sad that we can no longer experience websites that were once entertaining for us or others, but that’s just the price we have to pay to have the Internet we have now, which as Ms. Ruiz-McPherson specified, includes “Real-time access and interactions, insanely fast speeds [that] facilitate content spreadability and ease of digital interactions.” 

Is there any early internet website you think the younger generations are missing out on? Share with us in the comments! Also check out the Instagram and LinkedIn profiles of our interviewee, cyberpsychologist Mayra Ruiz-McPherson, PhD(c), MA, MFA!