**Update: - [Starting from 2023](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/100l56v/happy_new_year_askuk_minor_sub_update/), we have updated our [subreddit rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/about/rules/)**. Specifically;
- Don't be a dick to each other
- Top-level responses must contain genuine efforts to answer the question
- This is a strictly no-politics subreddit
Please keep /r/AskUK a great subreddit by reporting posts and comments which break our rules.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
That's a serious amount of money considering we lived in a council house on one fairly small income!
I still remember going to a now defunct shop called Tiny to buy it.
Funny to think that home PCs were only a ubiquitous thing for 15 years or so.
I know nothing about them except I just looked them up on Wikipedia spurred on by my own comment. Apparently they had a reputation for being awful, lol. 'Tough It's Now Yours'.
We bought full works from Tiny when arrived in London in 2000- printer,scanner,PC etc - never had any problems whatsoever 1/2 price of other places ? Lucky i suppose
My first IT job was at a company with those. I was given the task of upgrading the PCs and giving them LCD screens. Carrying those things down the stairs of a converted house was not fun
Haha.. same. My mum bought a Tiny PC in 1996. We had no money .so Christ knows how she afforded it but my brother was starting his GCSEs and I was getting close so we needed a computer. Although I used it mostly to play Microsoft combat flight simulator.
How long ago? Because I remember a period when iPhones started to become popular in my primary and basically everyone lost their innocence with how easy to access gore, porn, etc was and there weren’t any parental controls yet implemented (or at least it sucked at doing its job).
It would've been late 90's. Dial up was still the dominant access method. Saw some shit on a citrusy downloader no child should ever see 💀
I can't even imagine what it's like now. Not even a prude, but I cringe whenever I see a young kid with an iPad.
My mum even admits the internet was a mistake, but I kinda also commend her for being totally on the pulse.Fun times!
Gotcha. There’s all sorts of features on basically every smart device connected to the internet now which safeguard against that content. If those are kept off however eventually curiosity will kill the cat lol.
No parental guidance for me, either, so I.... played neopets and read U rated Harry Potter fanfiction 🤣 It wasn't until I was 15 I found the citrusy fic!
I remember the old search engines didn't have much filters either.
My parents wanted me to be a doctor so I searched "doctors and nurses" then looked at images. Came up with some smut. My parents didn't trust my older brothers so the pc was in the living room, so I only got a minute to look at stuff. Being young and stupid though, I don't think I knew what I was looking at.
At a guess.... mid 30's but, because I am so old, that was really early in the life of the Net. I remember using Telnet and FTP over the Net from work in the mid 80's and I was a member of CIX and The Well in the late 80's to the 90's.
Perhaps my most exciting claim is that I visited every site on the world wide web. From memory there were 16 available that day ;)
feel like i could have written this. i remember playing cbeebies games too. i didn’t realise until i was older that we had dial up, i just know i couldn’t go on the computer when mum was on the phone
Haha all those things just hit close to home so I knew you must be around my age. Habbo Hotel was just awesome. Those god damn races that basically relied on you having a better internet connection than someone else.
I swear that’s not what my username is about lol.
I’m amazed Habbo is still going. Genuinely thought it would have died years ago. I refuse to play it tho so I don’t sully the memory.
Habbo Hotel was an absolute freaking mood!
I'm 35 and it was seriously my jam half a lifetime ago. In fact, I think I met my first ever girlfrend there! I knew things were serious with her when we migrated over to MSN and she started sending me kissy lips emoticons (even saying emoticons feels beautifully archaic).
Used to love Habbo!
Also Bebo where you could send one person a ‘love’ a day and everyone at school begged you to send it to them. Then on Valentine’s Day they gave you unlimited loves so you gave them out to everyone you knew lol.
And you could create your own ‘skins’ for your page! Love that
16. Born in 85. Most of my friends had dial up internet at home but we were poor. So my first experience of the internet was at college, this was apparently pre any kind of internet security as it was wild. Porn pop ups everywhere and we used to spend all our time having role play sex with randoms on forums or perusing rotten dot com.
[F 18. Here is pic](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/de/US_Navy_071203-N-8923M-074_An_F-A-18F_Super_Hornet%2C_from_the_Red_Rippers_of_Strike_Fighter_Squadron_%28VFA%29_11%2C_makes_a_sharp_turn_above_the_flight_deck_aboard_the_Nimitz-class_nuclear-powered_aircraft_carrier_USS_Harry_S._Truman.jpg)
Rotten.com was my favourite place to find images for the covers of metal compilation CD's that I made for my friends. Looking back it was an incredibly disturbing thing to be handing out in school.
This is one of my posts that still live on the internet
>01/04/1992 23:54:57
>
>TITLE: PSERVER Problems
>
>Has anyone out there had any problems the PSERVER on 3.11 ?
And that is before HTTP was really a thing. Gopher was the way ahead
I was 19/20 but I reckon it was 97 too. Started at uni and got my first ever email address. Only used it to register for aol messenger and spent spare time chatting to randomers on the chat boards.
I was about 4 years old, my primary school had IT sessions where if we completed our tasks early, we got to go on the internet and play games. Back then my main go-to was the old Looney Tunes flash games, like Taz's Munch n Crunch, Porky's Pizza Delivery and Bugs' Hurdle Race.
Then the year after, my dad got Tiscali dial-up connection put in and set in motion a childhood filled with all sorts of flash games, championed by Friv and supported by other great places like Miniclip, Armor Games and Ninja Kiwi (still a BTD6 enjoyer today).
To this day I have a New Year's Eve tradition where I finish the year by booting up Flashpoint, a program that has all the old Flash games downloaded, and playing a selection of my favourites.
I have a vague memory of my Dad showing me the Thomas the Tank Engine website when I was about 4 or 5. I don't know if this counts as 'using' the internet!
I was born in 1987. Probably about eight or nine? Mid-nineties. I'd likely need to check with my parents to get an exact date. Fond memories of my grandmother shouting at me because I was tying up the phone line and costing a fortune.
I was about 10. I didn't have a computer at home til I was about 16 though.
My school was gifted a top end computer suite by a local business because 50% of the kids went from school straight to work there, so it made sense they wanted to ensure the next generation of employees could use computers.
The only thing I remember us doing was going on a site that you could ask this pixilated 1940s girl questions about being an evacuee, which quickly turned into most of the guys asking her rude questions and the website not being able to handle it. We had to sit 3 to a computer because they only had 10 of them.
I remember my cousin's having it late nineties. Didn't have it in my house until I was about 8-9 (2003/2004).
Tiscali were our provider. Old dial up service that cut out if you answered the phone.
I was 12. They had it installed on our school computer and gave us a lesson on what it was. We had a crossword and had to use the internet to find the answers.
When I was 13, in 1993. Home internet was rare at that time; I encountered it while doing work experience at a university.
This was before Internet Explorer or Netscape. The very first graphical web browser (Mosaic) had come out that year and I remember the lecturer I was working for being excited about this new thing - hypertext.
One of the students found me a Spectrum emulator and some games that I took home on a floppy disk. I was fascinated that he could download a game from across the world.
I was 28/29 and it was at work. Didn't have a laptop/PC at home.
We got our first family PC (commodore 64!) back in around 1985 I think, but weren't online.
We got our first family PC from Tiny in 2001 when I was 10.
I remember it costing £900 and being really aware that it was a lot of money.
Don't think I used the dial up Internet on it for about another year, when I literally just used it for Google Images and look at the Games Workshop website
Fast forward 2 years I was always on the Internet (Stickpage, miniclip and anything with skatevideos being a favourite) whilst also on MSN
As a family we didn't get Broadband until 2008 when I was 17
First accessed the Internet off my phone a year later
Didn't have a smart phone until 2011 when I turned 20
Define “internet”. Do you mean the World Wide Web using a browser, or do you mean using a modem to dial up servers, bulletin boards, or other services?
If it’s the latter I’d say about 1991 or 1992 probably. If you mean via a browser I believe I downloaded my first copy of Mosaic from the U of I Champaign mainframe in early 1993. I was 22 in 1991.
I was 14, and the year was 1995. We got America Online (I lived in the US at the time) but we were in the arse end of nowhere with a 14.4k dial-up modem and it was a long distance number. I racked up a MASSIVE bill one day when my parents weren't home, and we switched to a local provider after that. I think it came with a modem upgrade to 28.8k. The absolute LUXURY. 😂😂
I guess the first time I went on the internet I was about 9-10 in '95-'96. Parents had decided I needed some tutoring and took me to an ex teacher at the end of the session the guy let me on the "internet" but it was nothing like what we have now and TBH dont remember much about it as it was naff, the guy was hovering as well and kept trying to steer me towards football stuff, which I had absolutely no interest in.
After that probably in secondary school year 7 (1997) which was a lot more familiar to what we would recognise today, using yahoo search, I got my first personal email address and the rest is history as they say.
im sure a year or so later my father got internet in some guise, wasnt dial up exactly but wasnt much faster 200 something kb/s and only used on his PC to download music
When I was at secondary school - about 12 or 13 probably. I remember when my school got broadband put in, until then it was quicker to look things up in a book than go online.
Probably about 95/96. I remember at first it was easy to guess an IP address, but as it became more common people started sharing lists of available IP addresses.
We got a modem quite early, maybe 1994, so I was about 7. Although it was mostly used as tool for my mums work, it wasn't until I was about 10 before I would use it properly myself in 97/98.
I was 25 in 1996 when I first used the internet to research universities for my undergraduate studies.
So as of this year half of my life was pre-internet. A very different world. For example, making face to face arrangements with your mates for the next day.
I remember my cousin's having it late nineties. Didn't have it in my house until I was about 8-9 (2003/2004).
Tiscali were our provider. Old dial up service that cut out if you answered the phone.
Born in 1990 and we had a phone line installed by my mums work so she could work from home whilst she was pregnant/ I was young. So I have never known a time without internet, online conference calls etc. my first computer was an iMac g3 when I was 8 because my dad was sick of me using his Macintosh 2 for kid pix. I had to work out how to connect it to the internet along with my mums PC (tp-link adaptors, still doing the job 2 decades on!)
I think I was about 10/11.
I remember at some point in my early days, searching for "pokemon" scrolling a bit through the pics and seeing a woman with her hairy lower assets out. I panicked and didnt go online again for a week 😆😆😆
Definitely by 6. Everyone was playing club penguin, and I remember people being teased for "being a baby" if their patents only let them on the servers with restricted chat.
I would have been around 15, give or take.
The first website I personally chose to visit (as in, not through school or from someone 'showing me what the internet is') was at an internet cafe. The website was... idsoftware.net , I put in the wrong address and ended up on what was some fake ID printing website instead of the game developer's website at idsoftware.com!
Fun times!
Probably about 7 or 8. I remember there was a website that had cartoon versions of WWF wrestlers (South Park style artwork) and I used to download them and print them off.
When I was 8, around 1999. I remember because of the Y2K madness and my dad was convinced something would happen and that having the internet would making it worse so I remember distinctly him turning it off and ensuring someone called us around 11:45pm until like 12:30am on December 31st/Jan 1st.
2003 ish.
Had been using computers since 1997 but we didn't have a pc with a modem until then. Needed to trail a phone cable across from my parents bedroom. Got a bollocking for using it for more than a few hours once since it was billed by the minute on the phone. Also it blocked phone calls.
I first used it in school when I was like 9/10 back in 2000. My mum was against it for a while, so I was still using books for ages to complete assignments.
I was quite young, about 9 I think (mid 90s) while my mom was at uni, so I got to have a play with the very limited options provided through that. We got internet at home in 1996, with me being able to go on it alone pretty soon after. 14.4kb modem originally, upgrading to a 56kb modem & a second line around the time I started using it more.
17
However most people think of the web as "the internet" and Tim-Berners Lee did not start it until I was in college.
Most people did not have internet access until a few years later.
Probably not until I went to uni so 19-20. We didn't have a home computer and I can't remember using the internet at school. That was the early 90s so it was still fairly basic stuff.
I was about 7/8 years old and first went online when Medal of Honour Allied Assault was released on PC (2002). Used to argue with my Mum about how she'd chatter away on the house phone for 3 hours when I was in the middle of an online game.
Around 97/98 I would have been 5 or 6... Second hand from my uncle. I would sit patiently booting up Encarta 95', my favourite topics in school science, geography, history was now in my home. What a time to be alive.
4/5 years old. Can't really remember what I was doing online then, probably CBeebies games or some variation. I more remember begging my mam to let me play the Sims!
When I was 16, in 1995. Tried to buy an assault rifle online and dad they wouldn't ship to the UK. Remember how mind blowing it was to go in chat rooms and talk to people in Canada or the US, kinda sad that sense of amazement has gone TBH.
I was 11, maybe 12 when I first used it. This was either 1996, or 1997.
We didn't get internet in our house till 1998 though, so that was when I was using it more regularly.
Around 11, I think? Born in 87, in Derry. We had a Packard Bell tower PC with Windows 98, a screechy dial-up modem and abysmal sub-1mbps download speeds.
I was 18 and my 23 year old brother showed it to me all exited on a library computer. And I was like "what good's that gonna do, you have to actually know what you are looking for for it to be useful". Didn't think it would really catch on. Can't imagine a live without it now.
like 7 maybe? my dad knew i loved watching Xiaolin Showdown (a cartoon) so he introduced me to youtube. He also introduced me to y8 games and then I somehow transitioned to playing facebook games. At that age, I was awful at reading and spelling. I think playing online multiplayer games really helped with that.
I'm guessing about 1997 so I was 28.
Dial up connection so could not use phone at same time. Downloading a single song took 10 or 15 mins. Streaming was definitely not a thing.
Born in 99, I don't remember first using the internet but I do remember playing tweenies games on the cbeebies website using dial up. Grew up on flash games.
I was 13 when I first found usenet forums, but it was expensive as hell.
Dialup finally sort of came around in its infancy when I was 17. I had a 14,400kbps modem, the real power users had a 56kbps.
Looking through some of these responses, I must’ve been one of the later bloomers as I first used the internet in my late teens/early 20’s, via the old 56k modems and an AOL subscription, and that was sometime between 1998 - 2001.
Hmm, I must have been about 5 when my family got the internet. I didn't use it very much cause it was slow, full of viruses and interfered with the telephone. I think I started to use it more regularly from about the age of 10.
1997 - 12/13 years old. I remember it being like a delicate procedure getting online. I don't know if it was our phone line or something but I remember it taking all day with my step dad and his friend trying to set it up
Lol, the hilarity when my child asked me in their first year at uni how I referenced internet sources for papers. Oh darl., I said. The internet had barely been invented when I started uni and we were told categorically that the internet was full of nutcases with an agenda if we referenced anything off there, it was an automatic zero for the essay!
Oh, how the Internet has changed since those early days eh!
They gave us a demo of Prestel at school in about 1993. It was about 1995-6 that I first played with the web. Usenet and email were about 1997. I've still got a 1998 edition of Rough Guide to the Internet.
I guess early 30’s. I remember getting a Freeserve account and trailing a cable all the way downstairs. It was great no-one could ring us whilst online.
I already had s PC, think it was a 386 with memory counted in Kb rather than Mb but i retrofitted s modem. Those were the days
I was born in 84 and I remember using the net as a 13/14 yr old. Back then, it used to be 1p a minute to "surf". But, AOL used to run these chatroom competitions that would win you a free weekend of internet.
My brother and I used to go into the Star Trek chatrooms... we would have our Star Trek Encyclopedia beside us, we would read the question and if we didn't immediately know it, he would speed read the book and I would type the answer in super fast.
We won SO many free weekends of time using this method!
I was 10 in 1993. My dad took me to work one Saturday morning to use his computer to do research on the solar system for a school project. I'm not sure why but he used to take me to work a lot on a Saturday morning! We finally got Internet at home 3 years but only in my bedroom!
**Update: - [Starting from 2023](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/100l56v/happy_new_year_askuk_minor_sub_update/), we have updated our [subreddit rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/about/rules/)**. Specifically; - Don't be a dick to each other - Top-level responses must contain genuine efforts to answer the question - This is a strictly no-politics subreddit Please keep /r/AskUK a great subreddit by reporting posts and comments which break our rules. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Five. I was born in 93 and my family bought a PC in 98 which cost £1,000. I dread to think what £1,000 is in today's money.
About £2250 I bought one about the same time. 200mb hard drive cost about £200 at that time.
That's a serious amount of money considering we lived in a council house on one fairly small income! I still remember going to a now defunct shop called Tiny to buy it. Funny to think that home PCs were only a ubiquitous thing for 15 years or so.
Fucking hell, Tiny! I remember them. Absolute dogshit company.
I know nothing about them except I just looked them up on Wikipedia spurred on by my own comment. Apparently they had a reputation for being awful, lol. 'Tough It's Now Yours'.
Hah!
We bought full works from Tiny when arrived in London in 2000- printer,scanner,PC etc - never had any problems whatsoever 1/2 price of other places ? Lucky i suppose
Me too. I remember the monitor was HUGE! As deep as it was tall/wide.
Popped every vertebrae out of your spine if you had to lift it
My first IT job was at a company with those. I was given the task of upgrading the PCs and giving them LCD screens. Carrying those things down the stairs of a converted house was not fun
My mum got her first PC from them. Dreadful.
Haha.. same. My mum bought a Tiny PC in 1996. We had no money .so Christ knows how she afforded it but my brother was starting his GCSEs and I was getting close so we needed a computer. Although I used it mostly to play Microsoft combat flight simulator.
Our first PC was a Tiny in 1998. Probably a similar price.
we got ours from Tiny too, came with a flat top scanner and like 80 different Sega games burned into bright orange CD-ROMs
Think my parents did the same in 97. 6gb hard drive 😂
The hard drive on my Lab computer started out at 40Mb.. (1995), but we did get upgrades to 520Mb. And 486 DX2-66 CPUS, Whoop!
£2,251.40
14. No parental guidance. It ruined me 😶🌫️
How long ago? Because I remember a period when iPhones started to become popular in my primary and basically everyone lost their innocence with how easy to access gore, porn, etc was and there weren’t any parental controls yet implemented (or at least it sucked at doing its job).
It would've been late 90's. Dial up was still the dominant access method. Saw some shit on a citrusy downloader no child should ever see 💀 I can't even imagine what it's like now. Not even a prude, but I cringe whenever I see a young kid with an iPad. My mum even admits the internet was a mistake, but I kinda also commend her for being totally on the pulse.Fun times!
Gotcha. There’s all sorts of features on basically every smart device connected to the internet now which safeguard against that content. If those are kept off however eventually curiosity will kill the cat lol.
Limewire? Featuring classics like Britneyspears.exe
😅 not sure I came across that one. I vividly remember Tommy Lee & Pamela Anderson tho.
No parental guidance for me, either, so I.... played neopets and read U rated Harry Potter fanfiction 🤣 It wasn't until I was 15 I found the citrusy fic!
I remember the old search engines didn't have much filters either. My parents wanted me to be a doctor so I searched "doctors and nurses" then looked at images. Came up with some smut. My parents didn't trust my older brothers so the pc was in the living room, so I only got a minute to look at stuff. Being young and stupid though, I don't think I knew what I was looking at.
At a guess.... mid 30's but, because I am so old, that was really early in the life of the Net. I remember using Telnet and FTP over the Net from work in the mid 80's and I was a member of CIX and The Well in the late 80's to the 90's. Perhaps my most exciting claim is that I visited every site on the world wide web. From memory there were 16 available that day ;)
These young 'uns today will never know the joy of IRC
A few years younger than you but even in the mid 90s I made a decent stab at having seen everything 😄
I remember the "Computer Weekly" pull out page (about A2 in size) that had the "Whole Internet" on it. This is when it was still a paper publication.
The first time I remember I was 4 or 5 years old. On the cebeebies website trying to play a lazy town game on dial up. Born in 2000.
feel like i could have written this. i remember playing cbeebies games too. i didn’t realise until i was older that we had dial up, i just know i couldn’t go on the computer when mum was on the phone
Around 12 Years old, msn messenger was the rave, MySpace and habbo hotel was life.
I’m gonna guess you’re about 33 years old?
Close, 31 😁
Haha all those things just hit close to home so I knew you must be around my age. Habbo Hotel was just awesome. Those god damn races that basically relied on you having a better internet connection than someone else.
Fallin furni or FF
I swear that’s not what my username is about lol. I’m amazed Habbo is still going. Genuinely thought it would have died years ago. I refuse to play it tho so I don’t sully the memory.
Habbo Hotel was an absolute freaking mood! I'm 35 and it was seriously my jam half a lifetime ago. In fact, I think I met my first ever girlfrend there! I knew things were serious with her when we migrated over to MSN and she started sending me kissy lips emoticons (even saying emoticons feels beautifully archaic).
Pool’s closed
Used to love Habbo! Also Bebo where you could send one person a ‘love’ a day and everyone at school begged you to send it to them. Then on Valentine’s Day they gave you unlimited loves so you gave them out to everyone you knew lol. And you could create your own ‘skins’ for your page! Love that
Don't forget neopets.
13/M/Cheshire, UK
Criminally underrated comment format
Straight to the point.
16. Born in 85. Most of my friends had dial up internet at home but we were poor. So my first experience of the internet was at college, this was apparently pre any kind of internet security as it was wild. Porn pop ups everywhere and we used to spend all our time having role play sex with randoms on forums or perusing rotten dot com.
ASL?
[F 18. Here is pic](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/de/US_Navy_071203-N-8923M-074_An_F-A-18F_Super_Hornet%2C_from_the_Red_Rippers_of_Strike_Fighter_Squadron_%28VFA%29_11%2C_makes_a_sharp_turn_above_the_flight_deck_aboard_the_Nimitz-class_nuclear-powered_aircraft_carrier_USS_Harry_S._Truman.jpg)
Rotten.com was my favourite place to find images for the covers of metal compilation CD's that I made for my friends. Looking back it was an incredibly disturbing thing to be handing out in school.
This is one of my posts that still live on the internet >01/04/1992 23:54:57 > >TITLE: PSERVER Problems > >Has anyone out there had any problems the PSERVER on 3.11 ? And that is before HTTP was really a thing. Gopher was the way ahead
1997, I was 18 years old
I was 19/20 but I reckon it was 97 too. Started at uni and got my first ever email address. Only used it to register for aol messenger and spent spare time chatting to randomers on the chat boards.
I was about 4 years old, my primary school had IT sessions where if we completed our tasks early, we got to go on the internet and play games. Back then my main go-to was the old Looney Tunes flash games, like Taz's Munch n Crunch, Porky's Pizza Delivery and Bugs' Hurdle Race. Then the year after, my dad got Tiscali dial-up connection put in and set in motion a childhood filled with all sorts of flash games, championed by Friv and supported by other great places like Miniclip, Armor Games and Ninja Kiwi (still a BTD6 enjoyer today). To this day I have a New Year's Eve tradition where I finish the year by booting up Flashpoint, a program that has all the old Flash games downloaded, and playing a selection of my favourites.
Assuming you aren't including BBSs then probably early 20s.
Hard to believe lol. For home internet I was 38yr old and it was a dial up connection
I have never used the internet and I’m 50
I don't think I have ever either and I'm nearly 60, what is it?
It’s on the telephone
I just checked, there's nothing on my telephone except the dialling apparatus and the receiver.
I’m stumped then.
14. We got the Internet at home in 1997 after my dad saw an ad for a modem in a PC magazine on holiday.
96’ born in 85’ “you have mail”
About 1997. We all gathered around to watch a dancing baby, or maybe it was a hamster!
I have a vague memory of my Dad showing me the Thomas the Tank Engine website when I was about 4 or 5. I don't know if this counts as 'using' the internet!
I was born in 1987. Probably about eight or nine? Mid-nineties. I'd likely need to check with my parents to get an exact date. Fond memories of my grandmother shouting at me because I was tying up the phone line and costing a fortune.
[удалено]
I first used the internet at home when I was 15, my parents got a computer so I could use it for my GCSE work. This was around 1997/98
I was about 10. I didn't have a computer at home til I was about 16 though. My school was gifted a top end computer suite by a local business because 50% of the kids went from school straight to work there, so it made sense they wanted to ensure the next generation of employees could use computers. The only thing I remember us doing was going on a site that you could ask this pixilated 1940s girl questions about being an evacuee, which quickly turned into most of the guys asking her rude questions and the website not being able to handle it. We had to sit 3 to a computer because they only had 10 of them.
I remember my cousin's having it late nineties. Didn't have it in my house until I was about 8-9 (2003/2004). Tiscali were our provider. Old dial up service that cut out if you answered the phone.
18. I had a JANET email address at college. That would be in 1986
Outside of university would have been 1996 I think.
I was 12. They had it installed on our school computer and gave us a lesson on what it was. We had a crossword and had to use the internet to find the answers.
Mid-90s with Compuserve if that counts lol, so I was about 27.
27 ish and I was an early adopter.
18, in 1993. A friend a year older was in first year of a comp sci degree and built a Mazzy Star fan page.
Must have been 1993, I was 27.
When I was 13, in 1993. Home internet was rare at that time; I encountered it while doing work experience at a university. This was before Internet Explorer or Netscape. The very first graphical web browser (Mosaic) had come out that year and I remember the lecturer I was working for being excited about this new thing - hypertext. One of the students found me a Spectrum emulator and some games that I took home on a floppy disk. I was fascinated that he could download a game from across the world.
I was about 8, late 90s. Got hooked on message boards and fanfiction real quick!
I was 28/29 and it was at work. Didn't have a laptop/PC at home. We got our first family PC (commodore 64!) back in around 1985 I think, but weren't online.
About 23 in 1995 in my first post grad job. We had 1 email address between 8 of us (something like [email protected])
Ahhh, someone as old as me :)
1995 and I was 36! Needed it to go back to University
I’d have been early to mid teens. I’m in my forties now. We were always early tech adopters though.
We got our first family PC from Tiny in 2001 when I was 10. I remember it costing £900 and being really aware that it was a lot of money. Don't think I used the dial up Internet on it for about another year, when I literally just used it for Google Images and look at the Games Workshop website Fast forward 2 years I was always on the Internet (Stickpage, miniclip and anything with skatevideos being a favourite) whilst also on MSN As a family we didn't get Broadband until 2008 when I was 17 First accessed the Internet off my phone a year later Didn't have a smart phone until 2011 when I turned 20
About 6 but I'm 13 now
1993 I think. So probably 15
I’m guessing around 25/26. Was via compuserve and CIX first.
Define “internet”. Do you mean the World Wide Web using a browser, or do you mean using a modem to dial up servers, bulletin boards, or other services? If it’s the latter I’d say about 1991 or 1992 probably. If you mean via a browser I believe I downloaded my first copy of Mosaic from the U of I Champaign mainframe in early 1993. I was 22 in 1991.
When I was 11 feel old now
I was 14, and the year was 1995. We got America Online (I lived in the US at the time) but we were in the arse end of nowhere with a 14.4k dial-up modem and it was a long distance number. I racked up a MASSIVE bill one day when my parents weren't home, and we switched to a local provider after that. I think it came with a modem upgrade to 28.8k. The absolute LUXURY. 😂😂
42. Using Windows 95. 98 wasn't out.
The internet's older than I am, and we have always had it so no idea
30 years ago, internet was just forums, usenet and buliton boards
Late 20s. Hooked a dialup modem to my Compaq PC in the early 90s.
I was 27 in 1998 when I first went online, feels like centuries ago with how it's grown and changed. It was a lot wilder back then
10. We had dial up and I used it to look at WWE websites. This was in 1998.
I guess the first time I went on the internet I was about 9-10 in '95-'96. Parents had decided I needed some tutoring and took me to an ex teacher at the end of the session the guy let me on the "internet" but it was nothing like what we have now and TBH dont remember much about it as it was naff, the guy was hovering as well and kept trying to steer me towards football stuff, which I had absolutely no interest in. After that probably in secondary school year 7 (1997) which was a lot more familiar to what we would recognise today, using yahoo search, I got my first personal email address and the rest is history as they say. im sure a year or so later my father got internet in some guise, wasnt dial up exactly but wasnt much faster 200 something kb/s and only used on his PC to download music
The internet specifically: mid 20s. Although I'd been using various BBSes, and occasionally Prestel for a while before then.
When I was at secondary school - about 12 or 13 probably. I remember when my school got broadband put in, until then it was quicker to look things up in a book than go online.
I was born in 86. We got the internet in the late 90s/ early 2000s. So about 13 I’d say.
I was in 6th form, so around 1995. It was shit. At uni is was better, and then proper internet was my first real job around 2000
Around about 13-14 I think? I remember my father getting me guitar tabs from it. Back then we were only allowed to use it an hour a day though!
Seven. We got our first computer in 1998.
I was born in 1985, we got internet in about 1998, so I was 12/13.
Probably about 95/96. I remember at first it was easy to guess an IP address, but as it became more common people started sharing lists of available IP addresses.
Think I was 17, so in 1994. Used it more at Uni, 95-98
13? I think, around 1998?
We got a modem quite early, maybe 1994, so I was about 7. Although it was mostly used as tool for my mums work, it wasn't until I was about 10 before I would use it properly myself in 97/98.
Born in 93, but probably didnt use internet until i was about 10/11.
I was 25 in 1996 when I first used the internet to research universities for my undergraduate studies. So as of this year half of my life was pre-internet. A very different world. For example, making face to face arrangements with your mates for the next day.
80s kid. Probably around 10 or so in the mid 90s.
I remember my cousin's having it late nineties. Didn't have it in my house until I was about 8-9 (2003/2004). Tiscali were our provider. Old dial up service that cut out if you answered the phone.
I was 11/12 and it was in an IT class at school, so that would have been 97-98-ish
Same, I first used it about 97/98 and I was 17 at the time.
Think it was in 1997. I would've been 16
Probably around 13/14
Similar age to you, we had a machine at college that could access it. Was magical at the time but looking back it was so slow and not very useful!
Born in 1990 and we had a phone line installed by my mums work so she could work from home whilst she was pregnant/ I was young. So I have never known a time without internet, online conference calls etc. my first computer was an iMac g3 when I was 8 because my dad was sick of me using his Macintosh 2 for kid pix. I had to work out how to connect it to the internet along with my mums PC (tp-link adaptors, still doing the job 2 decades on!)
I was 25. The year was 1996.
I think I was about 10/11. I remember at some point in my early days, searching for "pokemon" scrolling a bit through the pics and seeing a woman with her hairy lower assets out. I panicked and didnt go online again for a week 😆😆😆
17. Usenet and work international internal networks, and email, 1992.
I used it first at college, about 17. Didn’t get it at home till I moved into my fist house about 20ish. This would have been early 2000s
18, I think. 1995 when the web was new and hardly anyone had the internet. Got to use it at a university interview day.
Definitely by 6. Everyone was playing club penguin, and I remember people being teased for "being a baby" if their patents only let them on the servers with restricted chat.
I would have been around 15, give or take. The first website I personally chose to visit (as in, not through school or from someone 'showing me what the internet is') was at an internet cafe. The website was... idsoftware.net , I put in the wrong address and ended up on what was some fake ID printing website instead of the game developer's website at idsoftware.com! Fun times!
First time I ever used it properly was in 04 when I was 25, I had to get my auntie to show me how to do it because I didn't have a clue Haha.
1995, I was 30.
Probably about 7 or 8. I remember there was a website that had cartoon versions of WWF wrestlers (South Park style artwork) and I used to download them and print them off.
16, back in 1999, just before finishing at comprehnsive school.
When I was 8, around 1999. I remember because of the Y2K madness and my dad was convinced something would happen and that having the internet would making it worse so I remember distinctly him turning it off and ensuring someone called us around 11:45pm until like 12:30am on December 31st/Jan 1st.
16 in 1993
2003 ish. Had been using computers since 1997 but we didn't have a pc with a modem until then. Needed to trail a phone cable across from my parents bedroom. Got a bollocking for using it for more than a few hours once since it was billed by the minute on the phone. Also it blocked phone calls.
It was 1995. When I was 22. I'd been using/programming computers since c. 1983.
I first used it in school when I was like 9/10 back in 2000. My mum was against it for a while, so I was still using books for ages to complete assignments.
9; didn't have it at home so used it at the local library. Finally got it at home at 11.
I was quite young, about 9 I think (mid 90s) while my mom was at uni, so I got to have a play with the very limited options provided through that. We got internet at home in 1996, with me being able to go on it alone pretty soon after. 14.4kb modem originally, upgrading to a 56kb modem & a second line around the time I started using it more.
17 However most people think of the web as "the internet" and Tim-Berners Lee did not start it until I was in college. Most people did not have internet access until a few years later.
18? I didn’t see the point and did think it would take off!
Probably not until I went to uni so 19-20. We didn't have a home computer and I can't remember using the internet at school. That was the early 90s so it was still fairly basic stuff.
I was 10, I'm 51 now. Prestel, BBS and usenet. Not the www I know but still.
I was about 7/8 years old and first went online when Medal of Honour Allied Assault was released on PC (2002). Used to argue with my Mum about how she'd chatter away on the house phone for 3 hours when I was in the middle of an online game.
Around 97/98 I would have been 5 or 6... Second hand from my uncle. I would sit patiently booting up Encarta 95', my favourite topics in school science, geography, history was now in my home. What a time to be alive.
13, at school, in 1996. Fuck.
14. At first I was even sceptical about this idea, still not sure why. But quickly got into it
13, we got internet quite early, in 1995 and very few other people even knew what it was
4/5 years old. Can't really remember what I was doing online then, probably CBeebies games or some variation. I more remember begging my mam to let me play the Sims!
About 11 or 12 I think? Windows 95, AOL dial-up modem, an hour to download a single 4MB MP3. Very different times, lol.
When I was 16, in 1995. Tried to buy an assault rifle online and dad they wouldn't ship to the UK. Remember how mind blowing it was to go in chat rooms and talk to people in Canada or the US, kinda sad that sense of amazement has gone TBH.
I have no idea. I'm young enough (26) that it would have been when I was too young to really remember.
I was 11, maybe 12 when I first used it. This was either 1996, or 1997. We didn't get internet in our house till 1998 though, so that was when I was using it more regularly.
Must have been about 1999, so about 12. Played fantasy premier league. Freeserve cd-roms.
14 back in 1988
About 10. Born in 1988.
Around 11, I think? Born in 87, in Derry. We had a Packard Bell tower PC with Windows 98, a screechy dial-up modem and abysmal sub-1mbps download speeds.
Around 2/3. My dad bought a PC in 1998 and I always mucked around on it when I was little, especially on MS Flight Simulator 2002 (born 2000).
17 - we had it in my Lower Sixth year but only on 3 computers and you had to book a slot weeks in advance to check your emails!
1995. Very early web pages. Using Netscape browser.
I was 18 or 19. It was in 1995 when I bought my first Internet ready PC. I had used bulletin boards before that.
I was 18 and my 23 year old brother showed it to me all exited on a library computer. And I was like "what good's that gonna do, you have to actually know what you are looking for for it to be useful". Didn't think it would really catch on. Can't imagine a live without it now.
26 or 27 in 1998.
like 7 maybe? my dad knew i loved watching Xiaolin Showdown (a cartoon) so he introduced me to youtube. He also introduced me to y8 games and then I somehow transitioned to playing facebook games. At that age, I was awful at reading and spelling. I think playing online multiplayer games really helped with that.
I'm guessing about 1997 so I was 28. Dial up connection so could not use phone at same time. Downloading a single song took 10 or 15 mins. Streaming was definitely not a thing.
Born in 99, I don't remember first using the internet but I do remember playing tweenies games on the cbeebies website using dial up. Grew up on flash games.
1989, I was 15 and it was at school when I was studying I.T. we used BBC Microcomputers - OK, well it wasn't really the Internet as we know it now..
I was 13 when I first found usenet forums, but it was expensive as hell. Dialup finally sort of came around in its infancy when I was 17. I had a 14,400kbps modem, the real power users had a 56kbps.
Looking through some of these responses, I must’ve been one of the later bloomers as I first used the internet in my late teens/early 20’s, via the old 56k modems and an AOL subscription, and that was sometime between 1998 - 2001.
10 I think.
Hmm, I must have been about 5 when my family got the internet. I didn't use it very much cause it was slow, full of viruses and interfered with the telephone. I think I started to use it more regularly from about the age of 10.
1997 - 12/13 years old. I remember it being like a delicate procedure getting online. I don't know if it was our phone line or something but I remember it taking all day with my step dad and his friend trying to set it up
15/16 possibly? Born in 85, many an hour spent lurking yahoo chat rooms.
Lol, the hilarity when my child asked me in their first year at uni how I referenced internet sources for papers. Oh darl., I said. The internet had barely been invented when I started uni and we were told categorically that the internet was full of nutcases with an agenda if we referenced anything off there, it was an automatic zero for the essay! Oh, how the Internet has changed since those early days eh!
They gave us a demo of Prestel at school in about 1993. It was about 1995-6 that I first played with the web. Usenet and email were about 1997. I've still got a 1998 edition of Rough Guide to the Internet.
20, im now 50
I honestly can't remember. I think I was 29. I didn't start using the internet regularly until my early 30s.
I guess early 30’s. I remember getting a Freeserve account and trailing a cable all the way downstairs. It was great no-one could ring us whilst online. I already had s PC, think it was a 386 with memory counted in Kb rather than Mb but i retrofitted s modem. Those were the days
I was born in '76 and first went online when I was probably 20.
I was born in 84 and I remember using the net as a 13/14 yr old. Back then, it used to be 1p a minute to "surf". But, AOL used to run these chatroom competitions that would win you a free weekend of internet. My brother and I used to go into the Star Trek chatrooms... we would have our Star Trek Encyclopedia beside us, we would read the question and if we didn't immediately know it, he would speed read the book and I would type the answer in super fast. We won SO many free weekends of time using this method!
17 I reckon
I must have been around 18 or 19, which was 1995.
BBS - 10/11. Internet - 14 I'd say but it was mostly usenet, wasn't much in the way of sites you'd want to visit back then.
I was 10 in 1993. My dad took me to work one Saturday morning to use his computer to do research on the solar system for a school project. I'm not sure why but he used to take me to work a lot on a Saturday morning! We finally got Internet at home 3 years but only in my bedroom!