my relationship with the evolution of the internet over the years
from what i can remember, my first childhood experiences with the computer were via video games for kids stored on CDs. one of them was Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus, where i played as Barbie going on a nourney trying to find a magic wand to break an evil wizard's curse. gameplay was made up of various puzzles and minigames, including one where you had to navigate floating ice to get across the river, which neither me nor my younger sister* could sucessfully complete in time, so our dad had to come and do it so we could finish the game's story. good memories.
but i wasn't using the internet at that point yet.
*note: a lot of my time on the computer was shared between me and my sister. my parents wanted us to learn to share, so we would sit together and take turns playing the games if it was only a single player game. it did lead to a lot of fights and petty arguments, but luckily our relationship survived :P
being a teacher, my mother was informed of the dangers of unsupervised internet access, and especially internet strangers. i wasn't allowed to talk to people online that i didn't know in real life, and i was forbidden from going on random unknown websites. basically, if my school allowed us to use a site, i could use it at home.
my first real experiences with social media were through google hangouts, which was the platform i mainly used to message my friends, before transitioning fully to instagram after google hangouts shut down in november of 2022.
below is a short recording of how social media affected my relationship with art↓