When I think of my earliest memories related to digital technology I think about my family. At first, we didn’t have a computer in our house, so that meant I could only be online at my grandma’s house with my cousins in our Saturday family meetings. I went to my grandmother’s house everyday, but I couldn’t turn on the computer by myself, so I had to be with my older and cooler cousins who played a farm game on an abandoned social media site called Orkut. After a few years, my mom taught me how to play Barbie and Polly Pocket games on that same computer, and my cousin introduced me to the world of The Sims 2 (which is still one of my favorite games ever).
Polly Pocket decoration game
The internet as a child meant having fun, playing games and connecting with my family and friends in real life. When I turned 7 or 8 I started playing Club Penguin, and my first online friendships (or interactions) started to appear. But it was mostly a way of me having fun with my school friends. I still love Club Penguin, as it holds a special place in my heart, but I wonder if kids still have safe spaces to play online. Colorful, with moderated chats and the possibility of social interaction without showing too much of yourself. As flash stopped being a thing in the late 2010s, Club Penguin died, and nowadays I believe only old nostalgic people play the fake versions of the game. I do that from time to time, realizing that now I’m in the elderly 18 & older category, as all mini games turned super easy and I can’t spend more than 5 minutes in the game without getting bored.
Age selection option when creating an account. Why do I feel so old?
Club Penguin felt really tailored to me as a child. I could pick my own outfits, have colorful pets, send letters to friends, collect stamps, play games and meet the penguin version of my favorite Disney characters. It felt safe to navigate as a child. I don’t know if my family actually thought about this, but all the computers I had access to faced doors, so my family could see what I was doing without even getting in the room. I used to think that was really annoying, especially when I wanted to watch music videos that included scenes of people kissing or when I created a secret blog with one of my friends to talk about nail polish and one of my oldest cousins made fun of it for about 5 years.
I remember Facebook had an age restriction of 13 years old so I actually never joined it until I went to university and needed to look for things on Facebook Marketplace, but at 11 I became addicted to Minecraft gameplays and made a Twitter account to interact with my favorite youtubers. Minecraft was an introduction to a digital experience away from my family and supervision, although it still allowed me to play with my school friends and make friends I trust until this day. My Nintendo DS became a smartphone and StreetPass became social media. From that moment on it was me, my phone and my laptop. No cousins around me, no door that I had to worry about.
Nintendo StreetPass, an ancient form of making online friends
Looking back, I can notice how my digital experience switched after getting my phone and my own social media. I don’t have any younger siblings or cousins and no one in my family or friend circle has had a baby yet so I have barely any idea of how kids are being introduced to the internet and what apps they are having access to. But I notice really young kids bringing their iPads out, enraptured by the screens and without any parent supervision. What for me started as a form of bringing me and my cousins closer, now seems to isolate children from the real world.
“Today, globally 1 in 3 Internet users is a child, and children are spending more time online and using the Internet at a younger age. Digital technologies are increasingly part of our daily life, helping us to find information, educational resources and more. We must keep in mind how helpless and vulnerable a child can be in the face of threatening anonymous users,” said Yukie Mokuo, UNICEF Representative in Kyrgyzstan.
Back when I didn’t know the computer’s password, the internet felt like a shared adventure, something I could only access through the people around me. It was a way to bond with my cousins, learn from my mom, and laugh at silly things with my school friends. It was colorful, playful, and just out of reach unless someone older and wiser was there to guide me.
Now, looking at how kids are introduced to technology, I feel both amazed and a little worried. There’s so much more access, but not always more connection. Children now swipe through apps alone, often unsupervised, in their own digital bubbles.
Technology meant family to me. It meant friends. It meant having fun together, figuring things out with help, and slowly earning the trust to explore more on my own. I wonder if, in such a digital world, today’s kids get a little bit of that magic too. Because while the tools have changed, the need for safe, shared, meaningful connection hasn’t.
A really nice blog! I relate a lot to your experience. And I love the title, it makes me a bit nostalgic. I have never really thought about how much of a social experience computer games were for me at a young age. Gathering with friends or family to play games on one computer. Unlike now it would be very unusual for us that everyone had their own device, so we would have to share. Makes me think of multiple player games like fire boy and water girl, that we would play on one computer.