Alain de Botton sort of talks about this in Religion for Atheists. Why it's important to have rooms (or buildings) that serves a certain purpose.

Having the internet available at all times was never the problem.

Letting for-profit corporations and other real world supervillains control it and how we use it was and is.

Sure, the lack of oversight of the early internet meant that some predators got too much leeway. Still better than the Epstein class being in CHARGE of everything for everyone.

TL;DR: the internet is not the problem. Billionaires, their corporations, their lawyers, and their pet politicians are.

And kids went to a computer lab to do computer stuff

You had a whole room dedicated to it? Well la di da, aren’t you fancy ;p

Yeah, but then, if you were like me, you spent most of the rest of your time watching TV or playng video games if you had nothing else to do. You basically always kept yourself entertained by those... despite the fact I also read a lot more back then.

We used to call it "surfing the web" too!

Back in my 3rd world country days, (2005-2008) the computer room was the only classroom with a bars over the windows, had a double gata on the doors, and were were only allowed on ONE kid friends wikipedianlike site.

Wish i could remember what the tool was called. All I can remember it is was green and yellow, and occasionally a cartoon character would pop up and say something encouraging...

Back in my day, you had to listen to your computer summon the demon called internet with wild screeches and hisses for 45 seconds before you could even check your email.

I propose that we need an app that does that every time you try to launch a social media app.