It's weird. I was born with the internet being largely a business or academic tool, with normal people barely having a reason to have an email address.

When I was in high school, flip phones could let you text friends, as long as you didn't mind your parents later using your soul to pay the phone bill.

When I was in college, the most addictive thing the internet could offer was foul bachelor frogs and rage comics.

Along the way, I learned how dangerous even those unrefined sugars were. It was like chewing coca leaves or sugarcane. Enough t get you a buzz, but not enough to ruin your life. So I know not to touch the algorithmic fentanyl feeds of TikTok and the like.

But good god, nobody younger or older had any protection from this. My parents and spouses parents, and my zoomer cousins both basically got handed giant bags of refined gigasugar without even the vaguest warnings. I'll refrain from likening it to opiates against because they are on a whole different level, but good god it does seem more dangerous than even refined sugar.