Was your internet ever locked down as a kid?

[Midnight Solace 5,135]

 

4 minutes ago, TwilySparky said:

I thought considering you are like 15 or 16 that you wouldn't be paying for it. Fair enough

In Australia you can get a job when you're at least 15 years old. Maybe it's different where you live, and you can't earn money when you're that young? 

[MangoFoalix 25,063]

Just now, Midnight Solace said:

 

In Australia you can get a job when you're at least 15 years old. Maybe it's different where you live, and you can't earn money when you're that young? 

You can, but it's heavily restricted until you are 18 in the states.

[Tropical Melody 8,957]

Yes interesting question.

As Twilight Luna, Internet didin't exist yet when I was a kid.

Nearest equiv. tho, would be television. Some parents probably did prevent their kids watching certain programs. Tho my dad was pretty easy going about it most of the time as far as I can recall.

There was quite a bit of snobbery when ITV (the independent channel) came online, I mean, advertising, how common and dreadful!

Yeah some people would only want to watch the BBC, and probably tried to get TV's that weren't able to get ITV.

My dad told me once that when he was a kid, it was Mickey Mouse and suchlike cartoons at the Saturday morning cinema, that were frowned upon by the older generations. In fact he said one morning their headmaster give them all a lecture in morning assembly, about how he doesn't want to hear about anyone from his school being seen coming out of the cinema after watching "that rubbish", especially if still wearing the school uniform. I'm not making it up.

EDIT: oh and comics.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 13, 2018 by Tropical Melody

[Here No Longer 5,290]

I never really had many experiences with the internet until I was about 11 or 12. But I wasn't locked down... In fact I was probably on sites that weren't age appropriate pretty often  

[Phosphor 11,546]

I didn't get internet access at home til I was around 10 or 11. It was really crappy dial up, so even if I wanted to look at bad stuff, it wasn't gonna load in time before the telephone rang. 

Regardless, my mother never put up a filter or anything.

[Stone Cold Steve Jobs 22,514]

It wasn't locked out. It just wasn't present period. I had internet like a few weeks at a time growing up.

[碇 シンジン 27,442]

We didn't have internet till I was 8-10 and there were no blocks whatsoever 

Dunno if it would have turned out better if there were blocks though

[Celtore 2,770]

Nope. To be fair, I don't think they really gave much thought about the web or cared about the internet in general. Pre-youtube/facebook/smartphone days were a different time for the web. The only stipulations were not revealing personal information and not infecting the PC with a virus.

[Misty Shadow 8,386]

Shockingly, even with the kind of family I grew up with, I did not have to worry about that. All I ever got was my dad randomly, on the off-hand, going, "Hey! What are all these weird sites you kids have been visiting?", and just having to answer in response that we didn't know and it was just pop-ups. My parents never knew too much about computers. 

[Thuja 3,669]

I don't think my mom knew how to do that.

[Elyrse 168]

I never discovered internet until I was in middle school. Most my activity my Dad never sees. 

[AveryGamerDude 4,640]

Not when I was a kid. But ever since I was 13, I had it locked town NUMEROUS times. For reasons I don't know if I can mention...

[cuteycindyhoney 13,345]

I just want to thank the OP so much for reminding me that the internet we know today, didn't exist when I was a kid. I was born in 1979!

Argh! I'm too old for the question to apply!

 

I got my first computer for my 19th birthday! (OMG, 20 years ago!) I had my own PHONE line, and paid for my DIAL-UP myself! The computer was a Protiva (Who?) from Home Shopping Club. When it was on the TV, my mom said

"Do you want that for your birthday?"  I said "Oh wow, yes!"

Mom asked my dad if it was a good deal.

He said yes and ordered it right up!

Computer, printer, 18 inch boxy picture tube monitor, amplified speakers, and something like 20 software CDs, for one thousand dollars.

It had a gigantic TEN GB hard drive, and ran at 700 Mhz. Actually, that was impressive for the time. Ten GB was the biggest hard drive on the market then. 1 Ghz processors didn't hit the market for a couple more years!

It arrived mid January. I knew it was there, and looked at the boxes every day.

I WAS NOT allowed to touch it until February 1st, my actual birthday! It gave me time to pick out a nice desk and comfy office chair to set up a work station in my bedroom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 14, 2018 by cuteycindyhoney

[Cash In 23,502]

Well, I didn't own an actual computer until I was 12 or 13, as I always had to share a single one with the rest of my family prior to that. At that point, my parents trusted me enough to not lock any sites, so I didn't have many issues in regards to that.

Edited August 22, 2019 by Cash In

[Photon Jet 5,502]

It's very important to have safe features enabled for kids when it comes to using the Internet so they don't get traumatized by explicit content from certain sources.

As for me, I don't remember my Internet getting locked that much several years ago.

[Olly 1,016]

They didn't know how to block sites, but even if they did, I would have found a way around it. What they did was simply stop me from using the computer... because growing up we only had one PC everyone used, I certainly never had my own. It happened because my mom was over protective and didn't want me talking to people online, but since I had few if any friends in real life, I resented the whole thing quite a bit. 

[Cirrus. 1,093]

My family got internet when I was about 12 around 2000. It was AOL dial-up with it's own program/browser. My dad put the parental control option on. I figured out pretty quick to use the AOL program to log on, and then just use internet explorer which was unaffected. I didn't do anything bad online, the AOL parental thing just annoyingly blocked the stupidest stuff.

The funny thing about the dial-up was that if my mom was on the phone, you could hear the phone conversation through the modem as it was getting ready to dial. As soon as the modem started dialing you could hear her yelling through the modem that she was on the phone . So it could kinda be blocked that way too!

 

Edited November 14, 2018 by Cirrus.

[SparklingSwirls 21,609]

Nope, I don’t think my parents paid much attention to what I did online 

We only had one computer though so sometimes my mother would kick me off if she wanted to use it.

[Dreambiscuit 12,662]

The internet wasn't such an all-encompassing fixture when I was growing up, and I only used it sparingly so my parents had no need to lock down anything.

[Narcissus 356]

I seldom use the internet, and even if I did, my dad never put restrictions on me. He knew I was trustworthy, and that locking me down wouldn't avail him anyway. 

[EpicEnergy 23,259]

It hasn't happened to me, but my parents did check my electronic devices occasionally to make sure I wasn't going on any unsafe websites or apps.

[Rainbow Cloud 19,572]

No, but when I was a young kid we didn't have a computer let alone internet and when we got a computer in 2000 we only had dial up internet where you paid by the minute when using it so use of it was limited due to cost.

To be honest though a world with less internet was better than the world we have today where the internet dominates everything.

[Lucky Bolt 35,271]

No, I didn't use the internet as a kid simply because I didnt have a computer or phone. I played outside and used my imagination. I'm glad I was raised without technology. 

[AveryGamerDude 4,640]

Not as a kid, no. But it was locked down a few times when I was a teenager, and I'm afraid my mom might lock it down permanently...

[Cagey 4,261]

I don’t think my parents knew how to lock down internet. I didn’t surf the web much anyway.