I started using the Internet when I was 12 years old. I would go into chat rooms and flirt. It was the beginning of the Internet for young people.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I first started using social media when I was 12 or something - not publicly; I had private accounts.
When I was 8 or 9, I started using bulletin board systems, which was the precursor to the Internet, where you'd dial into... a shared system and shared computers. I've had an email address since the late '80s, when I was 8 or 9 years old, and then I got on the Internet in '93 when it was first starting out.
I was extremely curious growing up. I taught myself how to sew, French braid, and cook. When I wasn't creating things with my hands, I was learning more about tech. I was experimenting with email at nine, had my first cell phone at 13, and was truly obsessed with the Internet as a teenager.
Most adults I know start their Internet session at Google, and most kids I know start their Internet session at either Facebook or MySpace.
Children who use the Internet are much better informed than when I was young. Use this to your advantage.
As a child, I did what any normal kid who grew up without any electricity would do - I spent countless hours working on a computer wired to my parents' car battery... and learned how to code. This natural passion for computers lead me into the Internet market during the late 1990s and early 2000s.
I'd been on the Internet since the 1970s when it was just for nerds. I started saying, 'Who would benefit from this?' I started imagining a world where young people could have their own email address, back in the days of family AOL accounts.
From early on... we really looked at the Internet as a whole new way to provide storytelling and entertainment.
My opinion, young people go to the Internet. To the Internet distribution system right now, you put it up there and it's accessed by the world.
I didn't even get a computer till I was 16, so I didn't have Internet when I was in middle school and beginning of high school. I didn't think to be looking things up and looking at message boards saying whether people liked me or not.