A survey of 16 to 24 year olds has found that 75% of them feel they "couldn't live" without the internet.
Reaction one:
Can't live? Define live. Good job, BBC, for putting that phrase in quotation marks. Bloody boohoo.
Reaction two:
Well. Considering I found the story on Twitter, and I freaked out at the idea that Sweden went offline for 58 minutes last night, I'm certainly not one to talk.
While I'm not a digital native -- I did learn to read before I learned to click, and my earliest memories on earth predate the existence of my family's Packard Bell 286 -- I'm pretty damn close. But not quite there.
I wonder if this fact alone makes me more likely, and more able, to quit the internet than someone born, say, the year Google was founded (hint: 1998). I can remember a time when people used phone books. I had a pen pal. I read movie reviews in the paper. It's all fuzzy, by now, but not mythological. What I can't decide is if those memories make an offline existence in any way alluring, because I know it's possible to have a meaningful life without the internet, or rather if they make it seem preposterous, since I know what I'm leaving behind and where I'm headed.
A final thought: Perhaps I am totally off base with this line of thinking (correlating internet quittability with history of exposure). Perhaps a junkie is a junkie is a junkie. Doesn't matter when you started -- only how deep your cravings are.
And if that's true, then I am effed.
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