It could have been mere coincidence. As I was settling into an evening of going through saved articles on Matter1, I noticed that much of modern online discourse frames our present state of technology as the nadir of social interaction. Accordingly, there is a pervasive reminiscence of an earlier, simpler time—an era seemingly more innocent, that has yet to develop the notion of being terminally online:
- Remember When Things Were Better in the ’90s? A.I. Does Too
- I didn’t bring my son to a museum to look at screens
- Anonymity is dead and we’re all content now
- TikTok won. Now Everything Is 60 Seconds
- Google admits the open web is in ‘rapid decline’
Grand catastrophizing is well-trodden territory for journalists. The cliché of “if it bleeds, it leads” still governs what appears in news stories and headlines. We’re wired to pay more attention to ominous warnings and scary premonitions, fearful of pessimistic futures, with negative framing reaching deep into our psyche compared to more optimistic platitudes. Even fairy tales and superhero stories feature bands of characters—misfits and reluctant allies—united against common foes.
But there is some truth to the idea that the internet of 2025 is materially different from the decades prior. No, these shifts are not on the same extreme civilizational scale of, say, indoor plumbing or running electricity or railroads or commercial flight. The communication revolution brought about by the World Wide Web did happen, but with the likes of AOL and Netscape bringing these technologies mainstream in the 90s. Even as we’ve built upon that accessibility to make it global and portable, its foundational nature was already established.
It’s not a coincidence that the the pre-smartphone era is the target of modern-day nostalgia. This was before devices were always-on and always available. Before social media evolved from checking on with faraway friends to fueling status anxiety. Before fake news and AI slop and continuous content streams designed to tap into human emotions to the point of exhaustion. When the infrastructure only supported 2G/3G type speeds2, most of the internet consisted of plain text and postage stamp JPEGs that, ironically, forced a level of patience.
As good as it may feel to immerse in the nostalgia of a bygone era, we can’t turn back the clock or reverse the progression of our internet-shaped society. One way to push back on mindless consumption is to shrink its footprint; limit the time and mindshare we lend to the online diaspora. Screentime limits are standard parent protocol to keep their kids from spiraling down into the virtual rabbit hole, but some also advocate “touching grass“—prioritizing the physical over the digital with regular cadence. Iit’s a useful reminder of the need for moderation, though I personally don’t have the discipline to maintain this type of arrangement.
Alternatively, we can leverage the idea that the nostalgia from our memories are themselves selective, and they provide a blueprint for recapturing simplicity: be intentional about our attention. Opt-out by default, vetting one online source at a time. Prefer smalll group chats over the cacophany of the Twitter/X “town square.” Dust off the RSS reader and subscribe to interesting blogs and newsletters, even if they only post once sporadically. And yes, it does take active work to screen out the algorithmic infinities of TikTok and Instagram, but I’ve found that it’s not only possible to reach the end of what your slice of the internet has to offer, but also be satisfied with such finality. It turns out the antidote to rampant abundance isn’t lethargy; it’s active curation.
