Hands up - who misses the old internet?
Guest newsletter by Michaela Makusha
I’ve got a confession - I miss the old internet. When I say the old internet, what I mean is the internet I was introduced to. Through flash dress-up games, Barbie’s virtual dream house and Club Penguin. The nostalgia for childhood favourites is seen in the revival of stuffed toys to clip onto our bags.
But alongside conversations around the addictive social media and online safety, we see nostalgic screenshots of sites EverythingGirl.com and Club Penguin, GirlGoGames, and other sites that were purely game-centric. For my friends and I, the internet was not a scary place when we were eight. That is not to say that there was no danger; where there is opportunity, there is danger. But with spaces crafted for children and tweens, there was more of a barrier between the adult social media world we see today and the utopian and imaginative spaces we grew up in.
One of these sites was Club Penguin, a massive multiplayer, child social site for children ages 6-14, where players could have an avatar who was a penguin (mine was purple), and a customised igloo. There were some extra features that you had to pay for, so on my birthday wishlist, a Club Penguin membership card made an appearance.
Not only were there child-friendly online spaces, but their offline presence was just as impressive as their online. In the Disney Store, you could buy toys and trading cards, bringing the online world to the offline world. We could trade toys and cards to unlock special awards online, and friend requests were usually from other schoolmates, dance classmates and their friends. I don’t ever recall my mum feeling as though she had to check anything because these were spaces designed for children.
I think this sense of online safety came with having a parent with a lot of knowledge of the internet and computers. Before my mum became a nurse, she was a computer programmer, and so had a grasp on moderation and how to introduce me to the online world. I had access to a computer at home - a white bulky desktop in the spare room. There were rules, of course - when I returned home from school or ballet, I had to do my homework first, and when my mum was satisfied and had signed it, I could go play before dinner. A little longer on Fridays and Saturdays, especially if it was raining outside. I would go onto EverythingGirl.com, which was a gateway to all the Barbie, MyScene and Polly Pocket games I could play, until I wanted to read a book or needed to get my hair done - sometimes both at the same time.
It was either playing with toy electronics or my Nintendo DS, full of animated dogs that I cared for as if they were real, or the numerous Bratz games I had. This nostalgia for the old internet and realising that young people no longer have these spaces breaks my heart because they taught me how to use the internet not only responsibly, but that it was fun. Child-centric social games were definitely an introduction into social media, as it were, sometimes even a bigger replacement. I did not get Snapchat until I was around fourteen, mainly to just talk with my friends at school. Even then, I probably played more Subway Surfers and Sims or watched SKAM.
But younger Gen Z and Gen Alpha do not have that same soft launch into social media. The closest I can think of is online gaming with Minecraft, Roblox or Discord servers, which are a Wild West within themselves, with few safety features. Getting a week long ban on Club Penguin for calling someone else stupid really taught a lot of people about content moderation, online etiquette and how simply not to be a dick - and also reinforced that there are consequences to what you say. For kids today, there are few safeguards and minimal content moderation, and big companies like Meta and X amplify harmful content that preys on young peoples’ vulnerabilities.
The question of what to do with young people and the internet is a hot topic - phone bans, internet blockers, or ”open door policies” so that parents and guardians know exactly what kids are doing online. The solution by many is to ban smartphones in schools, but bans simply won’t work. Prohibition has never been efficient, not with alcohol and certainly not with the internet, and it may have the opposite of the intended effect. For curious teens, bans make the internet seem like this mystical, cool forbidden thing rather than a tool to be used not only responsibly but to have fun with.
Carving out spaces for children on the internet was not only fun but profitable - we should do this again. I hope to see kids today have the next Club Penguin or Barbie website! They deserve the childhood we had. By reigniting this creativity, you work to save many children from the harsh launch into the adult world of social media and can gain credit for a solution to a wide problem.
We’d love to hear your reflections on life online or offline, to write for our guest newsletter get in touch: loggingoffclub@gmail.com
Michaela Makusha (she/her) is a freelance journalist whose work focuses on online and offline culture and the ways in which this influences political and social life, especially for marginalised communities. You can find her work in The Guardian, The New World, The Observer, Glamour UK, Black Ballad and more.
