Question About What’s Quietly Disappeared in the Last Decade Sparks Debate

​In a recent Reddit post titled “What are some things from the past that the internet collectively misses?” users have been sharing their nostalgia for simpler times.

The March 12 post shared by u/Successful_Oil_3270 has garnered significant attention, accumulating over 19,000 upvotes and 21,000 comments.

One user reminisced: “Online spaces for kids. When I was a child, we had several online places MADE for children. Every single children’s TV channel had a website with games for kids, there were several online games geared towards children (like Club Penguin), etcetera. Now if you’re a 10 year old, you either rot your brain with s***** YouTube videos or you rot your brain with social media.”​

This sentiment reflects concerns about the current digital landscape for children. A 2024 Pew Research Center survey found that 90 percent of U.S. teens use YouTube, with 73% accessing it daily. The same report noted that nearly half of U.S. teens are online “almost constantly,” raising questions about the impact of such pervasive internet use on youth development.

Another user commented: “Coins on the sidewalk,” highlighting a shift towards cashless transactions. Data from financial services company Capital One, states more than half of American consumers (51.6%) will use no cash in a typical week in 2025.

Reflecting on changing phone habits, a third commenter noted: “Ringtones, everyone now keeps their phones on silent.” This observation aligns with studies showing that younger generations prefer texting over calling. According to research from BankMyCell, 75 percent of millennials avoid phone calls as they’re time-consuming and 64 percent try to avoid whiny or needy people.

A fourth user lamented: “The ability to read and comprehend something longer than a paragraph.”

Research has shown that the digital age, with its emphasis on brief and rapidly changing content, has contributed to reduced attention spans, making it more challenging for individuals to engage with longer texts.​

In 2023, Dr. Gloria Mark, a psychologist and professor at UC Irvine, spoke on an American Psychological Association podcast. Highlighting her concerns about young children’s screen time, she emphasized its potential long-term effects on attention and focus.

She pointed out that children as young as two to four years old already average 2.5 hours of daily screen time, increasing to about three hours for those aged five to eight. Most of this time is spent watching TV and YouTube or gaming. Dr. Mark notes that young children are particularly vulnerable to distraction, and excessive screen exposure may normalize constant digital engagement, potentially shaping their ability to concentrate and process information as they grow.

This leads to a fifth comment: “Childhood. As a parent, I feel like I’m fighting an uphill battle by keeping ours screen-free: kids need to be taught how to play, how to interact with other humans. They don’t even go out to play with friends anymore; it’s all online.”

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, children should be kept away from screens until they are 18 months old and should only use screen time for watching educational programs with a caregiver between the ages of 18 and 24 months. Studies have found that screen time may delay kids’ speech development.

Newsweek reached out to u/Successful_Oil_3270 for comment. We could not verify the details of the case.

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