I am somewhat younger than the OP and while I would not say I lived in a pre-internet world I would certainly say I lived in a pre-modern-internet world, and th

I am somewhat younger than the OP and while I would not say I lived in a pre-internet world I would certainly say I lived in a pre-modern-internet world, and that is a much more important border. In 2010, a significant majority of people didn’t have smartphones. It wasn’t until January 2013 that most US adults had smartphones. The social media that we had then is a crude prototype of what we have now. 13 years ago, technology for the average person was a moderately improved version of traditional TV, mail, books, and office technology. More than a quarter of US adults in 2010 did not use the internet at all! That was a normal and fine way to go about things and you could live a typical life like that. Nowadays meeting someone who doesn’t use the Internet is like meeting someone who doesn’t use electricity! In 2010 it had not yet transformed business, shopping, relationships, life or anything really for the average Joe. Now it affects every facet of our society and absorbs every moment of attention we have. For your average person, their phone is where they meet their partner, the single physical object they touch the most, the first thing they see in the morning and the last thing they see before they sleep at night. Technology has completely transformed the entire human experience. No, I would argue that the real shift occurred around the early 2010s and what happened before was only important in relation to what happened next, which is the largest societal shift in recorded history.