Almost half of young people would prefer a world without the internet. We are haunted by the feeling that it has robbed us of something vital<\/p>\n
A video went viral<\/a> on X a few months ago that I can\u2019t stop watching. It\u2019s 2003: <\/strong>the band that later becomes MGMT <\/a>are performing their song Kids to their peers, years before they become a pop sensation, in a dusty quad at Wesleyan University, Connecticut. Social media doesn\u2019t exist yet. There is something about the way people look and behave and inhabit the space that tugs at my heartstrings and fills me with nostalgia. No one is dressed that well; the camera zooms unsteadily to capture the crowd\u2019s awkwardness, slumped shoulders and arrhythmic bopping. Beyond the footage we\u2019re watching, no one seems to be filming. <\/strong><\/p>\n I was only four when the video was filmed, so why does watching it make me feel as if I\u2019ve lost a whole world? A recent survey<\/a> suggests I\u2019m not alone \u2013 <\/strong>that almost half of young people would prefer a world without the internet. If anything, I expected a higher percentage. This doesn\u2019t mean my generation really would like to reverse everything that\u2019s happened in the last few decades, but there\u2019s clearly something we feel we\u2019re missing out on that older people have had, and we attribute it to the internet \u2013 or at least to its current form, dominated as it is by social media.<\/p>\n Isabel Brooks is a freelance writer<\/p>\n