Millennial, briefly experienced a life with limited access to information.

You are capable of more than you think. You wrote phone numbers down and memorized your own. You memorized the ones you used regularly. I had 7-8 friends and family numbers memorized.

You also only needed one phone number per household.

When you needed to know something like how to fix a car or replace a light bulb you asked someone. Often An uncle, aunt, or cousin. If nobody in your friends/family group knew, you went to the library.

Yellow pages and magazines and instruction manuals were constantly floating around with information. I never felt deprived of curiosity. I read a lot.

You would naturally have more friends because you’re not on the internet all the time. You would probably have a third place. Go to parks and what not. I’m an introvert as well and I grew up in the 90s, you’d be fine. Lol life finds a way. You would be surprised what you would be willing to do when there is nothing else.

I feel that. I actually was just lamenting that a minute ago, looking at the bottom of my Zippo lighter, which says “1941 Replica.”

“Man, imagine living in a time when nobody thought smoking was bad for you…” - my brain

Imagine living in 1902, when you could just go to the store and buy cocaine and heroin for your toothache.

Hell, listening to the fun our parents had growing up. It shouldn’t be punishable by years in prison to shoot off some fireworks at a party. (I live in OH, our fireworks laws are brutal. Us and Utah, man.)

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with lamenting that the past is gone. Yes, there were bad things we’re better off without, but we lost and gave up a lot, too. Missing those things isn’t wrong.

Having lived that childhood, I can give you some insight.

“Damn, how did people even get information?”

Believe it or not, most people simply didn’t. For the average low engagement person they would get news/information from the 3 or 4 TV channels available on Over-The-Air TV. Those that wanted to be informed about current events would actually plan to be in front of a TV somewhere to catch the 30 minutes of evening news (well 30 minutes national and usually 30 min local). There was some news on the radio, and possibly the largest news source was newspapers (usually only your locally published on) and monthly magazines. For most people that was it! For some they didn’t read the newspaper and didn’t watch/listen to the news.

However, if you wanted more news/knowledge/info, there was more to be had, but you had to actively go places and seek it out.

like I suddenly imagine myself, there, as a child, and not having access to this seemlingly unlimited access to information that I currently have

Libraries were the “unlimited access to information”, and there was a lot of it. Unless it was a really small branch library, every single public library building you walked into had more books/magazines/newspapers than you could read in your entire lifetime, and there were literally hundreds of libraries available to you across the USA. Private libraries, such as colleges, would have even more. It felt like unlimited access to information at the time.

and not to mention, entertainment content.

Honestly, we were much more creative. When you’d already read the couple of new magazines you got that month, nothing on the 3 or 4 channels of TV interested you, and the 4 or 5 radio stations were playing songs on heavy rotation you already knew, you went looking to create your own entertainment. This could be playing sports, writing, art, playing games you made up with friends, trying new bicycle/skateboard tricks, etc. At least a third of people would be people that created things, making songs, building models, woodworking, fixing/upgrading cars, growing (gardening/livestock), cooking, etc.

So like, that feeling of feeling like I’m in the past (as in: I’m imagining myself being in the past), but not have access to the internet just gives me a very bad feeling.

It was actually the opposite. If you spent the time to search out information, which took skills like knowing where to look in a library, you’d be thought of as smart. Example: “How the heck did you know off the top of your head that that capital of Hungary was Budapest?!”. For someone in the USA, to know they, they would have had to sought out a world map/encyclopedia/almanac, know that Hungary was a country, know that is in Europe, and know how to find the capital. Same with general knowledge on any topic such as history of the Roman Empire or US Civil War. If you had an interest, you could find the information, but it took work. People knew that, so if you could show you had the knowledge it was appreciated and came with a certain amount of respected.

You would have been just fine.

I mean, imo, you got it correct with many of your descriptions:

Fear, Anxiety, Panic, caused by the lack of access to the internet.

Now, I thought I was going to have to coin a term here, but something pretty close already exists:

Nomophobia, fear of not having your your smartphone.

Other proposed terms from other people over the years:

discomgoogolation

abinterretephobia

macriapodiadictuophobia

These have all been proposed as words to mean, basically, fear of not having access to the internet.

Now, you are describing more specifically a fear of an entire, past world without widespread internet access, which is a bit different… as it isn’t just you personally not having your internet device, but the total lack of them, the lack of societal norms built around them, etc.

I would point out that there are still roughly 3 billion of people on Earth, right now, who live without consistent and reliable access to the internet, who cannot afford a smart phone or any kind of internet device.

But yeah, as others have said… before the internet was widespread… we used libraries, we read books and articles and physical newspapers… sometimes, you would have to hunt down a particular rare book, or ask a library to get it loaned from another library, you could wait weeks or months.

I remember an actual physical voicemail machine, an actual physical caller ID device, I remember having to commit my friend’s and family’s 10 digit phone numbers to memory, or carry a small personal contact list with me.

I remember when getting a cordless phone, that would let you go sit down on the couch instead of having to stand or sit within 3 feet of the wall mounted phone… was a completely mind blowing innovation.

And I was born in the tail end of the 80s, before the Berlin Wall fell.

I remember being forced into typing lessons, on an actual keyboard, as one of the very few things my dad forced me into that was actually a good call, and now that the vast majority of younger folks use touchscreens… an increasing number of them have no idea how to actually type, which blows my mind because for the vast majority of my life, not knowing how to type was an extremely stereotypical Boomer attribute.

And now its getting far worse, with an absolute epidemic of students of all manner of subjects who just do not know anything, because they are reliant on some kind of AI to answer all their questions and generate all their answers.

It has been argued before that a human with a smartphone, which they have at all times, is functionally a kind of ‘soft’ cyborg, as the smartphone is a part of so much of their thinking, their culture, their way of life.

So, I suppose its understandable that a ‘soft’ cyborg is terrified by the idea of having part of their brain ripped out, and cannot comprehend how a society could function with everyone not having their portable thinking and communication augmentation.

Those of us in our 40-50s that helped build the thing you are having trouble imagining life without are more and more wishing they didn’t do it. We know the world before and after and yearn for the world we helped destroy. The WWW had so much potential, but like all good things it was shit on by corpo scum.

It’s because back then there was a thing called boredom which led to creativity and generally happier lives. Now, it’s nearly impossible to be bored, and people are much less apt to learn a new thing or go on an adventure because theyre obsessed with their phones. Institute a no phone or no internet rule on weekends, I do this and it’s great!

You didn’t have much info, but neither did other people! People told the weirdest stories and “facts”.