Growing up on the cusp of social media

Earlier this week I wrote about the newly announced under-16 social media ban for the UK. The post has so far been one of my most read on this blog so far (spotlight helps). This is unsurprisingly a hot topic, but has also got me thinking about my relationship with technology and the web around that age. Especially after speaking with a colleague who has a 16 year old son. I grew up in a rural area, so communication technology was always lagging behind the urban areas. TV signal could be spotty at times, and if the wind was particularly bad then power cuts were not a surprise due to reliance on above ground wires. This also extended to the phone lines. Whilst we did get broadband early enough, it stayed around 2Mb/s until I moved away. The other big factor was that phone signal at the time was very much specific to certain areas of the village. At home, I had no phone signal (this is also pre-smartphone) so texting was not something I did that often. If I wanted to send a text I would…