Denver Post Comment Section

I won't say it's not a matter of degrees, of course. Just that there certainly were Xers in the trailing end that started getting online at some pretty young ages. I am right in the middle of the Xers, and I know my younger siblings were on the 'net before they left high school, for instance. Many of my friends - granted, we were all part of the digerati - were running BBSes or at least using them. I got a modem as soon as I was able to afford one, and I lived out in the sticks. Very few BBSes were local calls. I imagine there were Xers that lived within the reach of The Well, and I bet it played a large role in shaping them...

Again, this would only be certain pockets of the world and people of a certain class. I'm just saying it started shaping people much, much sooner than Gen Z and finding a hard edge of when those effects might show up might be rather difficult. I mean, people like to mock younger people for always having their face in their phones, but I sure as hell have seen boomers all worked up over online drama and sitting around in social situations with their faces in their phones, too, LOL.