I'm exactly the same age and can vouch for this. I played outside all day and TV was a special treat, maybe one evening a week plus Saturday morning cartoons of course. In many ways life was better pre internet, but I think overall it is beneficial to humanity. Access to information is unprecedented and it's finally starting to get interesting with the total collapse of main stream media taking place right now, and obviously the emergence of Bitcoin. The calamity that is fiat money was put into motion ironically at almost the same moment the earliest experiments that became the internet were taking place. I can't help but feel that it is a kind of counter force for good against the evil of fiat, finally producing in 2009 the champion needed to defeat the monster.