> how many of us on this site were able to learn and grow because they got online as teenagers and learned things
A huge majority, but it's not necessary as demonstrated by the ones like me that learned things as a teenager without "online" being a thing yet. Well, there were BBSes for the ones that had access to them, but they were pretty niche. We had books and monthly magazines. It was enough to bootstrap the 90s and people before us had even less and nevertheless they bootstrapped us.
The real concern is the differential between the have and the have nots. Probably lacking TikTok will have an almost zero effect because what's there will be replaced by the same things on a different platform. If a country should ever go offline and revert to books, which are out of date at the date of printing and more so every day after then, that would be a problem.
A huge majority, but it's not necessary as demonstrated by the ones like me that learned things as a teenager without "online" being a thing yet. Well, there were BBSes for the ones that had access to them, but they were pretty niche. We had books and monthly magazines. It was enough to bootstrap the 90s and people before us had even less and nevertheless they bootstrapped us.
The real concern is the differential between the have and the have nots. Probably lacking TikTok will have an almost zero effect because what's there will be replaced by the same things on a different platform. If a country should ever go offline and revert to books, which are out of date at the date of printing and more so every day after then, that would be a problem.