2025: My First Year on the Internet

For so many of us, being on the Internet is as normal as breathing. The first thing we do when we wake up is check our phones for new messages, emails, alerts from our apps, or scroll whichever endless feed captivates our attention.

We’ve done this for years.

For many others, their first year on the Internet was recent. According to data from the World Bank, 29% of the world’s population don’t use the Internet. In many countries, the digital divide is often due to lack of reliable access and illiteracy. Even in developed countries, such as the U.S., a handful of households choose not to be online due to cost, lack of interest, and privacy and security concerns.

We interviewed 4 people around the world for which 2025 was their first year on the Internet. They loved the access to information, and the freedom to learn. They were introduced to the world of online scams quickly. All of them felt that being on the Internet expanded their world.
 

Here are their stories, from New Delhi to the Bronx.

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THE BRONX, By Julia Carpenter
Photos: Evelyn Freja

When Bruce Roudette got his first smartphone, he thought he was being handed a tracking device.

After 51 years in prison, Bruce arrived back home in the Bronx, the neighborhood he’d left in 1973. He was one of a handful of New Yorkers granted clemency by Governor Kathy Hochul at the end of 2024, but he barely recognized the world he reentered.

Bruce struggled to feel at home in a neighborhood he hadn’t known for more than half a century. Even visiting a local diner felt alien; after 50 years of prison food and commissary snacks, the price of a hot counter breakfast seemed staggeringly high. The Osborne Association, a nonprofit helping people and families affected by incarceration, got Bruce set up with fresh clothes, a much-needed haircut and a job on their staff as a recreation specialist. A woman who worked at Osborne also handed him a slim black rectangle: a smartphone.

“I said ‘What the hell is this tracking device? I don’t need no tracking device,’ and she said ‘No, no it’s a cellphone,’” he said. “So I put it in my pocket and I didn’t even turn it on, because I didn’t know how.”

Once someone showed him how to use the phone, he was “fascinated.” He watched a friend FaceTime his mother in another country.

But despite the fascination, Bruce struggled at first to understand how ubiquitous technology had become. While in prison he’d seen people using smartphones, and prisoners were allowed computer access for supervised activities. Some people Bruce knew were even able to get tablets to rent movies or listen to music.

But Bruce felt wary of the hold these devices had on people. Because he went into prison before the ubiquity of YouTube videos, smartphones and internet memes, he didn’t know to miss it. He actually credits that lack of digital savvy for his survival. He spent a significant amount of his sentence in solitary confinement, which he thinks would have been harder for someone who lived a life wired to the Internet.

“Internet, phones, none of that existed when I went away, so I learned not to worry about things that drove other guys crazy,” he said. “Some guys would want to get on the Internet every day to see who won the game. And people get addicted to the Internet, right? The worst thing you can have in prison is an addiction, because they’ll use it against you. If you don’t have anything, they can’t take anything from you.”

But once he was released and working at Osborne, the digital learning curve felt steep. He’d seen actors in spy movies use the Internet and talk about its magic powers, but using a real-life smartphone didn’t look anything like he’d expected from Hollywood.

But even though Bruce said he didn’t like using the computer, his supervisor at Osborne showed him how, explaining that using it would be necessary for his job. Bruce wished he’d had some sort of technology course or education in prison, to help him better adjust to life in the 21st century.

“There was no preparation,” he said.

Since returning to the Bronx in February 2025, Bruce admitted he’s used the Internet for fun, exactly once. In prison, someone had told him Chuck Zito, a legendary member of the Hell’s Angels, beat up Jean Claude van Damme, the bodybuilding actor nicknamed “Muscles from Brussels.” Bruce actually knew Zito back in the day, before he made it big. Someone at work suggested Bruce look on YouTube for more info, and sure enough, he watched three different videos, including a recreation of the fight, an analysis of the moves and an interview with Zito.

But scrolling Wikipedia, falling down Reddit rabbit holes or even spiraling deeper into YouTube holds little appeal for Bruce. So many of the lessons he learned in prison stay embedded within him, he said. He read George Orwell and sci-fi novels in solitary confinement, and those stories imbued him with a skepticism for “groupthink” and a deep fear of online surveillance.

“We’re part of the penguin generation: Everyone walks down the street with a phone in the face,” he said. “To me, it’s ridiculous.”

Plus, in his experience, these supposedly life-changing devices aren’t perfect. Every little glitch or bug frustrates him to no end.

“You get on there and your mind is prepared to do something, and then the thing don’t want to work,” he said. “You have to fight with it and jiggle with it and then all of a sudden it comes on like ‘I’m ready to work now.’ I don’t want a machine like that. So I’m learning how to do it now, but it’s only because of the job I have. At home, I’d never have one of these things.”

Read the full article here.