To feel like I wouldn’t be that bothered if the internet disappeared?

I would genuinely really miss Mumsnet and the feminists on Twitter who make me feel like I’m not going mad.

Even just running the payroll for large companies. They used to have a team who would put cash into envelopes and all of the workers would have to queue up (when they could otherwise have been working) to collect their wages... but then people don't usually get paid an exact convenient round amount, so you'd have to have a huge pile of notes and coins to be counted manually and individually into each one. Doable enough, maybe, if you only have half a dozen employees; but imagine doing that for everybody working in a school, hospital or supermarket.

In fact, would scrapping the internet mean that we would all have to return to only using cash or cheques again?

if the internet makes your mental health worse, get off it. Not that hard.

Nail on the head. We can have the benefits without the downsides, but it's down to the person/individual to control their own internet usage. No one forces anyone to indulge in social media and doom scrolling. It's a CHOICE that people make to do it.

Personally, on balance, I think the internet does far more good than harm, and makes life easier/better in so many ways that people simply don't understand/appreciate.

But that is half the problem - younger people have no patience for anything - they must have all they want - NOW.

Actually, map-reading was quite a skill and worked well enough. People seem to want to have everything done for them - they don't want to learn how to do things themselves. It's sad.

Do we really want to go back to everyone wasting their time for a GP to write a prescription by hand? You'd need to go in person and probably waste an hour in the waiting room (in my old surgery, you could be there all morning as they didn't do appointments, it was turn up and wait!). Then you've gone to traipse round to the pharmacy to hand in the paper prescription. Then go back a day or two later to pick it up. Far easier to ask online, the GP "pings" it through to the pharmacy, who then "pings" you to say it's ready - or even better, they may deliver it to you if you've set up home delivery. If everyone is efficient, the time between asking and it being ready for collection can be just an hour or two, thus avoiding a lot of wasted waiting and travel time. If it doesn't work so quickly, that's a fault with the people, not the systems.

As for bank branches re-opening, do we really want to waste time traipsing to the bank to cash a cheque when we want some cash, or to pay in our wages cheque, or to hand in a passbook for the interest to be written up? I remember the queues at lunchtimes on Fridays as everyone waited to bank their wages cheques - a complete waste of a lunch hour with queues outside the door.

People need to be careful what they wish for. I think there's a lot of "rose tinted spectacles" on these kind of threads, with people either not young enough, or having forgotten just how slow and inefficient lots of things were back before computers and the internet!

We can have the conveniences of modern life (online banking, shopping and services, Google maps, TV and music streaming etc) without doom scrolling, algorithms and arguing with strangers on the internet. That's the bit we need to fix.

I wonder how old the OP is and if she remembers having to repeatedly call up and get an engaged signal to book anything, having to go to actual shops to buy anything, or wait weeks for them to be sent from a catalogue, having to find the way and know where you are without sat nav, having to go into the bank which was only open during office hours to do anything financial. Younger adults wouldn't have a clue how to do a lot of day to day life things offline and would explode with frustration at 'please allow 28 days for delivery'.

And I'm another one who's in a hobby group where we get together weekly to do what we do, as well as meet socially a few times a year. We do have a Whatspp group, but it's only really used to arrange meet ups and share photos etc. Sometimes it can be days between messages.

Yup, I'm in three different "clubs" and we all talk, barely anything is done online as we actually need to by physically present together to indulge in our hobbies/interests. If people are that bothered about too much being online, then they need to get out and find alternative "in person" activities.

Likewise all those who whinge about online shopping - well get out and go to physical shops instead - help keep them open rather than whinge once they've shut due to lack of trade!

I love the internet but I actually miss our old lives of being in the real world, interacting with real people to get stuff done. I'm addicted to doom scrolling and I don't think it's made my life better.

I'm an 80's baby, an old millennial.

I would hate to go back to life before everything was online. It makes me life so much easier. I'm so busy i don't have time (& don't want to give anything up to make time) to go to a bank or go shopping etc.

But this is one of the positives - branches would have to re-open and employment opportunities would grow.

Drs 'writing by hand' seemed to see more people than current Drs. And it was only ever scripts Drs write out. Secretaries type reports.

Yup, I doubt we'd even have the population to fill all the jobs that would need to be created, nor the ability to train/educate them in the skills required. Everything would be so much slower - we'd be back to 28 day waits when ordering anything by mail order, of course having sent a paper order form with a cheque rather than an online click. Inflation would rocket - everything needs a small army of "back office" staff so business/organisation overheads would soar, meaning massive price rises. Taxes would have to increase as the public sector would need to employ huge numbers of extra people to do everything by hand that's currently done by computer. It's computers and the internet that have made society function as it does today, i.e. more people working fewer hours, working from home, not having to work Saturdays (banks and office jobs!), everything faster, more efficient supply chains etc.

Nope. I am a member of a book club, a choir and a walking group. We all talk.
Plus friends from work, uni and school gates. My two adult DCs have tons of real life friends, not online.
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You too can go out and join real life clubs if you want to talk.

I have family in three different continents. Am I expected to use snail mail to communicate?

Agreed. We need to undo it - slowly and carefully. We managed before, we can manage again. Haven't even had it that long and people claiming cannot live without it 😂

Also having to phone round several insurance companies to get quotes and repeat the same information repeatedly.

Having to travel to places with no live turn by turn directions so need to plan using a paper map and follow road signs.

But the humans have gone from the banks and they have sold their buildings! My nearest branch is 10 miles away and I'm deemed lucky. Doctors would have less appointments because they'd have write by hand.

This is a niche one - although every one of us will each have our own niche applications - but I love quizzes and have organised a number of community quiz nights. Not having the internet as a tool for compiling quizzes would make it hundreds of times harder. How would you even gather clips for the music round, or the picture round?

I also enjoy old gameshows (don't judge me ), and the range and interest level of questions is painfully evident. It even says in the end credits on Bullseye that they used the Encyclopaedia Britannica to verify their questions - I can't even imagine how that would work nowadays!

I am Gen X too and would be lost without the internet. No WFH for a start.
I don't buy Temu type stuff, and the internet has actually improved my mental and physical health because I pay no heed to influencers.

I wonder if AI will attempt to recruit vulnerable humans or ones it identifies as valuable at some point, sort of like spies.

I think the issue is that most people do want the internet to exist, but only for the things that they personally want to use it for. Unfortunately, the idea of billions of individually personalised separate global communications networks is a nonsensical paradox.

There's no way of having all the good of the internet without having the bad too... and also, what is good/worthwhile online and what is bad/pointless/harmful will differ dramatically between every person you ask.

I'm a novelist and it would make my professional/creative life much, much harder, even only in terms of research.

As someone who is housebound, I'd find this awful. The Internet is a lifeline fo many.

But again, YOU are actively choosing to come online to discuss this interesting-but-hardly-essential topic with strangers. You could have easily gone to the cafe, pub, park or bus stop and conversed with other people face to face there!