Lauren, A Young Internet User in 1996
Lauren told me to scrounge around for her photo as a 10 year old using the computer because it was needed for a magazine article. As some of you might know, Lauren started an online journal (not called blogs then) on December 1996 so the photo had to be around that time. Oh no! It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. For days, I poured over stacks of photos because I have not been organizing them for the past 12 years. I finally found the photos of her in various poses with the computer. My geeky little Lauren.
Lauren was 9 years old while M was 8 years old when I had an internet connection at home. Between the 2 girls, Lauren used the internet a lot more than M. My internet service provider in 1995 was Virtual Asia. For 500 pesos a month, I had 15 internet hours. Geesh, it was terribly expensive to get wired during those days. The internet at home was mainly used for email purposes as I wanted to save my precious internet hours. One summer day in 1996 , 9 year old Lauren got bored and demanded to go online to search for penpals. I foresaw the need to strike a balance for the wonders of the internet with the responsibility for accountability, self-discipline, and safety. The best defense I had was to make exploring the online world a family affair. Together, we surfed and discovered two kid sites , the kidscom.com and kidpub.com. What caught their interest in kidscom was the graffiti wall that served as a chat room but it wasn’t in real time. The kidspub was a fun place to submit writings. Lauren was raring to get her creative juices started with the kidspub. The thing was they wanted her to submit the articles in HTML.