When did the internet stop being fun? Perhaps you don’t want to know

Catherine Prasifka belongs to the first generation that grew up online. Her new novel This is How You Remember It explores how this shaped them in ways we are yet to fully understand

Catherine Prasifka was born in 1996, the tail-end of the millennial birth years. Photo: Joanna O'Malley

Róisín Lanigan

Once upon a time, our internet identities used to be completely separate from our real-life, 3D selves. The internet was a phenomenon emitted from the family PC, in the family computer room. We accessed our internet lives in short, finite bursts. We logged on after school to chat to each other on MSN. We created and played and explored on websites that seem in retrospect laughably quaint and innocent: Neopets, Harry Potter, Miniclip.

Now our internet identity is our identity. Our online lives are omnipresent and atomised. The internet exists in our phones, our laptops, our games, our televisions, our social media selves, our real-life selves.