I saw my first beheading at the age of 12 on ebaums world. My buddy got targeted by a pedophile and sent child pornography on a messaging board. Half the sites were on angelfire or geocities and featured constant porn pop-ups. My email was absolutely filled with dick pill spam immediately. Newgrounds was a super popular site with kids my age and like half of it was porn games. There was this really annoying emoji banner ad on like every site that would constantly shout “OH MY GOD NO WAAYY” and “SAY SOMETHING” (seriously it happened so much I can still hear it).
I don’t know that the internet “worked fine” lol. I mean, I think I turned out alright, but if my parents knew what I was seeing on the internet they never would’ve let me on the computer again.