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krrrr-eee-eee-eee… kHHH-chaahh… brrrrzz-SKREEEE… “You’ve got mail.”

That satisfying, deep, warm, and friendly voice announcing your virtual mailbox was full made up for the brutal screech that echoed through our kitchens, studies, and living rooms. It was the sound of our desktops working so hard to connect to dial-up internet. Little did we know how deeply the screech would reach.

Today marks the end of an era. On September 30, 2025, AOL will cut the cord on its final dial-up connection (AOL, 2025). The screech is finally dead.

On one hand, I am thinking to myself, “It’s about time!” Yet, as I stop and pause, I reflect how, in only about 30 years, our world changed, and it started with that screech.

Dial-up was such a common noise in the 90s, that even the bright green talking parrot that lived at the local corner store, Buddy, would echo those dial-up tones. My friends and I would ride our bikes a few miles away from our home to this store in the suburbs of Chicago, and we wanted to try to entice the bird to do the “internet noise.”

Little did we know how the internet would remake us from the inside out. So much so, kids today can’t even ride their bikes a few miles from home and spend their summer afternoons walking around a corner store with a not-always-so-friendly parrot.

Generations Meet the Net

When AOL began distributing trial CDs around 1993–1994, the generational terrain was already set. At that moment, Boomers (born approx. 1946–1964) were ages ~29 to 47 and already established in careers. Gen X (born ~1965–1980) were teens and young adults. Millennials (born ~1981–1996) were children or not yet born.

Boomers: Adoption on the Back End

By 2000, 61% of 30–49-year-olds, and 46% of 50–64 adults, were online (Pew Research Center, 2000). This was compared to almost three out of every four 18 - 29 year-old during the same time.

Boomers didn’t grow up online. It became an innovation added into their already established adult life. Over the 2000s and 2010s, adoption surged: today, 96% of U.S. adults report using the internet (Pew Research Center, 2024). In just about a decade, the world had adopted the internet.

Gen X: Bridge Between Analog and Digital

Gen Xers, in college or early in their careers, just as home internet and AOL CDs became widespread, served as the frontline adopters who straddled the transition from analog to digital life. They used computer labs, logged into corporate email, and translated between fax machines and inboxes. Their era was one of transition. For many, using technology, particularly typing, was essential as they entered the workforce. But it’s important to understand that Gen X did not experience the Internet in their most formative teenage years.

Millennials: Utility First, Entertainment Second

For many Millennials, the internet entered life as a tool, not as social media. It was email, research, early chatrooms, AOL Instant Messaging, and general web browsing. It was a chore to get online. You had to make sure no one was on the home phone, and loading a site took forever. If you wanted to research something on the Encyclopædia Britannica website, you had better make sure you had 30 minutes to load the pictures. MySpace and early social networks appeared later, and most were past their formative years when social media became widespread. For most of Millennials’ schooling, internet was utility. But in college and early adulthood, its culture shifted toward social.

Gen Z: Always-On, No Screech

By the time Gen Z arrived (born 1997–2012), broadband and Wi-Fi were steadily rolling out; the default was online, not offline. Nearly all U.S. teens today (96%) say they use the internet every day (Pew Research Center, 2025).

Furthermore, 95% of teens report having or having access to a smartphone (Pew Research Center, 2024). They don’t remember a dial-up era. They only know always-connected.

Gen Alpha: Ambient Internet as Birthright

Born 2013 and after, Gen Alpha lives in a fully connected world. Every device has a chip: refrigerators, toys, TVs, tablets, thermostats, ovens, coffee makers, cars, voice assistants, digital photo frames. The internet is ambient, omnipresent, woven into identity from the start. No screech. No onboarding. Just presence. In every aspect of life.

Adoption & Transition: From “Do You Use It?” to “Where & How?”

In 2000, roughly half of all U.S. adults said they used the internet (Pew Research Center, 2000). Today, that number is about 96% (Pew Research Center, 2024).

Yet the key shift was in modality. During the early 2000s, usage was mostly desktops and dial-up; by the 2010s, home broadband dominated. Today, mobile access is standard. In 2024, 90% of U.S. adults own a smartphone, up from 35% in 2011 (Pew Research Center, 2024). This shift reveals more than adoption: it shows how the internet moved from optional to default, from place-based to everywhere, from tool to identity.

When the Internet Shifted Culture

When the screech first filled our homes, it felt like promise. A tool. A new channel. Few anticipated that it was quietly reshaping what it meant to live. Nor did people anticipate the extreme Gen Z mental health crisis the internet would catalyze. The internet amplified visibility, immediacy, and comparison. Over time, these dynamics correlate with rising anxiety, depression, cyberbullying, and loneliness among youth.

It also transformed access, including adult content, into something far more immediate and subtle, slipping into corners of youth experience before many parents or systems knew. Kids were exposed to things far beyond their years. Even as I shared a few weeks ago, the internet has exposed me to horrific and graphic content in real-time, unannounced. The line between exploration and harm became blurred.

Meanwhile, schools, workplaces, relationships, and economies absorbed it. Phones in classrooms are distracting; remote tools rewrote how teams relate, causing people to work remotely; algorithms altered what we see, and how we see ourselves.

In my generational research, I lean on a framework I call Pendulum Theory: each cohort experiences, challenges, overcorrects, then recalibrates. I examine seven levers (with a helpful acronym of R.E.S.P.E.C.T.): Religion, Education, Sex & Gender, Politics, Economics, Communication, and Technology, to trace how technology didn’t simply join the forces of culture; it injected momentum into all of them.

Religions streamed sermons, building mega churches and celebrity pastors. Education moved from blackboards to Chromebooks at every seat to online learning management tools. Identity and sexual norms entered digital arenas of discovery and conflict. Politics became threaded with real-time social media and politicians staying up tweeting in the middle of the night. Economies have globalized exponentially (Amazon, Alibaba, remote platforms). Communication mutated from good ole’ AOL Instant Messenger to email to social to chat to AI. And technology’s infrastructure accelerated forward, birthing the next wave.

It’s not helpful to dwell in the past too long, but instead use this as a wake-up call as we are experiencing another technological revolution. This time, it’s not the internet. It’s Generative AI. And Millennials are leading the way in GenAI advancement.

From Modems to Models: Acceleration in Motion

Dial-up crept into American life over a span of years. Broadband and smartphones took a decade to reach mass adoption. But generative AI? It’s launching on a different scale altogether.

Internet utilization curve (U.S.): In 2000, about 52% of U.S. adults said they used the internet (Pew Research Center, 2015). Over the next decade, that climbed to ~76–84% (Pew Research Center, 2000–2015). (Pew Research Center, 2015) That suggests it took roughly 6 to 8 years for the internet to go from early adoption toward majority use.

Smartphone adoption curve (U.S.): By 2011, only 35% of U.S. adults reported owning a smartphone (Pew Research Center, 2024). Within just a few more years, ownership crossed the 50% threshold (mid-2010s): by 2015–2016, smartphone ownership was well into the majority range. That means smartphones reached majority adoption in a shorter window, roughly 4 to 6 years after mainstream launch.

Generative AI adoption curve: ChatGPT hit 100 million monthly users in just two months after its public launch (Reuters, 2023). That pace outstrips anything we’ve tracked: for context, TikTok took about nine months to hit 100 million users; Instagram took more than two years (TeamIgnite, 2025).

We leapt into the internet era believing that connectivity would be purely liberating: that knowledge would spread, educational outcomes would improve, communities grow. Yet we later found that, in some contexts, access to devices and social media correlated with distraction, declining test scores, and mental health challenges. We assumed that more access equaled more learning and more connection. But the data showed more complexity.

Generative AI is here now, and the risk isn’t hypothetical. If we don’t proactively guide it, we could repeat the same story as the internet, but at thrice the speed, compressed into a single formative generation. Gen Alpha may never know a world unmediated by models, AI models that is. Their first drafts, search queries, even conversations could be shaped by algorithms and LLMs. What happens if curiosity itself is outsourced before it has a chance to form? What happens when the tools that promise to expand our horizons quietly narrow them, reinforcing bias, eroding skills we once practiced, and training a generation to accept answers without asking deeper questions?

I remain cautiously optimistic about what AI can unlock. But optimism without vigilance breeds extreme risk.

Leadership in the AI Frontier: Anchors for the Next Era

Of course, as I started, I do sort of mourn the end of the dial-up era, though our ears will thank us. But I use that as a anchor to reflect on the technological advances we are living in today.

As new waves roll in, leaders must anchor themselves with clarity. Here are three questions I believe must guide us:

1. What will stay the same?
   Identify enduring human truths, curiosity, dignity, relationships, learning, innovation, and introspection that must persist regardless of how swiftly tech evolves.

2. What must we protect?
   There are many things such as open dialogue and conversation not mediated by algorithms. But if the internet taught us anything, we must protect our kids and our youth. Sure, AI will bring incredible advantages to their learning and ability to create in new ways. But what are we risking by unlocking the AI best too early in our youth.

3. How do we prepare wisely?
   Unlike our care-free dive into the internet, I feel parents, educators, policy-makers, and leaders must embed guardrails from day zero. We can always become less strict. However, we need to monitor unintended shifts and make changes to lead early, not after harms emerge.

The shrill dial-up connection is screeching for the last time today. But now there’s a quiet hum all around us. That hum is generative AI, already reshaping how we think, create, teach, relate. Our job isn’t merely to adapt quickly, but instead it’s to lead with foresight, protect what matters, and build a future worthy of what’s to come.