Definitely sad to hear.

Depending on where you were and the kind of awareness/money your family had, you could argue that much of younger Gen X "grew up with the Internet", since it was available commercially in the very early 90s or so, with things like Compuserve, Qlink, AOL, predating that by quite a bit, although most of America was asleep to it.

I wonder if the people wondering that are more referencing smart phones...because certainly you could say that Gen Y grew up with the Internet if you are not talking only about smart phones.

you could argue that much of younger Gen X “grew up with the Internet”,

As someone in that group, I wouldn't agree with that distinction compared the phrase usage to Millennials/GenY.

Those early years of online connectivity were with a comparatively very small online cohort. Most of the folks you were online with weren't people you would or even could interact with in real life. Before the general availability of dial up internet, I only knew 2 or 3 other people total growing up that had a modem, among those we might be dialing into the same BBSes, but because of limit resources at the BBS and home (limited time on the family phone line), you perhaps had 20-30 minutes total of online time a day at most. This says nothing about limits of long distance telephone calls to BBSes in other cities. Compuserve, Prodigy and Quantum Link limited you to 5 hours a month for your subscription fee before overage charges kicked in.

So yes, we had knowledge of an online life, and friendships on the other side of the line, but it was extremely rare to meet someone in person you'd met online just because of the smaller audience online at the the time.