I was just thinking that I am young, of the generation that has grown up with the world wide web and all that. But then I realized that even I did not quite have what children today have, since I was a teenager before I ever got online.
I think it was 1995 or 1996 that my family entered cyberspace, with AOL. (Wow, 20 hours free!)
And you, Dopers?
We got internet access in April 1998. I was sooo excited as I was a young teenager. I found out about chat rooms and I looked up my favorite band at the time, No Doubt. We had a gte internet. I don’t know if that’s still around. Oh…and our first computer was an Acer.
In 1996 I first found the intarweb as a place to spend many hours - I think it was within 12 months after that that we first got dialup at home. I’ve only ever been without it for a couple of weeks when I first moved to Sydney in 2001, and then again for about a month when my old computer blew up in July 2004.
I couldn’t live without my internets.
I think it was 1997, I got it for work (possibly late '96). It was considered a benefit that our at home connections were fine for personal use as well, but for the first year at least, it didn’t occur to me to do anything else other than work.
Looking back, it seems longer. Not even 10 years!
I resisted getting it for a long time, but I finally got it in about '97. Somehow I had this odd notion that if I got it, I’d be sucked into it and never want to leave.
Heh. Do I know myself or what?
I’ve been a satisfied member of AOL since 1995.
I still remember my brother setting it up for me and showing me the ropes. He explained that I could search for anything I wanted to know about and told me to type the first word I could think of.
That word was “cheese”.
The rest is history. 
My husband brought the internet into our house in December 1998. At the time I was happy because it seemed to be a nice way to look at houses for a move we were thinking about. Little did I envision that the net would eventually allow me to work at home, instantly access important information and let me become part of wonderful place full of really cool people from around the world.
Broadband internet access is my personal favorite invention of the last two decades.
My house first got the net in 1997.
My first time on-line was about a year before when my older brother brought me with him to his College Library as he looked something up for a class. I just sat there behind the keyboard with no idea what to do. I distinctly remember thinking that this is stupid, I’ll never get into this… Ooops.
First PC entered the house in 1983. On-line access soon after, but no www per se. Internet access in 1994 when Netscape took off. Used that for quite a while until MS jumped into the browser business.
September, 1995. I had just broken up with one of my highschool boyfriends, and I was thinking how jealous he would be that we had the Internet - too late, sucker!
Used Netscape to start with, my father told me to never use anything that had the name AOL on it, then he set me free…
I logged into mIRC and joined a #writers chat, a #blur chat, joined a million mailing lists, emailed every single person who emailed me, and thought myself quite a cultured young lady of the world.
Many years, many burns, many worms, many eBay wins and losses, and many “free! no credit card required!” porn sites later, I’ve learned a lot and feel confident in this world. Now that I’m not teh n00b loh-sar.
Usenet access from 1989.
That dried up after a year or so and I got a consumer dial-up account in '92.
Remained convinced that HTTP was faddish for longer than I care to admit. (Didn’t really start to use the web more than usenet until 1995.)
Prodigy in 1994. Then AOL two years later.
October 1998. Within a couple of weeks, I’d met the guy who owned my local ISP (thank you ICQ) and I began dating him, and soon after that I started getting free internet (free bonus, not the main drawcard) so I only paid for a couple of months worth of internet access from then until he sold the company, circa 2000. We’ve been married for 4 years in December, so yay internet.
Used Usenet a few times, but not at home in the late 70s.
First online connection from home – CompuServe, about 1980
Cleveland Freenet (the very first freenet) – about 1986-- email, usenet
First “real” ISP (via Unix shell) – APK net, Cleveland’s first ISP, about 1991.
(I still have one email address from this period – the same address for about 14 years, anyone got that beat? If I would have kept my original CompuServe account, it would have been 25 years. I did keep it for a long time.)
I am greatly amused that one of the google ads is for eating disorder help.
Got my first home internet on July 4, 1997. I remember the date because I had bought a computer from Wally World and on July 4th a friend helped me connect to the internet. He had been on since 1995 and I used to go to his house and play around. I was so excited that I got a second phone line just for the internet. Then about three years ago I switched to DSL and got rid of the second line.
I blame my friend for the fact that I became corrupted looking at gay porn sites. 
Had Usenet access in grad school, 1991-93. But that wasn’t ‘household’ access.
Hooked up to AOHell in early 1995, graduated from that a couple years later.
I, too, am a satisfied AOL user since '97.
Y’all remember when you first started and would send out an email joke and have to ensure that everybody got it? I remember doing that with a more experienced ‘net person and they firmly but nicely explained that every single stinkin’ joke had already made its way around already. Bummed me out! :wally
I had Usenet access through the university starting in 1988 and since I had access to the university system through dial-up at home, you could technically say I had internet access at home at that time.
But the first time I really started using it was when I had AOL in 1994
My dad introduced me to usenet in '88 or so. That’s later than a couple other people, but seeing as I was only 8 at the time, I think that gives me a record of some kind.