Maybe It's An Age Thing, Maybe It's A Me Thing

How readily do you think to check the Internet for solutions to problems?

The question occurred to me last weekend. I was hooking my original XBox up to play some Crimson Skies. The disc tray refuses to open unless there's a disc in it. I had turned it on and opened the tray to switch out games, but it closed before I could put the disc in. So it was stuck. I spent a good twenty minutes fiddling with it, pressing the button, trying to jiggle the tray to get it to respond.

It wasn't until I'd reached the point of trying to pry the tray open when a knife that it dawned on me there was almost certainly a video or article online somewhere that would explain how to deal with this. And there was.

My delay in going that route might just be my personality. I tend to try and handle things myself, with whatever I have at hand at the moment. If that fails, then I'll go retrieve more tools, but I hate to waste the effort on bringing something over I didn't end up needing. Or maybe I'm just slow on the uptake. My father says I have a tendency to lock myself into one strategy for getting things done, and then stubbornly press ahead, rather than look for easier alternatives.

But I wonder if it isn't partially an age thing. The Internet wasn't really something I used for research purposes when I was growing up until at least high school. Maybe not even until college. I had access to it prior to that, but if I needed information on something, I went and found a book. Would someone younger, if they grew up with the idea "there'll be something to help with that online", more readily turn to it?