I was a kid in the same times. Yes, for those of us lucky enough to have access to machines that had good modems (or, well, any modem), some semblance of this was possible. To argue it is at all at the same scale, though, is rather wrong.

The comparison was "it has never been easier." Back then, just don't buy that rather expensive modem and let the kid take up the home phone. Nowadays, it is "don't buy the entry level game system or ubiquitous computing device."

It really is vastly harder nowadays, because of how ubiquitous networked devices are. Can it feel easier? Sure, but I guarantee that most motivated kids can and will outsmart most parental controls used by less than tech savvy parents.

> I had video game systems. I had portable video games systems.

> There was no controls at all in those times.

There was though; you could by design do less with it than a Raspberry Pi with Internet connection.

Its like using vi versus emacs. Neither is better, each have their pros and cons. These (portable) video games systems are akin to vi; they do one specific job really well.