[Karrot_Kream]

It opened to a wider and wider audience. If you were a telephone operator in the early 1920s-1940s, you would have been messaging other operators over lines already. If you were on ARPANet you could have done it in the '60s-'70s. In the '80s you could have done it with acoustic couplers, modems, and BBSes. Then came the internet. Then came the web on desktop computers. Then the web on mobile.

I can tell you where I grew up (a poorer area), always-on internet access was very much seen as a luxury until the late 2000s. Many of my classmates used the internet at school rather than at home. Now kids in the same (still poor) area couldn't think of not having internet on their phones.