Hell the crazy things I used to do to connect to the internet after my mother went to sleep. She didn't wanted me using the internet because of phone charges so I secretly got into the roof to strip the phone wire bare and connect my own hidden cable that I would unroll and route it to my room to connect to my modem at night. YES part of it was to watch porn and download mp3s and roms. No I wasn't of legal age. Did my life got ruined by this? Well I'm an IT engineer now so arrive at your own conclusion.
I think this current hysteric moral panic is definitely being pushed by a lobby of a nascent AI industry that wants to create a problem for their surveillance tech solution.
Seeing you were on dialup, how board where you on dec 31, 1999?
Me, I was up watching the systems work great, missing all the cool parties guzzling caffeine for 3 days. But it made managers happy for me to be there. If I tried that now, I would end up in the grave.
By the way I got hit by a considerable electric shock from that. By that time I had no idea phones carried enough tension to actually shock me.