Every morning, Njeri wakes up, checks her phone, and promises herself “just five minutes.”
Two hours later, she has watched 36 videos, learned one dance, and earned exactly zero shillings. Somewhere else, someone used the same five minutes to invoice a client online.
That contrast quietly defines the digital age we live in.
By the close of 2024, the world crossed 5.4 billion internet users, with Africa recording one of the fastest growth rates in mobile connectivity. Smartphones are now more common than laptops, data bundles cheaper than transport fares, and social platforms more powerful than many traditional institutions. What was once a luxury has become infrastructure, as essential as roads, power, and banking. Yet despite this unprecedented access, outcomes could not be more unequal.
The internet is creating wealth, careers, and global relevance for some, while quietly draining time, focus, and potential from others. The difference is not access. It is how the internet is treated.
In the early days, internet access was deliberate. You logged on with intention. Time was limited, speed was slow, and usage was purposeful. Today, the internet is omnipresent, always on, always buzzing, always competing for attention.
It now runs businesses, classrooms, newsrooms, marketplaces, and even friendships. Entire careers exist purely because the internet exists: content creators, digital marketers, virtual assistants, data analysts, designers, editors, consultants, traders, and remote professionals serving clients across borders without leaving home.
The internet has simplified what once took years: – Learning no longer requires a classroom, selling no longer requires a shop, publishing no longer requires permission, employment no longer requires geography. This is the new normal, but infrastructure rewards productivity, not play!
Every day, millions of young people like Njeri wake up and unlock the same apps, buy the same data bundles, and scroll the same platforms. From the outside, their lives look identical. But within weeks, months, and years, their outcomes could not be more different. One uses the internet as an escape, scrolling for laughter and distraction. Another uses it as a classroom, searching, saving, practicing, and building. One spends hours debating strangers online about issues that will never pay rent. Another quietly assembles a portfolio, learns a skill, and invoices a client. One complains loudly about unemployment. Another earns silently. The dividing line is not intelligence, luck, or education level. It is intentional use. In the digital economy, simply being online counts for nothing. Presence is cheap. Purpose is what gets paid.
Used well, the internet has become one of the greatest wealth-creation tools in human history. It has lowered barriers that once locked millions out of opportunity and opened global markets to anyone with skill and discipline. A teenager can learn video editing on free platforms and earn within months. A professional can reskill mid-career and remain relevant without returning to university. Skills now travel faster than passports, crossing borders at the speed of bandwidth. But the same internet, misused, has quietly built another economy, the economy of addiction. Short-form videos engineered to hijack attention. Online betting disguised as opportunity. Pornography normalized as entertainment. Notifications chopping concentration into fragments. The result is a generation that is constantly online yet permanently stagnant, busy but unproductive, visible but unskilled. The internet itself does not decide outcomes. It simply amplifies habits, whatever they may be.
We love the story of sudden success. “They just blew up overnight,” people say, scrolling past years of invisible effort in a single swipe. But digital success is rarely sudden. What appears overnight is usually the visible moment of a long, unseen process, learning without applause, failing without witnesses, practicing without recognition. Algorithms do not reward luck; they reward patterns. Markets do not reward noise; they reward competence. Social media exposes habits long before it reveals success. Your feed is not random. It reflects what you repeatedly choose to consume. What you watch trains your mind. What you search shapes your skillset. What you ignore quietly delays your future. Online success does not come suddenly. It arrives when preparation can no longer be hidden.
Here is the uncomfortable truth many would rather avoid: the internet is one of the fairest systems ever created. It does not ask for your surname or your background. It does not negotiate with excuses or sympathize with effort that produces no value. It responds only to what you bring, effort, learning, consistency, and usefulness. Bring discipline, and it multiplies opportunity. Bring curiosity, and it multiplies skill. Bring laziness, and it multiplies distraction. That is why two people using the same phone, the same data, and the same platforms can end the year worlds apart. One upgrades quietly. The other repeats the same cycle loudly. The system did not fail either of them. It simply reflected them.
Digital competence is no longer optional, and pretending otherwise is expensive. Employers expect it. Clients assume it. Markets punish its absence. Even the most traditional professions now depend on digital fluency to remain competitive and visible. The new normal is remote work, online collaboration, digital payments, and global competition, and it is moving fast. Those who refuse to learn are not attacked or excluded. They are simply overtaken. Progress does not stop to persuade. It moves on.
From a professional standpoint, working daily at the intersection of finance, skills, and value creation, the guidance is clear. Decide early whether you are going to use the internet primarily as a consumer or as a creator, because the two paths lead to very different destinations. Choose one monetizable digital skill and commit to learning it deeply instead of sampling everything shallowly. Curate your feed with intention, because what you consume trains your thinking long before it shapes your income. Measure your time online by output, not hours spent. Above all, treat platforms as tools first and entertainment last. The internet rewards focus long before it rewards fame.
When two equally talented people compete in the digital age, one factor consistently separates them: private discipline. Not motivation. Not hype. Not trends. The winners are those who can learn quietly, practice consistently, and improve without applause. They treat the internet like a serious place of work even when everyone else is playing. You cannot joke your way into a digital economy. You must train your way into it. Because in the end, the internet always pays back, exactly according to how you treated it.
The writer is a Chartered Accountant, and a chartered Tax advisor
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