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Ctrl, Alt; Delete: How I Grew Up and Stayed Sane Online
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272 pages, Paperback
First published May 12, 2016
16 people are currently reading
964 people want to read
About the author
Emma Gannon
16 books680 followersEmma Gannon is the Sunday Times bestselling author of eight books, including ‘A Year of Nothing‘ and ‘Olive’, her debut novel, which was nominated for the Dublin Literary Award. Her second novel, ‘Table for One’, published in 2025 with HarperCollins. Emma also runs the popular Substack newsletter, ‘The Hyphen’, which has thousands of paid subscribers. She also hosts creativity retreats all over the world and was a judge for the 2025 Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 46 reviews
July 10, 2016
The whole way through I was just exclaiming 'YES YES THAT'S ME YEP!' or feeling my jaw drop at the 'realness' and cleverness of each chapter. I <3 Emma, all the retro and all the modern versions.
September 3, 2016
How I Grew Up Online is an interesting discussion of difficult issues that can affect young people, such as self-image and how society today makes us very aware of how we look, especially with the media, and is written from a female perspective that shows how girls and women can be both negatively and positively affected by the online world.
I liked the sense of humour that Emma tells her stories with, when the story was not too serious in nature she made light fun of it, which I found quite entertaining. The book as a whole was not incredibly gripping in that it did not have me unable to put it down, but it was still an enjoyable read that brought forward some interesting points about intriguing topics.
I think Emma made a good point about how we have a big problem with abuse on the internet and how that makes it difficult, when people are determined to make hateful comments at you rather than become involved in a conversation, to discuss important and controversial topics, some of which she also discusses in the book, such as feminism and the difficulty in learning to be a feminist when the internet makes it difficult to make mistakes. The book also makes a good point about how, while it is not the be-all and end-all, the internet is still important and can be used for good.
My copy of this book was received from Maximum Pop Books as a prize from a giveaway.
I liked the sense of humour that Emma tells her stories with, when the story was not too serious in nature she made light fun of it, which I found quite entertaining. The book as a whole was not incredibly gripping in that it did not have me unable to put it down, but it was still an enjoyable read that brought forward some interesting points about intriguing topics.
I think Emma made a good point about how we have a big problem with abuse on the internet and how that makes it difficult, when people are determined to make hateful comments at you rather than become involved in a conversation, to discuss important and controversial topics, some of which she also discusses in the book, such as feminism and the difficulty in learning to be a feminist when the internet makes it difficult to make mistakes. The book also makes a good point about how, while it is not the be-all and end-all, the internet is still important and can be used for good.
My copy of this book was received from Maximum Pop Books as a prize from a giveaway.
January 1, 2017
2.5 stars - This sits right there in the middle of the rating system because I didn't dislike it but I had really high hopes of recommending it to my equally as internet obsessed best friend... and I won't do that. I can see why so many people can relate to the stories of growing up online but for me the perspective and stories didn't apply. Not Emma's fault, but it did take away from my reading experience. I would definitely read a follow up book focusing more on her life after her career had taken off. I find her fascinating as a role-model in that department and the book did go in that direction a little towards the end.
November 18, 2019
2.5.
I really enjoyed the first third of this, and all of Emma's personal anecdotes and memories, but everything else fell a bit flat for me. I just found myself not quite agreeing with alot, which is fine, but it muted my enjoyment. I also found the advice section to be a bit condescending. I think she has a great voice, but maybe it is just not what I needed to read at this moment.
I really enjoyed the first third of this, and all of Emma's personal anecdotes and memories, but everything else fell a bit flat for me. I just found myself not quite agreeing with alot, which is fine, but it muted my enjoyment. I also found the advice section to be a bit condescending. I think she has a great voice, but maybe it is just not what I needed to read at this moment.
December 31, 2017
An interesting insight into the impact of social media and the Internet on our lives, relationships and careers.
August 24, 2017
I should have guessed from the title of the book "how I grew up online" that the book would be about HER. Nothing wrong about that but I just could not relate to her stories and her experiences on Twitter (mainly) and on Internet.
Overall I would say that the book is ok and is easy to read. I would recommend it to someone who uses twitter on a daily basis , has a blog or YouTube channel. Otherwise, a regular user of internet and social media may not be able to identify him/herself with the stories she describes throughout the book.
Overall I would say that the book is ok and is easy to read. I would recommend it to someone who uses twitter on a daily basis , has a blog or YouTube channel. Otherwise, a regular user of internet and social media may not be able to identify him/herself with the stories she describes throughout the book.
August 23, 2016
Ctrl Alt; Delete is a book every millennial and Internet loving person needs to read. Even if you're not a big Internet person you still need to read it. Scratch that, everybody needs to read this book. It's so relatable, laugh-out-loud funny and also incredibly inspiring and thought provoking. Emma is such a gifted writer and this book was such a strong debut. I can't wait to see what she does next.
March 15, 2018
This was the first book I purchased on @audible and I enjoyed it immensely! I feel it’s one of those books that should be on School library’s everywhere and chapters studied! As a mum of 3 the internet is a scary and intimidating place, but this memoir offers some great insights in to how the online world can help and how the likely good is there will be tricky times, embarrassing moments and times where you will want the ground to swallow you whole- but you will survive!
August 16, 2016
Absolutely loved this book. Very relatable. Would definitely recommend to others. :)
August 7, 2016
4.5 Stars
January 23, 2018
Emma Gannon is someone I love in the blogging world and I have been a long time follower of her podcast so reading this book has been on my list of 'to read' for a very long time. The book follows how Emma grew up with the internet and how the online world affected different aspects like feminism, sexuality, friendship and work life.
This is one of those books that is very chilled out, could-read-in-a-day and is very relatable. You can tell a blogger wrote it and I love that - especially because I have a prior connection to Emma's voice online. Very enjoyable and an easy Sunday read that'll leave you going 'OMG I REMEMBER THAT'
This is one of those books that is very chilled out, could-read-in-a-day and is very relatable. You can tell a blogger wrote it and I love that - especially because I have a prior connection to Emma's voice online. Very enjoyable and an easy Sunday read that'll leave you going 'OMG I REMEMBER THAT'
January 10, 2018
Ctrl Alt Delete is een boek die ik al een tijdje op mijn ‘to-read’ lijst had staan omdat ik ook luister naar de gelijknamige podcast. Dit non-fictie boek heeft namelijk perfect weer hoe het is om op te groeien in deze tijd. De gevaren, maar ook de positieve kanten van de online wereld worden perfect uitgelicht door Emma.
January 20, 2021
I have actually stopped reading this a bit before the end as I was getting fed up of it. It’s a real shame as I loved the first third and it was really nostalgic but it then just became a bit preachy and only really relevant to people who work in social media/PR. Too boring to finish but started brilliantly.
May 28, 2020
Really insightful and fascinating. I was born before the Internet but I am young enough for it to have been a big part of my adult life. But the thought of it being part of my childhood is untenable.
Some really interesting and thought provoking chapters. Written with warmth and a friendly tone.
Some really interesting and thought provoking chapters. Written with warmth and a friendly tone.
May 20, 2017
Funny, makes you reminisce about growing up online and pushes you to become a freelance 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
Very much enjoyed the balance of positivity and genuineness
Very much enjoyed the balance of positivity and genuineness
June 29, 2017
I bought this to read alongside my dissertation. I need to pick it up again and read it properly since university work didn't allow me to read it properly back then!
September 27, 2017
SO RELATABLE.
May 29, 2018
I really enjoyed this book! I really connected with Emma as I grew up with social media. I would recommend this book to anyone!
August 9, 2019
A funny and realistic look at life online.
March 8, 2020
Liked the beginning, felt a bit odd in the end. No spoilers
May 3, 2020
So relatable, I loved this
March 28, 2021
I found myself switching off throughout a lot of this book and didn't end finishing it unfortunately
September 23, 2021
I tried so hard with this book and I thought it would be great reading stories from the past back in the day but it just wasn’t enjoyable for me.
December 4, 2021
This was enjoyable and relatable 👌🏻
December 28, 2016
Interesting POV on literally what it felt like to grow up online, with MSN messenger (oh the days of mass convos and endless nudges) transiting into social media. Was good to read about the views of someone who more or less lives and breathes social media, which I try to limit, personally.
_____
I had been putting myself up for approval from a stranger. I was essentially giving a virtual person, through a machine, permission to have a positive or negative effect on my real-life emotions.
You can tell who was a previous cool kid when they were younger because they will still reminisce about school way into their late twenties or early thirties, while everyone else doesn’t want to bring it up, ever.
Having other people in control of how your friends might perceive you is the most crushing thing, especially at fourteen.
Teenage friendships, looking back, were always far more intense than in adult life. We spent so much time together; we’d sleep in the same bed, cry on each other’s laps, and tell each other our deepest, weirdest feelings. I felt properly in love with my friends. My friendships nowadays are not as suffocatingly close, but those teenage bonds never properly wear off.
I don’t know a single teenager who liked themselves during school. Every ounce of my energy went into attempting to fit in or just to flat out avoid being noticed.
Despite the constant reality of peer pressure, I discovered there’s nothing more freeing than saying ‘no’ or speaking up when you like something different.
Being yourself takes a lot of confidence because you don’t ever feel truly normal. No one does. You have to take the risk of telling people the stuff you like, and then keep your fingers crossed that they a) like it too, and b) respect you for it. We all have quirks, secrets, weird obsessions.
Social media has never been a natural place for sharing the real stuff. Us human beings have a lot of boring life admin, so we’re very good at hiding it online nowadays and only sharing the happy, bright, emoji-filled chunks of our lives, in order to give the illusion we are very happy, well-put-together, mentally stable individuals.
If you keep asking someone the same question over and over, whether it’s career, relationship or whatever, you are clearly unhappy, and you have to suck it up and change things yourself.
London is known for being the type of city that can leave you feeling lonely in a crowded room because it is bloody hard to meet decent people. It’s not difficult to find people in general – they’re everywhere – but it is difficult to find people you wouldn’t mind spending a rainy Sunday afternoon with.
I tried leaning in and asking for more, but it didn’t work, so I leaned out and quit the job.
This was a lesson I’d learn over and over again: pretending to be confident slowly but surely turns into real confidence.
‘I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.’
YouTubers sell things based on customer demand. Write a book please. We want to see this type of video next. Can you film something with your sister? Bring out a bubble bath range! Come to Ireland. Sell some T-shirts with your face on. They respond to the requests of their massive and loyal community. This is something a lot of traditional companies could learn from.
By living our real selves online and searching for things we love, it is easy to cross paths with new people and form niche friendships. My friendships online have occurred because I am at a point in my life where I know who I am, what I like and what I’m trying to achieve. Of course, I’ve also got it wrong in the past too, thinking that someone is a certain thing but subsequently realising they aren’t.
(Regarding online debates) I decided to mute people who are constantly outraged by small things, simply because you cannot get to the crux of an issue or have valuable conversations when either person is angry.
The 'friend crush', which according to good old Urban Dictionary is when you ‘experience a strong desire to become friends with a person you don’t know very well’.
Culture and art help us find our buried souls, the feelings that have been squashed by social pressures, tradition and ingrained stereotypes.
I learned that you cannot speak on other people’s behalf, but you can share your own truth and listen to other people’s.
Everyone has a right to freedom of speech. Everyone has a right to be offended. But if no one ever offended anyone, no meaty conversations would ever take place.
_____
I had been putting myself up for approval from a stranger. I was essentially giving a virtual person, through a machine, permission to have a positive or negative effect on my real-life emotions.
You can tell who was a previous cool kid when they were younger because they will still reminisce about school way into their late twenties or early thirties, while everyone else doesn’t want to bring it up, ever.
Having other people in control of how your friends might perceive you is the most crushing thing, especially at fourteen.
Teenage friendships, looking back, were always far more intense than in adult life. We spent so much time together; we’d sleep in the same bed, cry on each other’s laps, and tell each other our deepest, weirdest feelings. I felt properly in love with my friends. My friendships nowadays are not as suffocatingly close, but those teenage bonds never properly wear off.
I don’t know a single teenager who liked themselves during school. Every ounce of my energy went into attempting to fit in or just to flat out avoid being noticed.
Despite the constant reality of peer pressure, I discovered there’s nothing more freeing than saying ‘no’ or speaking up when you like something different.
Being yourself takes a lot of confidence because you don’t ever feel truly normal. No one does. You have to take the risk of telling people the stuff you like, and then keep your fingers crossed that they a) like it too, and b) respect you for it. We all have quirks, secrets, weird obsessions.
Social media has never been a natural place for sharing the real stuff. Us human beings have a lot of boring life admin, so we’re very good at hiding it online nowadays and only sharing the happy, bright, emoji-filled chunks of our lives, in order to give the illusion we are very happy, well-put-together, mentally stable individuals.
If you keep asking someone the same question over and over, whether it’s career, relationship or whatever, you are clearly unhappy, and you have to suck it up and change things yourself.
London is known for being the type of city that can leave you feeling lonely in a crowded room because it is bloody hard to meet decent people. It’s not difficult to find people in general – they’re everywhere – but it is difficult to find people you wouldn’t mind spending a rainy Sunday afternoon with.
I tried leaning in and asking for more, but it didn’t work, so I leaned out and quit the job.
This was a lesson I’d learn over and over again: pretending to be confident slowly but surely turns into real confidence.
‘I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.’
YouTubers sell things based on customer demand. Write a book please. We want to see this type of video next. Can you film something with your sister? Bring out a bubble bath range! Come to Ireland. Sell some T-shirts with your face on. They respond to the requests of their massive and loyal community. This is something a lot of traditional companies could learn from.
By living our real selves online and searching for things we love, it is easy to cross paths with new people and form niche friendships. My friendships online have occurred because I am at a point in my life where I know who I am, what I like and what I’m trying to achieve. Of course, I’ve also got it wrong in the past too, thinking that someone is a certain thing but subsequently realising they aren’t.
(Regarding online debates) I decided to mute people who are constantly outraged by small things, simply because you cannot get to the crux of an issue or have valuable conversations when either person is angry.
The 'friend crush', which according to good old Urban Dictionary is when you ‘experience a strong desire to become friends with a person you don’t know very well’.
Culture and art help us find our buried souls, the feelings that have been squashed by social pressures, tradition and ingrained stereotypes.
I learned that you cannot speak on other people’s behalf, but you can share your own truth and listen to other people’s.
Everyone has a right to freedom of speech. Everyone has a right to be offended. But if no one ever offended anyone, no meaty conversations would ever take place.
March 15, 2017
Emma Gannon is part of that strange new generation who make a living from the internet, whose blogging about the everyday has led to writing and journalism and speaking engagements and who applauds the entrepreneurial spirit of vloggers and other creator/influencer types.
She’s only a couple of years younger than me but the world she describes varies from familiar to terrifyingly alien. In the first two of her series of essays about her relationship with the internet, she depicts the stresses of MSN conversations and selecting the perfect profile picture – not just for strangers but for people at school, for friends-of-friends, for people you know – as well as the thoroughly unpleasant experience of having private messages to a boy shared publicly. And all this before she turns fifteen.
Gannon is perfectly pitched as the person to illustrate how earlier online communications paved the way for the tangled and problematic mess of social media today (even though she is very much a fan of it) – just on the cusp of that point where it was the norm for online identities to be linked to your real-world ones, rather than being completely separate. (I was a teenager in fandom circles, where it was your secret world. When Bebo started up and normal people had online profiles, it was weird.)
As she grows up ‘with’ various different social networks, she emphasises the power there is in staying on top of new trends and new apps – something which sounds completely exhausting, but seems to be what she loves. She also addresses the trickiness of discussing issues online, especially feminism. It’s more breezy than thoughtful, perhaps in part because she’s more used to blogging, but as a quick read about internet culture for young people, it works.
She’s only a couple of years younger than me but the world she describes varies from familiar to terrifyingly alien. In the first two of her series of essays about her relationship with the internet, she depicts the stresses of MSN conversations and selecting the perfect profile picture – not just for strangers but for people at school, for friends-of-friends, for people you know – as well as the thoroughly unpleasant experience of having private messages to a boy shared publicly. And all this before she turns fifteen.
Gannon is perfectly pitched as the person to illustrate how earlier online communications paved the way for the tangled and problematic mess of social media today (even though she is very much a fan of it) – just on the cusp of that point where it was the norm for online identities to be linked to your real-world ones, rather than being completely separate. (I was a teenager in fandom circles, where it was your secret world. When Bebo started up and normal people had online profiles, it was weird.)
As she grows up ‘with’ various different social networks, she emphasises the power there is in staying on top of new trends and new apps – something which sounds completely exhausting, but seems to be what she loves. She also addresses the trickiness of discussing issues online, especially feminism. It’s more breezy than thoughtful, perhaps in part because she’s more used to blogging, but as a quick read about internet culture for young people, it works.
January 22, 2020
A thoroughly enjoyable and highly relatable book about growing up online. I enjoyed this book more than the ones Emma's blogger counterparts have written, probably because we're the same age: there's no talk of marriage or babies. Emma's stories of MSN, Myspace, and dial-up internet connection made me smile knowingly. She covers her experiences of catfishing, rude pics getting distributed and meeting people online. As she goes through her life, the internet devices change to smart phones and Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and how our daily lives revolve around social media and how it affects us on a daily basis. For example, surrounding ourselves with constant negativity, worrying how people perceive you online and the fact that we're always attached to our devices. She writes with such honesty and humour; she comes across as someone you'd want to be friends with. After having worked hard at an internship, Emma started blogging and finding her voice online. Her popular blog, Girl Lost in City, has led her to journalism, becoming an author and going to media events. It's not hard to see why: her biggest attributes seem to be her intelligence and humour, and her blatant honesty. Her writing is absolutely flawless, and flows smoothly throughout the chapters. This book has sections on porn, as well as feminism - topics that most female blogger books contain, but Emma's is set apart as it is all based on how the internet can influence these subjects. It's very hard to make mistakes on the internet, with the whole world watching you, and this book really opened my eyes to how we live our lives online. 4/5.
July 29, 2016
I’ve been a fan of Emma Gannon’s writing and her blog for quite a while - she’s got a clear voice and a great skill for observations and descriptions, so I was excited to receive a copy of her book to review.
This felt like a longform version of Emma’s blogging or her writing for the Debrief - witty, knowledgeable, warm and brave. That’s not to say new readers should be put off - this is an inclusive and honest memoir and I’m sure it will win Emma a host of new fans.
There were chapters I adored (the one on the trolls was probably my favourite, I loved how clearly Emma cut through the BS and was able to verbalise so much of what is happening and what needs to change; and the interning excerpts made me howl/wince). There were others that made me feel very old (at thirty five almost a decade splits my experience from hers), and once again very glad to have done a good portion of my growing up and my uber-awkward teenage phase away from the online world.
If you like a good bit of nonfiction I’d heartily recommend this book, and I’m very excited to see what Emma might write next. I think you’ll like this if….you enjoyed Yes Please by Amy Poehler, or Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling
This felt like a longform version of Emma’s blogging or her writing for the Debrief - witty, knowledgeable, warm and brave. That’s not to say new readers should be put off - this is an inclusive and honest memoir and I’m sure it will win Emma a host of new fans.
There were chapters I adored (the one on the trolls was probably my favourite, I loved how clearly Emma cut through the BS and was able to verbalise so much of what is happening and what needs to change; and the interning excerpts made me howl/wince). There were others that made me feel very old (at thirty five almost a decade splits my experience from hers), and once again very glad to have done a good portion of my growing up and my uber-awkward teenage phase away from the online world.
If you like a good bit of nonfiction I’d heartily recommend this book, and I’m very excited to see what Emma might write next. I think you’ll like this if….you enjoyed Yes Please by Amy Poehler, or Why Not Me? by Mindy Kaling
September 11, 2016
I could relate to this on so many levels, maybe that's what made it so much fun to listen to. Well done Emma!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 46 reviews