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I was a bit slow realising why my Internet connection has been so especially bad lately.

The aha moment came late yesterday afternoon.

That was after a successful morning presenting to a large group via video call without any issue whatsoever.

The difference? Our eldest had two exams yesterday, and so was out for most of the day.

But then the kids returned home. That’s when my afternoon meetings went sour.

However, I didn’t make the connection until my wife pushed her head around the door after listening to me abort a conversation with a colleague.

“Have you lost your Internet again?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Then you can block the kids,” she said. “I’ve been watching them. They’re just pretending to revise. She’s just watching videos, he’s just playing games.”

And there it hit me. My Internet woes have been coinciding with Study Leave.

While I’ve been struggling through meetings, I’ve been sharing bandwidth with Spotify, video shorts, online games, and who knows what.

And probably not only in our household, but with an entire neighbourhood connected to 5G broadband.

It’s got so bad recently that I decided to give up on our supplier altogether and switch over to fibre. Well, that was the plan, anyway.

The youngsters take a lot for granted. They don’t remember the days of dial-up Internet. They simply consider Internet access a right, like freely flowing water.

It’s their right to stream whatever they like whenever they like. The idea of downloading a song or a game once to access offline at leisure escapes them.

This is a different world to the one we grew up with. Their expectations are different from ours.

It’s a world in which everyone must now compete for bandwidth, regardless of priorities. Who cares that the one who pays for it cannot do the job that pays for it.