My parents decided to give me access to the Internet when I was 12-13 years old. I remember coming home one day from school and finding my room in kind of a mess, with new cables around my computer and a small rectangular thing close to it.
I wasn't sure what was happening, but I got extremely happy once my mother told me that the small rectangle was a "modem" and that I will finally have access to the Internet.
Since then, I spent most of my time in front of my computer, talking to all kind of people in online chats, watching maybe too many YouTube videos and playing all kind of stupid online games.
I specifically remember spending at least 6 to 8 hours a day in a very bad MMORPG called Metin 2, even though I never managed to get past level 32 or 34.
Now, I can't say I regret wasting all that time. It was wasted time, but I not only had quite a lot of fun, but I learned a lot of things. The people I spent time with taught me more than I ever learned about how to not be a jerk, and how to talk to others, some even constantly advised me to read, which is another reason why I started reading later in life, all the games I played taught me how to be a better person, no matter how hard that may be to believe, and spending so much time in front of my computer is the reason I'm here today, writing and trying to work from home.
What I do regret however, is the reason why I wasted all that time, and, if you didn't already guess, I'm talking about school.
I had to go to school at around 8 in the morning, then spend 6 to 7 hours there, and then come home. I also had homework, had to take private lessons when it came to math and other important subjects and even though I wasn't always doing it often, I had to study from time to time to make sure I'll pass.
All that, every day, made me hate studying, made me consider it useless, and that's one of the main reasons I never spent my time doing anything productive when I was young. I just came home from school, did whatever I had to do, then I sat down in front of my computer and I just played games for as long as I could.
Having to study a bunch of things I wasn't interested in, just to have a "better future" that I didn't even care about, at a time when all I wanted to do was to have fun, was what made me hate studying and learning new things.
Only later in life, after I finished high school, I started learning things on my own, after I discovered how useful it can be to just know things. I even got obsessed with studying after I finished school, both because I enjoyed it, and because I felt a need to kinda learn all the things I needed that school didn't teach me.
If you're in school, or if you already finished school, here's a little piece of advice that probably a lot of other people will give you as well in life - start studying. Not what school teaches you, or tried to teach you, but things you care about, things you like, things you're interested in.
If you're still in school, try to spend around an hour doing something productive that you like. It can be reading, learning how to code, how to create games, learning about history, math, and so on. Forget about how school tries to force you to learn certain things, and just invest your time into learning something you like.
If you finished school and you still hate studying because of all the bad memories you have from school, just try to do it once more, this time, at your own pace, and focusing on the subjects you like most.
No one is there to make fun of you for not being great any more, no one is there to remind you how much time you have left to finish your assignment. Just learn what you want whenever you want, and, luckily, you'll realize how great learning new things is, and how much time you wasted when you were young just because your teachers and the educational system had no idea how to motivate you and make you curious.