America Online Shuts Down Dial Up Service

Quimora Grant, staff writer

In September 2025, America Online (AOL) officially closed the curtain on its once pervasive dial-up internet service. The company, formerly known solely as America Online, announced that it would retire its dial-up offering, including the familiar AOL Dialer software. Though it may seem insignificant, this is a noteworthy milestone. It's the end of an era of technology that for many was their gateway to the internet. It’s also a moment to reflect on how far media and social media have come. 

When AOL first offered internet access via dial-up in the early 1990s, it was revolutionary. Users would call into the network, hear the modem’s iconic screech beep handshake, and suddenly a world of email, chatrooms and rudimentary websites became free to explore. At its peak, AOL served tens of millions of subscribers in the U.S., becoming the forefront of early web access. Dial-up is a form of internet access that uses a standard telephone line to transmit data through a computer or modem. Using the service is inexpensive, meaning that dial-up was widely accessible and granted access to communication across wide distances, online banking, easier access to news and information, and helped technology advance further towards completely free education by introducing online courses and educational resources. 

However, dial-up’s limitations were clear; connection speeds were slow, any incoming or outgoing phone call would interrupt the internet session, and it couldn’t keep up with the demands of video streaming or the readily available connectivity that followed. As faster broadband, cable, DSL and fiber networks emerged in the 2000s, dial-up began its decline.  

When AOL made the announcement this year, only a small number of households still relied on dial-up, mostly in rural or under-served areas where broadband hadn’t fully reached. The story of AOL’s dial-up is one of connectivity and access. It raises the topic of what happens to “slower” communities who have not yet made it to more updated technology. 

The broader arc of media and social media is about how we share, communicate and build networks online. In the 1980s and early 1990s, online communication took the form of bulletin board systems, text-based chat rooms, email lists and early online forums. While these are primitive by today’s standards, they laid the groundwork for what was to come. 

By the late 1990s and early 2000s, platforms explicitly built for social connectivity emerged: sites like Friendster, Myspace and eventually Facebook began to define the idea of a “social” web. As smartphones arrived and mobile internet spread, social media evolved rapidly. Platforms shifted from text and status updates to photos, video, live streaming and algorithm-driven feeds. For instance, Instagram launched in 2010 and quickly became one of the major visual-oriented networks. Around the same time, the shift toward algorithmic recommendation changed how content was surfaced and consumed, leaning more towards the wants and aesthetic preferences of the user. 

Social media has also evolved from just being about socializing. News, marketing, entertainment and commerce have become implicit in the algorithm. Platforms influence how information is created and distributed, how brands engage, how creators earn money, and how culture circulates globally. The shutdown of the program invites us to reflect: the way we connect has fundamentally changed. Social media is now central to how we consume media, form communities, get news, and even build livelihoods.