When I turned 19, it was 1987. I was skeptical of the Church way back then. I wasn't sure if I wanted to go on a mission. I did a lot of research on the Church, but this research mainly took the form of talking to people about my doubts. If I had had the internet back then, there is no way I would have gone on a mission.
I had to find out the truth the hard way. I ended up going on a mission, and I had to waste 2 whole years. Then I went to BYU, and it wasn't until after I left BYU that I came across "anti-Mormon literature". I spend a lot of time studying ALL ALONE, because everybody around me was Mormon and didn't seem to doubt the Church, and nobody knew much about the anti-Mormon stuff. I'm proud that I did this all by myself. It took years and years to uncover the truth, and I had to do it in spite of the discouragement from religious leaders. The only live person who helped me was Sandra Tanner, and I only talked to her for 2 hours. The Church had a BIG IMPACT, largely negative, in my life at that time, and if I had found out the truth earlier I could have avoided years of "wasted time".
Now all you have to do to find out if the Church is true is to spend some time online. THE INTERNET HAS MADE IT SO MUCH EASIER!!!!! If I had had the internet at age 19 I would have eaten up all the "anti" stuff, just like I wanted to do but coudn't because there was no internet.
Back then there weren't so many Ex-Mormon groups either, and the ones that existed were hard to find; things are much, much different today.
Perhaps the only positive thing is that I got to experience the temple and mission field firsthand. If the internet had existed back then, I would not have gone to the temple, and I would not have discovered firsthand how crazy the temple ceremony is. I would also not have discovered firsthand how crazy the mission field is.

But still, they don't leave you alone. Damn it.

I would have left the church at 17, not 57.

I knew nothing of the Tanners. I didn't even know any ex mormons. I'm not from Utah(yay). I wouldn't of had a clue where to look for information. I also didn't have the time to track down information. I had a family to raise, a job, and school. Even when something didn't add up, there were no resources that I knew of to check out the truth.

The internet has changed that forever. The church didn't see it coming. In the past it has been very easy for them to control information, which in turn, controlled the members.

I was taught from the day I was born that if I questioned the church, there was something wrong with me. Fear was used to keep members in line. Combine that with lack of information. The church made my life miserable.

To find out the church has been taunting and tormenting with lies and more lies was quite the revelation. They can no longer get away with that. The up and coming generation will force them to come clean. I'm so happy I lived to see the day!

I investigated TSCC for 3 years, there was no information that was easily available that told of the true nature of TSCC. Had the Internet been available, I never would have investigated the cult.

I can relate to your post. At the age of 15, I remember saying to my father, "any problems I have with the church are my problems, not the church's." WTF? Little alarms would go off whenever I sat down to read the Book of Mormon, as if I could see the nonsense that Joseph Smith had pulled off. I came across some "anti-Mormon" tracts when I was 16, and quickly read them and then threw them out. After my mission, I spent hours in the SLC library, destructing the whole thing. I can't remember how many books I read, I wished I had kept a journal. I also spent some time with Sandra Tanner, who sweetly gave me some free literature to guide my research (I was newly married and very poor.) At that point, I still attended, but my heart was not in it at all. A few years later, I worked for a cutting-edge technology company and the early Internet fueled my research in full force. I recall many hours on the old yahoo.com directories, scouring all the information I could find. Even in the mid-90s, the volume of info available online compared to time in the library was mind-boggling. Thanks goodness for the Internet! Thank goodness for getting my wife and kids out when the kids were very young.

Soon after joining "the church" in my late teens, I started to get a trickle of "meat" after much milk, and one of the things I was told was to stay away from the "anti's" and the "Reorganized" LDS Church members (apparently we had some were I grew up and they were quite vocal with the Mormons). It's kind of funny look back on it now, it's clearly one of those "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" moments.

As someone younger it certainly is easier now with the internet. I grew up in the church as a skeptic, but I went along with it because that was all I knew. I also did not have any contrary information. When I became an adult I actually discovered the real history of the church and realized the Emperor had no clothes. The so called spiritual experiences you are supposed to have in the church; well I experienced such a feeling when I 100% realized it was not true. There was a sense of peace that went over me like I had not felt before. That was the best day of my life to this point.

up to and through the 1950's, leaving MORmONISM was like trying to quit the communist party. in the 1850"s it would get a person killed.

The teacher spent a few days teaching us about the Scientific Method. He did an excellent job and for the first time I understood the logic behind science. I was BIC and raised in the Mormon church. I had always been leery of the magical entities of religion -- god, satan, jesus, the holy ghost. When I learned about the Scientific Method then I realized that religion is based on unverifiable magic. I made a conscious decision that I would not base my life on such magic.

About the same time, a Sunday School lesson told me that god always answers sincere prayers. I put that to the test for two weeks. I did a lot of sincere praying and got no answers. That experience, plus learning about the Scientific Method, turned me into an atheist. From there I essentially exited LDSinc.

I was still living at home with my TBM parents, so I had to tread cautiously. I gradually started cutting out of meetings early and sometimes avoided going to meetings. About three years later I completely quit going to meetings and at age 17 that was the end of my Mormon experience.

Exiting the Mormon Cult by age 17 was the best decision I ever made. No Internet was necessary. In those days a person had to THINK their way out of the Cult.

The internet was still pretty much just text as I was on my way out. I did have a modem, and dialed into the public library to surf what the web was at that time.

I DO remember finding the To Young Men Only thing about masturbation. I may have been on some kind of exmo or anti-mo site briefly.

But I was too busy trying to have a life of my own, behind my parents' backs, to give it much study. That and text porn and weed websites were much more interesting at that age.

I already knew mormonism made me feel icky. But I was still brainwashed enough to think it was a sign of my innate badness somehow. (The porn and weed "problem" really contributed to my guilty feelings.)

I didn't know just how many good reasons there are to feel icky about it!
After being very poor and occasionally homeless, 8 years later I got my own computer, plugged into the internet, and found RfM not too long afterwards. :)

But I never did go looking for "anti-mormon" information. I looked for truth. I didn't need to use any "anti" sources to confirm my suspicions. Mormons throw out the "anti" word way to easily just to cast aspersions on the material. Its the old trick of "if you can't discredit the information, discredit the messenger."

The church's own material condemns it. The Journal of Discourses is a prime example. Talks by many of the prophets and GA's are another prime source of information, ala Bruce R. McConkie. Then there are the credible historians who write from a basis of historical research, rather than emotional drivel. Todd Compton, Michael Quinn, Val Avery and Linda Newell, Van Wagoner, Will Bagley, to name a few, write from verifiable and sourced information.

Truth can withstand scrutiny, and if the church is true, why are the leaders constantly telling us not to read anything not church approved? Huge red flag...

I am so glad the internet helped me to find the REAL history of TSCC when I came upon Lesson #27 from the Joseph's Myth worship manual back in 2009 when it talked about avoiding the bitter fruits of apostacy and it whitewashed the Kirtland Bank scandal history. It infuriated me!

The internet has been a game-changer, and it's only been widely used for about 15 years. There's more to come.
It has applied non-stop heat to the church. In yesteryear apostates were isolated. You had to go out of your way to get anti-mormon information, especially GOOD anti-mormon information that would actually make you go hmmm...I mean academic-quality research, not mormons-worship-satan evangelical drivel.

I was on my mission '90-'92, when the brethren counseled members to stay away from "symposia". At the time, I think you pretty much had to go to something like that to get the real research. Otherwise, there was no handy outlet for that stuff. It was ten years before the internet started leaking that kind of stuff to me. Now all the brethrens' attempts to isolate apostate outlets looks so lame. Actually, it backfired because their attempts to isolate and censor apostates is just being recycled as anti in itself.

What to do now?

It looks like they're trying to drown it out with volume. That's the sing-hymns-outside-confernz tactic. Will it work? Well there's a big difference between a few protesters (mostly evangelicals) picketing GC, and a few million disillusioned mormons who outnumber active mormons almost 2 to 1. That is, literally for every mormon defender there is someone with the opposite opinion. That's more like 20,000 protesters showing up to GC. The internet gives them all a common forum. If you go to the internet you ARE going to get both sides...

...And hence the church trying to censor the internet. They're preaching filters, ostensibly for porn, but more and more I believe they use porn as a scare tactic and that they really want to censor anti. They don't want you to read the other side.

But it seems inevitable. And now, there's Romney...and for the first (well OK, second) time, the general public has an interest in mormonism as it affects THEM.

How will another year of daily mormon news effect the membership?
How will another 10 or 20 years of the internet effect the membership?
Will it level off? Will it get worse? Will the church be forced to overhaul itself (I mean give up orthodoxy...their external PR doesn't count...I mean internal change).

And, will apologetics work? That has backfired too. FARMS is an excellent way to verify anti stuff (...like yes Smith really DID have 33 wives...but there's only proof that he had sex with one of his plural wives, the rest is circumstantial)...Thanks FARMS, you're the best!
It was apologetics that got me distrusting Joseph Smith a year before I lost all faith...by defending the Helen Mar Kimball incident. I was appalled by it. And that was just an internet leak...I wasn't even looking for that!

With their Internet and skinny jeans.

And rhythm and blues music.