A few years ago, my anxious father quit what was for him the internet: Aol. I recently cut the cable cord, a medium that’s long been synonymous with TV. That was two months ago. Looking back I realize that like my father, I was scared and should have done it sooner.

As a septuagenarian, my father’s story was typical of long-time Aol dial-up subscribers. His subscription was a security blanket. He was sure he didn’t need the dial-up component, but he didn’t want to risk losing access to his stock portfolio, investor forums, and email. His setup worked, and he could afford to keep paying the subscription he had dutifully paid for over a decade. With my help, we were able to migrate everything he used on Aol to the ad-supported and open internet that was already being delivered into his house via the broadband component of his cable package. Even after things were fully mirrored, he still felt trepidation when the time came to pick up the phone and terminate his dial-up account (despite Aol’s best attempt to obscure and complicate the procedure). Months later he told me he felt silly for letting the ruse go on for so long.