The internet is mostly known for being a nightmare for your privacy, but I also think there is another side to that coin. I mean, it is insanely easy (and common) these days to do all your internet communication with messengers, that have pretty much unbreakable encryption (Signal). That was not possible for the average person before computers and the internet. The government could easily read all you private letters.
Also, all our web traffic is fully encrypted with https (although that is more of a security than a privacy thing) and most modern phones automatically do full disk encryption for your files. It is also trivialilly easy to use a proper end to end encrypted cloud storage (proton, tuta etc.) or even use unsafe cloud storage like Google Drive as long as you encrypt your files locally before uploading.
I know, the internet is still a net negative for most peoples privacy, but it is pretty cool how far we’ve come with encryption.
It was not needed by anyone other than governments. Mass surveillance was not possible, and you could correspond about criminal activities over the phone and through the mail and unless you were already under criminal investigation, no one could ever know.