anyone born before 1995, what is something you loved about your childhood that kids today would probably hate?

35 comments

1. hours in the woods

2. Going to arcades.

   Pure nostalgia blinders on the way people reminisce about them, imagine playing Elden Ring but you have to pay $0.50 (adjusted for inflation) to keep playing every time you die.

3. Being disconnected. We did not have internet in my home until 1996 and I was in middle school at that time.

   I like to disconnect at times. People hate when I do it.

4. Ride our bikes 10 miles across town and search for a supposed dead body in the marsh

5. Not having a cell phone. My parents had no idea where I was.

6. AOL chat rooms.

7. The old school Razor scooters

8. No mobile phone, not bashing kids these days for having them as they are useful and I could have done with one myself when I was a kid a few times (usually from crashing a bike but having no way of contacting home, so instead I had to push the remains of the bike home while battered and bruised).

9. Coming home when the street lights came on, because you didn’t know what time it was and didn’t care. Completely unconnected.

10. Flipping through channels thanks to no internet, and how simplistic and clunky video games were back then.

11. Catching fish in the creek in the forest by my house with no cell phone and building forts in the forest and knowing to have to be home before dark but also knowing that mom and dad don’t know where you are and aren’t stressed about what you are doing all day

12. No internet, technology was very basic in the grand scheme of things, CRTs and Nintendos, having to look in the newspaper for the local movie times, rotary phones, outdoors

    ​

    I can go on and on. I’m very nostalgic to the 90s

13. The lack of videos / social media. Goofing off doing stupid things with friends was great. Now everything is recorded and fake for internet attention.

14. Having to watch non on-demand tv at a specific time. This was exciting because you had to be ready to watch so it was like an event, and the following day at school everyone would be talking because that was the only the time you could watch whatever program it was. You don’t really get this with streaming in quite the same way because everyone watches on their own schedules.

    Edit: also renting videos from blockbuster. No way you can explain that simple joy of seeing your parents come home with a couple of videos and hoping they got the ones you want.

15. Going to Hollywood video and renting a PlayStation or Nintendo 64 console for a couple days.

    Buying the strategy books for video games because what was the internet and blogs?

    Using the worm light on your gameboy to sneak playing Pokémon on a school night so you can be the very best, like no one ever was.

    Edit: Forgot to mention having to blow out the dust from inside the Nintendo 64 game cartridge lol

16. Saturday Morning Cartoons.

    The part that kids today would hate is exactly what made them special: The inability to access block programming just for children at any other time.

    Now you can get cartoons whenever you want. It is objectively better… but it’s also kind of like being able to eat cake whenever you want. NOT being able to do that makes it special when you get it. There was magic in waking up early and watching cartoons in your PJs.

17. Pizza on Friday night watching TGIF.

18. Writing hand written letters or notes to each other. Nowadays, it’s through text messaging or DMs.

19. Same answer as everybody else. If you told kids these days you were going to take away their phone, internet, and video games, and make them be outside literally the entire day, I think they’d all hate it.

    I was born in ’86. Around ’92 or ’93 I lived in a suburban cul-de-sac in the middle of the woods. My friends and I would leave our houses and be outside playing sports and riding on our bikes and climbing trees in the woods literally from sunrise to sunset. When it got dark all the moms would flash the outside house lights and that meant it was time to come back home.

20. Oddly enough, the waiting. Everything was so much more exciting because we had to wait. Anticipating a new show that week, waiting to be able to check your email or chat on AIM, getting something in the mail that you ordered from a catalog, waiting for your mom to get off the phone so you could use it. It was all exciting and made the thing you were waiting for that much sweeter.

21. Renting old cartridge console games (Mega Drive /SNES) from blockbuster video, getting high scores and putting my three letter initial as ‘POO’, ‘ASS’ etc and sniggering away thinking about how hilarious the next person to rent it would think I was

22. The lack of social media. I didn’t realize it at the time but growing up without “peer surveillance” was a really REALLY good thing.

23. – No internet

    – No mobile/smartphones

    – Being out of touch (privacy)

    – Little or no reality shows. MTV actually played music

    – Going to the library to research homework, essays etc

24. Waiting in eager anticipation for the next CD release, hearing only the lead single you heard on the radio, and going to the record store to buy it

25. Renting movies or video games at blockbuster.

26. Myths and legends. Being able to find Mew under the truck off screen in Pokemon Red was actually a mystery worth discussing when you didn’t have the internet to instantly debunk it.

27. Being the navigator in the front seat for a multi-state road trip using an atlas and street signs.

28. Secrets. Nothing being filmed.

29. The joy of recording a song on the radio on tape at the right moment when the DJ didn’t talk before or after the song after you’ve been sitting around for some time

30. – 🐍 on Nokia 3210

    – Physically having to call to your friends House to see if they wanted to hang out.

    – No camera phones, no witnesses 😂

    – Kids TV (Kenan and Kel, Dragonball Z, Ed Edd & Eddie, Alex Mack, SBTB).

    – No Social media/internet (or with dial up connection)

    – Nintendo 64

31. Cartoon Network lineup on Friday nights.

32. Picking up the packet of photos you’d just had processed. Getting the good ones reprinted for your friends or family.

33. Going to the library and using my card to check out books that I chose.

34. To echo similar sentiments here, but to touch on a different aspect, physically walking to your friends house and knocking on their door to see if they were available to play outside.

35. Slower pace. You were not in touch with everyone the whole time, so arranging for doing things together took time, and the time we spent together was, I feel, more meaningful because when we were not together we were really apart from each other.