We talk too much about the good old days. What aspects of American culture and society are better now than when you were a little kid?

50 comments

  1. The globalization of communication. You can now have friends in other countries or other parts of the country that would have been impossible for the most part when I was young.

    I would also say the prominence of individual media, whether it be politics, gaming, reviews, or any other genre. Whether it interests you or not, its an option and we arent as bound by mega media conglomerates and at the mercy of what they deem suitable to provide for us.

  2. The internet and social media enable people with cool niche hobbies to come together to share their passions. Lovers of pet clothing, 1950s Manga, beer can collecting, horseback archery, etc. can now find their tribe with just a few clicks.

  3. I think “good old days” mostly just refers to being young and carefree.

    Life is much better today by virtually any real standard.

  4. I think bullying for children isn’t as much of an issue as it once was. What used to be routine examples o bullying 30 years ago are newsworthy today. Children seem considerably kinder.

    Mental health issues are much more talked about and accepted today. That has been a positive change really in the last decade or so

  5. Gaming. 8yo me in front of the SNES playing basic 2D sidescrollers and thinking they had a plot was cool, but 33yo me on Discord with the gang playing co-op shooters and crafting games is a completely new and very satisfying experience we didn’t really have in the nineties.

    It’s also way, way easier to exist as a queer American.

    The cities are generally safer.

    Rape reports are up, but I’d bet my neck that actual rapes are down.

    If my talks with old tradesmen are to be trusted as roughly representative of America as a whole, alcoholism is way down and the new drug abuse problems aren’t as bad as what we’ve stepped away from.

  7. Believe it or not, race relations. But only in comparison. Also gay and trans rights — again, in comparison. Women’s rights, or pretty much any minority rights. We have a long way to go, we have to fight people who want to turn back the clock, *and* we’ve come a long way.

  9. Remember when restaurants offered smoking and nonsmoking sections. How crazy does that seem now! The fact that I can actually go out to eat and not smell like an ashtray when I come home is amazing.

  10. Violent crime.

    Violent crime rates in the early 1990s were crazy high.

  11. BBQ techniques and technology, as well as flavors have come a very long way in the past few years.

  12. Playing video games or role playing games isn’t considered nerdy anymore.

    We don’t use things like “little girl” or “gay” for ways to put men down.

    Being able to find out about music from all over the world with a few clicks of a mouse.

    More international food options around town.

  13. Craft beers.

    Internet. (Yes, I pre-date the internet.)

    Mobile phones (Yes, I pre-date mobile phones, too.)

    I’m just going to stop here, this is getting embarrassing.

  14. Today’s youth; when I was in high school it was perfectly acceptable to make fun of someone because of their body, sexual orientation, race and socioeconomic status. No one got picked on more than the poor gay fat kid. Teachers did little
    to stop it then. Now that’s unacceptable, which I think is a good thing. Kids today seem kinder to each other. I could complain all day long about the purple hair, the music that they listen to and the fact they are addicted to their phones but the kindness they show towards people of different backgrounds gives me a lot of hope. I’m excited to see what they do!

  15. I am grateful for the advances in medicine. If my baby brother had spinal meningitis today he would survive.

  16. uhm we used to be really mean to gay people and the majority of america was anti-gay marriage

    now majority of america is pro gay marriage and we are generally nicer to gay people

    which is pretty cool

  17. A lot of casual racism seemed OK when I was a kid. I remember people throwing around racial slurs. White people *might* not say the n-word but other slurs were kind of accepted.

    This rolled in a lot of casual homophobia. Obviously there was the whole “bad thing=gay,” but also like if you got mad about the slurs or anything “PC,” you were “butthurt.” And that basically ended conversations because it made *you* the problem, not the people throwing around slurs, who were overwhelmingly white and straight.

    The whole get chicks wasted and try to have sex with them trope also seems to be widely acknowledged as disgusting now. Whereas it was sort of casually accepted in conduct, if not necessarily explicitly. I remember men sort of being like “well, if *I’m* as drunk as they are, then it’s OK.” Which doesn’t make any sense because it was still your plan sober. I remember people lauding me as a good person when I would actually take care of drunk girls at parties, and not, I don’t know, date raping them. Literally the bare minimum lol.

  18. I guess I like a lot more of the video games and movies. Apart from media though, not much. The stuff that’s good, and it is mostly good that I observe in my culture isn’t all that new from my youth but rather hasn’t gone out of style.

  20. I think “third spaces” have definitely diminished, especially local community ones. But now instead there feels like a much larger proliferation of hobbies people can have. It’s super easy to pick up a new hobby, and not be judged for enjoying it. I feel like all sorts of hobbies like D&D, fitness, home gardening, woodworking, etc are all bigger and more accessible than ever before.

  21. Non formal education.

    When I was a kid we had the ‘A’ edition from a variety of encyclopedia series. I could tell you all kinds of stuff about Australia and animals from the Aardwolf to the Axolotl.

    That said, now I can binge insanely informative youtube series or Wikipedia entries and learn about things I never heard of… Even if it doesn’t start with A. LoL.

    You can also basically learn any skill you want online at this point. My neighbor rehabed his entire house via YouTube videos and passed inspection at every step. You can watch entire course lectures online. It’s kinda awesome.

    Edit: Re : ‘A’ editions if encyclopedias:
    Back when door to door salesman were a thing, the encyclopedia sellers would leave the A edition as a freebie incentive in hopes you’d bite and buy the full series. A sort of try it before you buy it thing.

  22. I was a kid in the 1970s and early 80s. Honestly, I’m trying to think of anything that was “better” back then. Technology is great and the advances in medical, dental, cellular, internet, cars, and computers is pretty damn incredible!

  23. Access to the internet, mainly because it didn’t exist back then. I sometimes wonder if that’s a good or bad thing though.

  24. The availability of finding out pretty much anything you want with a quick google search.

    The ability to look up anything that comes to mind is amazing.

    Want to learn how to do something? Look it up on youtube.

    Also the ability to watch TV and movie at your leisure.

    When I was a kid, if you missed an episode of a TV show, good luck trying to watch it again. You’d have to hope for a re-run or wait years for syndication, if at all.

  25. Smog.

    Air pollution still isn’t great and some places have gotten worse, but growing up in the 80s and 90s there were days that made your eyes water. Those don’t happen as often anymore. It’s the California equivalent of the Cuyahoga River not being on fire.

  26. I was born disabled. The Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law shortly past my 5th birthday. I’ve read and heard about how things were before it, and although there’s a lot more to do in terms of accessibility and acceptance, we’ve come a very long way in the past 33 years.

  27. The internet’s pretty cool. I love that I can look up all kinds of data instantly with a device I carry in my pocket.

  28. Food. There is so much more variety in terms of restaurants and what’s available in stores. I can find or make cuisine from almost any country. As someone who grew up with very generic and unexciting American foods (mostly), I think this wonderful.

  29. Well, I couldn’t get married until 2015. It is moderately less socially acceptable or legally allowable for people like me to be denied jobs, assaulted, etc. on the basis of my identity. That’s kind of nice.

    I’m also just generally glad we are removing statues of traitors and maniacs from places of public honor although there’s still a long road to go.

    Speaking of long roads still to go, we have come a long way in making access to health care more equitable, although it’s not perfect. Some scary situations I was in as recently as 15 years ago would not be likely to happen now.

  30. Ask any Black person if they’d go back to even the 90s. Nope!

    Source: Black person.

  31. I think the acceptance of people in general is better in an OUTSIDER perspective. However, I think internal disgust and dissatisfaction may be increasing.

  32. Sooooo much. Many already listed so I’ll just pick one more:

    Kids are CRAZY smart these days. I was for sure one of the really smart smart kids in the 80’s. Lots of spelling bee, math Olympiad, etc trophies. I have a kid born in 2000 who is also crazy smart but compared to my 12 year old? Nope.

    His school has a flag for every immigrant student. This year they have 120 flags. My son just casually walked underneath them, naming every single flag, as if he was just singing the alphabet. He knows MLK, Malcolm X and Rosa Parks but also Phyllis Wheatley, Benjamin Banneker, James Baldwin. He and his friends regularly talk about Putin or the Great Reset, maternity leave in other countries, feminism, plus a bunch of things I don’t even understand. I guess this list doesn’t sound too impressive but watching these kids talk really is. When I was 12, I was wondering if you could actually really die from “one hit of weed” and daydreaming about being a Sweet Valley Twin.

    I know this is how it goes of course. My grandmothers only had an 8th grade education, and before that, none of the women in my family had any formal education. I understand my kids will be shocked by their kids and so on, but it’s still crazy to see it. I feel like there must be some sort of exponential growth in uh learning/knowledge from one generation to the next and I wonder if it will hit a plateau at some point.

  33. I feel like people generally take better care of their pets now than ever before.

    There’s way more vets in the area, more pet stores, and even subscription boxes for your pet. General pet nutrition knowledge has gotten much better as well.

  34. The internet. When I have a question instead of the public library and trying to find a reference to anything about it, I can just do a quick search and there’s the answer

    The shipment of goods. My current diet consist mainly of Asian and Mediterranean cuisine and that and that was possible because trade agreements between countries has gotten bigger.

    Knowledge transfer. Khan academy and patrickjmt are the only reasons I got through a majority of my math/science based class. People can more easily find like like minded groups.

  35. Medical interventions too numerous to even mention. Just for one example, my husband has pronated ankles and can’t do anything like ice or roller skating. Whether the fix existed in the 80s or not, parents weren’t as easily informed. Our toddler also has this problem but we will be able to get him orthodic inserts to correct it before it’s established.

  36. Even with the current anti trans backlash, it is much safer and more accepted to be queer now than when I was a kid.

  38. Kids who are born out of wedlock are no longer referred to as illegitimate

  40. The fact that I’m sitting here at work reading this post on my hand computer that I keep in my pocket really speaks to technology

  41. I don’t think things have gotten better, exactly; neither have they gotten worse. They’ve just changed. Individual issues might have improved, or worsened, from the perspective of the people who focus exclusively on them.

    The total level of nonsense, unreason, and craziness taken as normal is about the same. The overall situation is getting worse, of course, but that’s entropy for you.

  42. Tech, most people will go to the internet as an example… tech is neither inherently good or evil, it’s all the user.

    Nail Guns – you ever hauled a compressor and hoses out to a job site and then lugged a million pound gun all day? Cordless is light years beyond that setup, and I’ve framed houses and decks with hammers! Give me the guns.

    Cars – you can walk into a dealership and leave with a 500hp monster that comes with a warranty. 400hp was nightmarishly fast when I was young. If you’ve got money 1,000hp with a full factory warranty… also, the truck I want for work will tow 40k pounds… dafuq… 40,000 pounds!

    Phones – I remember rotary.

    Yeah, basic tech that we all take for granted has changed a lot of things. I couldn’t imagine building things with 3” long flat head screws! Forearms like popeye.

  44. I think cars are much safer now. Between anti-lock breaks, proximity sensors and even auto-pilot. I used to be really scared of dying in a car crash but now I think unless I was really crushed by a big truck, I would survive a crash. People still drive like assholes and are more distracted so maybe it’s a wash.

  46. Back in the day, you could smoke inside of a restaurant, but had to leave your dog outside.

    Now you can enjoy your dinner without secondhand smoke and many places are pet friendly.

    This leads me to believe that we are *not* living in the worst of all possible timelines.

  47. I’d have to say the internet. I’ll be the first to agree that there’s mountains of bad online, but there’s far more good, and it’s utterly amazing to see how it’s influenced the world. Growing up in a world where home computers didn’t exist and then sitting here today, typing this on an iPad…it’s been a hell of a ride.

  48. I remember when they would mail you your boarding passes for your flight! Glad that’s in the past.

  50. When I was a kid:

    People smoked all the time and restaurants had smoking sections.

    We had an assault weapons ban.

    People were more bigoted. Lots more nasty language towards LGBT+ than today.

    Lot less tolerance of people being different, we were starting to become more inclusive. But autism, depression, etc were looked down on as being weird and ‘just cheer up’.

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