People Remember These 40 Things Being Their Reality When They Were Kids But Children These Days Wouldn’t Understand Them
Every new generation of people experiences life differently. That depends on what economical, political and cultural environment they grew up surrounded by. They are also heavily impacted by the technology that is available and how it makes their lives easier and less complicated as time goes by.
Those who were born earlier witness the change in the generations, in the global trends and technology development and observe how younger people than them don’t experience the world in the same way they did.
This does not necessarily mean that the way today’s kids are growing up is wrong, but it’s still interesting to explore what things lose their relevance over time and how they immediately expose your age. Redditors went down memory lane when LastPoopOnTheLeft asked them “Without revealing your age, What is something from your childhood that ‘Kids These Days’ wouldn't understand?”
Let us know if anything in this list was part of your childhood and if you ever had to explain it to a younger person who had no idea what it was!
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How much time we spent playing outside, but not in organized sports. Pickup kickball in the street where you yell “CAR!” to break up the game briefly for a car driving through. Coming home covered in dirt after disappearing for five hours. We all made fun of how we were called by our parents. We would explore and poke around. Dig up worms, chase butterflies, freak out over finding a dead baby bird, skin our knees at least twice a summer and entertain ourselves for hours.
There wasn't even text message, phones had a cord on it that you could wrap around your house ten times, and if the TV wouldn't focus you had to either move these things called bunny ears or smack the TV lol
Getting to be goofy and awkward and not have to worry about it ending up online for everyone to see.
Recording music from the radio
I used to hate when the DJ talked over your favorite song after you had waited HOURS to catch it on the radio so you could record it.
How we had to plan our TV watching around a printed schedule. No VHS, no dvr.
Circle what you wanted to watch! And if two programmes overlap then.... Dad decides.
Yep. When the tv guide was published we would sit down and decide which Saturday night movie we would watch
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The TV Guide! It was an essential weekly magazine in our house growing up.
Remember the excitement when the annual issue that described all the new shows came out?
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You say "I can't hang out. Buffy is on", and everyone understood. I do miss that.
So true. If you missed your show, everyone also commiserated with you because they knew its something you could never get back. There were no guarantees that the 1 episode you missed out of 24 would make summer re-runs and there were times you never figured out an important plot point because you missed that one week.
Load More Replies... FFS! We only had 3 channels and they all went off the air at midnight.
We had 4: ABC, NBC, CBS and PBS. Remember when they used to play the national anthem right before they went to the test pattern for the night? And I think after a certain time, even the test pattern would be gone, and it would just be static.
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And a lot of times you would miss an episode of a TV show and, if it didn't get summer re-runs, you would never get any chance to see that episode ever. On the other hand, TV in the 70s at least was mostly a horrid wasteland and not worth planning your time around.
It didn't take that much planning when there were only 3 channels! I can still remember when we Channel 4 started broadcasting. For a while we were stuck with 5 as the local mast didn't retransmit all the channels and we couldn't get it direct from the regional one. In fact my parents still can't get all the terrestrial channels, but they now have satellite so they can get them on that.
I grew up on a remote farm. For a very long time we only received the 3 national channels (on a black & white TV of course). Only after 1995 did we get the 3 extra channels (on a color TV at last). Satellite TV was only available some 10 years later.
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Wizard of oz, Peter Pan, West Side Story and Brian's Song was on once a year. Around Thanksgiving.
3 maybe 4 channels black and white and if the president was on you were out of luck
Christmas Radio Times! My OH and I actually bought one last year to feel Christmassey
One of my 1st jobs was for a printing company that made the local tvguides. Everyone had their own free TVGuide, every week in my house, no need to share. It was a HUGE deal back then.
What was traciadiennes? We had either TV Guide or the newspaper listings.
It’s not working, cuz it’s not on Ch3
Knocking on your friends door to see if they could come out and play.
My best friend lived in the house behind mine so I would climb our chain link fence instead of going around the block to go visit her. She did the same for me. We went over so often we had pushed the top of the fence down. My father finally decided one year to put a ladder over it for us.
Hitting that red strip of paper for your toy gun with a rock.
Organising to meet someone on a landline and actually having to turn up on time or they wouldn’t know where you are because you have no way of contacting them.
Wait....... did we say one or two? Maybe it's one and they could be a little late. They will be here. Any minute now. Let's just wait untill two, just to be sure. At two your friend came around a corner and said that they weren't sure if we said one or two. Some of my friends still don't have a phone and it still stresses me out
Calling the theater to listen to the prerecorded list of what movies were playing and at what time.
Calling a girl and her dad answers the phone. That s**t was rough, kids.
We had to walk up to the t.v. to turn it on or off, change the channel, or adjust the antenna when the picture became unclear.
The Wizard of Oz was on once a year, and if we missed it we had to wait another year to see it
It always seemed to be around Easter because I remember eating chocolate bunnies while watching it.
those sort of binoculars with cardboard discs with pictures. I used to have Dora the Explorer ones.
Playing the same level on a game over and over because there’s no Saves
Countless times of being on the verge of having an aneurysm, but you kept your cool because you knew if the controller got obliterated that was it for the rest of your childhood....
That Lite Brite was peak technology
NOT DA MAMA!
Re-watched that series recently! It's surprising how much of it I clearly remembered, and just how cheesy it really is too.
Walking to blockbuster and spending an hour trying to pick a movie everyone agrees on
Kids these days wouldn't understand why people who grew up with beanie babies won't buy NFTs
The sound on the phone when somebody was using the internet.
Waiting til nights and weekends to make FREE phone calls on your mom’s Nokia.
Waiting to call long distance on weekends because it was cheaper. No cell phones.
I've noticed a lot of younger people who have grown up with social media don't have a strong sense of privacy. Everything is filmed and turned into a tiktok or an insta story without asking if you consent to having your life shared like this.
Waiting for your friend to get home to call them. (Not having constant access)
Yeah, and my mom always saying "What do you possibly have to talk about, you've seen them all day at school and you're going to see them tomorrow, you can talk then." I'm now perplexed by what we actually had to say to each other for so long.
A computer with a black screen with orange or green font.
Blowing on Game cartridges to make them work.
Going on road trips as a kid where the only form of entertainment was some sort of game played amongst your siblings in the back seat involving the license plates of other passing cars. On our car trip to Disney/FL from central PA me and my brother had a competition on who could write down the most license plate numbers… we ended in the thousands but for the life of me I can’t remember who “won” 😂
We used to do "Slug Bug" (without the punching, thankfully; we'd just yell that out whenever we saw a VW Beetle drive past). That's gotten much harder now that the VW Beetle has been discontinued.
Picking up the telephone to call your friend and hearing people talking because it was a party line, meaning multiple households all had to share the same line and so you had to wait until it was available.
I recently had to explain what “changing the channel” meant to my small kid because he only knows streaming. We’ve already covered CDs, VCRs, and what it means to roll down a car window. It was a little rough (for me, not him). Edit: oh and we watched “Turning Red” and I got to explain what a flip phone is.
You needed a light accessory for your Gameboy because those suckers didn't have back lighting. And to trade Pokemon, you needed to use cables. CABLES.
Note: this post originally had 45 images. It’s been shortened to the top 40 images based on user votes.
Getting your photos developed (and you could only take 24, not thousands)
And each picture costs money, including blurry and too dark to see.
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Adjusting the rabbit ears too. The youngest had to stand and hold a certain position so the tv would stay clear!😂
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Oh lord don't remind me. Cramming 5 people in a dodge colt hatchback with no ac to drive 12 hours to see relatives in another state. I hated summer break from school sometimes knowing that trip was coming
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My 9yo and I were recently watching reruns of AFV. The announcer at the end read off the "mail your videos to [address]" and she looks at me and says, "How do you mail a video?" I've never felt so old in my life 🤦♀️
As you can tell by my many down memory lane posts, apparently I am ancient. Just bury me in a pyramid.
While reading to an 8 year old recently I had to explain what a handkerchief was.
India till the 90s was a closed market and so we did not have most brands from abroad in India. We have a few which had the monopoly. Chocolate was mostly Cadbury... If we got some fancy food item, it was either from some expensive duty free shop or if someone came from abroad
Awe, you're in India... I have very close, intimate even, relationship with some parts of India. Please, kiss the sky and touch any tree for me. Pretty please, it was my birthday yesterday (June 2nd). And thank you. ♥️
Load More Replies... ok I can out-retro all this ... using a compass and mapbook to navigate instead of a gps. Coding in assembly code. Saving apps onto audio cassettes. ABBA was on the radio. Yes I am fing old.
The year was 1976 - my school had a computer room ( large room FULL of tape processor to run ONE monitor) I was drawn to it like a moth to flame. I was told " Women will never be able to work computers, they are way to complicated". Not the first nor the last time I was underestimated.
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My husband just brought up ditto machines. I can remember how the purple ink smelled when fresh out of the machine. Also, I'll add overhead projectors.
It is interesting to see that a lot of this stuff matches with the kids who grew up in India too at the same time. In India, till the 90s, TVs came in late. So not everyone had TV or good quality ones. Black and whites ones at most. My house was one of the first in my society to get colour TV. Plus television channels were govt controlled... so just one or two channels which had shows okayed by govt. But they were good programmes. Plus we had some shows from abroad including cartoons. Sundays had kids from our society in my house to see them. We were roaming all over town like goons and our parents were relaxed.. i am sure parents these days are petrified if their kids even steps outside their homes. Going to theatres to watch movies was a big deal. We wore good clothes. Food meant a popcorn pack, samosas or potato wadas, ice cream (chocobar) and cold drinks. Cold drinks was just one or two brands. We did not have international brands in India till 90s.
I miss games on CDs (or DVDs?) added to yoghurt or juice multipacs. They were simple but soo lovely
Lol how most of these were new technology for me at some point in my life.
I'm old enough to remember getting up real early on Saturday morning, turning on the TV to warm up, then waiting for the Test Pattern to turn off, the station sign on, then all cartoons all Saturday morning till 1:00 in the afternoon. Then spending the rest of the day running around outside.
If you missed an episode of your favorite show you had to wait for the rerun.
OMG...my kids didn't know how to make a "Collect Call"! We (adults) had to explain that to them. They asked ALL of our friends about calling "collect" just to hear how we each would make the call..."You have a Collect Call from, 'TheMovieIsOverCanYouComePickUsUpWeWillBeWaitingOutFront' Do you accept?" 😆😂🤣 Great Times!
To be honest I think a lot of "childhood things kids don't understand" and "gen z" is because most of the time, kids don't post on tiktok. Mostly weird kids do. But because other people don't actually go outside or meet kids, all they see is tiktok. Most of gen z does a lot of these things.
Getting your photos developed (and you could only take 24, not thousands)
And each picture costs money, including blurry and too dark to see.
Load More Replies... Adjusting the rabbit ears too. The youngest had to stand and hold a certain position so the tv would stay clear!😂
Load More Replies... Oh lord don't remind me. Cramming 5 people in a dodge colt hatchback with no ac to drive 12 hours to see relatives in another state. I hated summer break from school sometimes knowing that trip was coming
Load More Replies... My 9yo and I were recently watching reruns of AFV. The announcer at the end read off the "mail your videos to [address]" and she looks at me and says, "How do you mail a video?" I've never felt so old in my life 🤦♀️
As you can tell by my many down memory lane posts, apparently I am ancient. Just bury me in a pyramid.
While reading to an 8 year old recently I had to explain what a handkerchief was.
India till the 90s was a closed market and so we did not have most brands from abroad in India. We have a few which had the monopoly. Chocolate was mostly Cadbury... If we got some fancy food item, it was either from some expensive duty free shop or if someone came from abroad
Awe, you're in India... I have very close, intimate even, relationship with some parts of India. Please, kiss the sky and touch any tree for me. Pretty please, it was my birthday yesterday (June 2nd). And thank you. ♥️
Load More Replies... ok I can out-retro all this ... using a compass and mapbook to navigate instead of a gps. Coding in assembly code. Saving apps onto audio cassettes. ABBA was on the radio. Yes I am fing old.
The year was 1976 - my school had a computer room ( large room FULL of tape processor to run ONE monitor) I was drawn to it like a moth to flame. I was told " Women will never be able to work computers, they are way to complicated". Not the first nor the last time I was underestimated.
Load More Replies... My husband just brought up ditto machines. I can remember how the purple ink smelled when fresh out of the machine. Also, I'll add overhead projectors.
It is interesting to see that a lot of this stuff matches with the kids who grew up in India too at the same time. In India, till the 90s, TVs came in late. So not everyone had TV or good quality ones. Black and whites ones at most. My house was one of the first in my society to get colour TV. Plus television channels were govt controlled... so just one or two channels which had shows okayed by govt. But they were good programmes. Plus we had some shows from abroad including cartoons. Sundays had kids from our society in my house to see them. We were roaming all over town like goons and our parents were relaxed.. i am sure parents these days are petrified if their kids even steps outside their homes. Going to theatres to watch movies was a big deal. We wore good clothes. Food meant a popcorn pack, samosas or potato wadas, ice cream (chocobar) and cold drinks. Cold drinks was just one or two brands. We did not have international brands in India till 90s.
I miss games on CDs (or DVDs?) added to yoghurt or juice multipacs. They were simple but soo lovely
Lol how most of these were new technology for me at some point in my life.
I'm old enough to remember getting up real early on Saturday morning, turning on the TV to warm up, then waiting for the Test Pattern to turn off, the station sign on, then all cartoons all Saturday morning till 1:00 in the afternoon. Then spending the rest of the day running around outside.
If you missed an episode of your favorite show you had to wait for the rerun.
OMG...my kids didn't know how to make a "Collect Call"! We (adults) had to explain that to them. They asked ALL of our friends about calling "collect" just to hear how we each would make the call..."You have a Collect Call from, 'TheMovieIsOverCanYouComePickUsUpWeWillBeWaitingOutFront' Do you accept?" 😆😂🤣 Great Times!
To be honest I think a lot of "childhood things kids don't understand" and "gen z" is because most of the time, kids don't post on tiktok. Mostly weird kids do. But because other people don't actually go outside or meet kids, all they see is tiktok. Most of gen z does a lot of these things.
