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30 Facts From The ’70s And ’80s That Seem Unbelievable Now, Shared In This Online Thread
Kids in the '70s and '80s had a different experience when growing up. No wonder your auntie Betsie never misses a chance to tell the same old story of her 10-year-old self walking 5 km to school in freezing winter. “These days kids, they don’t know!” she mumbles.
But she must be right. This illuminating thread shared by Dan Wuori, the senior director of early learning at The Hunt Institute, shed light on what kids in the past experienced in their daily lives and most of it is simply hard to imagine.
“My high school had a smoking area. For the kids,” Wuori tweeted before asking everyone to share “What’s something you experienced as a kid that would blow your children’s minds?” Below we selected some of the most interesting posts that reveal just how much times have changed.
Image credits: DanWuori
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Trawling through the library index first to find the right encyclopedia / reference publication then building your footnotes / bibliography to support your submission. Roughly 30 minutes for per reference...
Childhood memories are something most of us cherish throughout our lives. Prof. Krystine Batcho, a scholar in science of nostalgia and licensed psychologist, has developed a tool to measure our emotions towards the past using the Nostalgia Inventory Test. The tool shows how strongly and how often people feel nostalgic.
In a previous in-depth interview with Prof. Batcho, Bored Panda asked the professor about the role our childhood memories play in our lives. According to the professor, childhood memories can influence our adult lives in a number of ways. “They can contribute to our overall sense of happiness in life.”
Me too. Still at least it wasn't difficult choosing what to watch!
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And when the plastic k**b finally broke and fell off, you got out the pliers to change the channel.
Yep... And if you were lucky your city had one or two independent UHF channels.
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And only one TV. With 6 people in the house, good luck ever seeing the show you want.
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And we thought it was a gift from the gods when we finally got FOX lol
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When you had to go to Channel No.3 in order to play video games. True era of games and hackers...
If I remember correctly my grandma's TV only got 3 channels that were clear and the few others were mostly static depending on what time of day it was. That was also during the period when kids were used as the TV remote.
I was a little girl in the 70s..I recall UHF channels..old TVs in the 70s-80s before cable ( my family got cable in 82) had 2 dials. Bottom dial was for the top 4 channels ..ABC , CBS, NBC, and PBS..if you wanted to watch cartoons you had to put the bottom dial up to U (the U was up in the 12:00 position then turn the top dial for UHF channels.. they were the upper number channels. I lived in the Philadelphia area so we had I think had 4 UHF channels .Channels 17, 23, 29, 48.You had to use rabbit ears to make clear and I remember on a good clear day you might get a New York channel.
I lived in New Zealand in the 1970's and there was only one, I repeat, ONE, television channel!
I lived in NZ '90 and as a toddler I was allowed to watch The Simpsons and Married with Children
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And the "rabbit ears" on top of the TV you constantly turned the k**b on to adjust the antenna on top of your house to get reception when it rained, because you knew sh#t about how it really worked and just wanted to watch something that wasn't snow
We had three, one of which only played curling, hockey, The Beachcombers and Don Messer’s Jubilee.
We lived in Gettysburg PA (where I was born) until 1968, then moved to a small rural town in Maryland. We had both the local and Baltimore ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS affiliates on antenna. Closer to the early 70s, you could get some stations from other cities on very limited cable. We got some independent stations from DC and Philadelphia. BUT they were all assigned their own numbered VHF channel and, though we had a new floor model color TV with a stereo built into the top, we had no remote. As the baby of the family, guess who became both the remote AND the person who had to hold the rabbit ears (the antenna that sat on top of the TV) wherever, and in whatever position, made the reception clear—-even if I had to miss seeing (but could still hear) the TV show?
And two big knobs, one of which (UHF) had a ton of numbers but only one worked - the PBS channel. (USA - YMMV)
We had one channel. And us kids were the designated TV remote control. But we were were not allowed to touch the TV controls unless Dad told us too.
Lived in an area where only 2 tv stations picked up good on our tv. I think that’s why we went outside and played till supper time in the summer.
PBS - Sesame Street, Zoom, The French Chef, and yeah Nova documentaries. My Spanish is quite decent, and my sister is a scientist.
And one of the channels was always snowy because the signal was blocked by the mountains.
And I don't think the quality of the TV has improved since I first watched it in 1959. ;)
And rabbit ears often with foil on them to get better reception.
I grew up in a small country town, we had two channels, I used to love visiting friends in the city, they had four XD
And the network went off the air at 1 or 2 in the morning just showing static.
And if the President was talking, your whole night was screwed because HEWAS ON EVERY CHANNEL!!! NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! Knight Rider was supposed to be on!!!!!!
We had 3 channels- CBS, NBC, ABC. The "remote control" was whomever was closest to the TV.
I remember when there were 3 channels. Channel 4 didn't come out until 1982
Growing up on seventies-eigrhies in Hungary: one tv channel from Tuesday-to sunday, the other tv channel only afternoons (no Monday either). Tv ends around midnight
I had 3 channels and none when parents kicked us off so they could watch the news.
I remember before November 1982 when there were only three channels and none of them were on 24 hours a day. BBC2 in particular was off air for most of the day except for Play School at 11 am and then off air again until later on in the afternoon. Most of the time it was the test card and some music courtesy of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, all made on a Moog synthesizer.
Mine had 5 channels as a kid and I was born in 2000. I even remember the numbers, channels 12, 10, 5, 4 and 2.
ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS. When we lived in the country in South Carolina we got NBC all the time, ABC sometimes, CBS in the early morning and PBS not at all.
How about this. For my sister's final year of high school, my parents disabled the (4 channel) TV for six months to help her study for the final exams.
you were lucky. One had one run by the central govt. Programmes were good though. The state govt ran another channel for local programmes. Despite less channels, the quality of the programmes in terms of topics was good. Of course, tecnically it was not great. But everyone tried their best. Today, i am actually bored of the countless channels as it is rubbish most of the times. I am talking about India. Till 90, govt controlled everything. When our economy opened up, we go cable TV which had private players. Before 90s, govt wanted to not just entertain people but also educate. Most who grew up in these times still fondly remember those programmes.
there wasn't TV EVERY day and ALL DAY. in the 70's we had TV at night (a couple of channels only) but during the day it was wednesday afternoon and saturday afternoon, that's it.
4???! we only had ONE! And we still need to slap it every now and then
Similar but different ... anyone renember the original "Radio Caroline"
ahh tin foil across the rabbit ear antenna. had to move it every time we changed the channel.
Three VHF channels and one UHF channel that you had to work the knobs, front and back, for.
But the 4 channels always had something worth watching on! Not like these days trawling through dozens of channels showing rubbish
A neighborhood friend accused me of lying when I said we had four channels. PBS had just started. Long before Sesame Street. I remember the live action Friendly Giant.
We had one dedicated dish on our roof for HBO and one for MovieTime. Until 1980, when cable came to town!
A bunch of shows my peers consider pop reference but I didn't watch because CBS didn't come in very well
We were lucky. We got 3 VHF channels, and 2 UHF; and when the weather was just right, we got a Canadian channel out of BC that showed some great stuff. Anyone remember Strange Paradise?
First time I saw TV about 1953 the picture was dark & fuzzy because they didn't have an antenna. Later in the fifties I worked with my dad putting up antennas on Saturdays.
RTE, Network 2, and TG4. And that's only if the booster up the mountain wasn't acting up.
This was "normal" in the UK in the 80s and 90s. Uniform was a skirt for the girls. In winter they simply wore woolly tights, which was also part of the uniform and had to be a certain colour. Boys wore trousers and it was only if it was really hot we could wear shorts and very occasionally it would be declared a "no tie" day.
Moreover, Batcho argues that social experiences we had when little are crucial to our development and adult lives. “Positive childhood social events, such as family get-togethers during the holidays or parties to celebrate birthdays or achievements, help establish good self-esteem and healthy social skills in adulthood,” she told us.
Prof. Batcho’s life-long research suggested that “positive childhood memories are associated with more adaptive coping skills in adulthood.” For example, people with happier memories of childhood were less likely to turn to counterproductive ways of dealing with stressful situations, such as substance abuse or escapist behavior.
The amount of times I would burn my hands on the monkey bars from the hot Aussie sun 😤 the blisters! But my god was it fun!!!
That means that healthy coping is not something we’re born with, but rather “it is learned during childhood by role modeling trusted adults, and memories of how respected adults coped with adversity,” the professor explained.
If you deeply cherish your childhood memories and carry them throughout your life, you’re not the only one, Batcho argues. The professor explained that this phenomenon is called “rosy retrospection,” and it refers to a tendency to remember the past as better than it really was.
Ha. There was one bus stop in the entire village. Apart from the one and only school bus, the remainder of the bus service flipped between one an hour to two busses a week! I walked to primary school, including on my own from about aged 7 or 8, and cycled to secondary school which was 3 miles away in the nearest town. This is probably why I have such little patience with the Chelsea tractors (SUVs) doing the "school run".
“There might be an evolutionary reason for it, because a favorable focus on the past helps most people remain healthy and happy despite the practical and emotional challenges of adult life,” prof. Batcho explained. Having said that, it’s also important to note that memory retrieval and the way we feel about them is directly influenced by a person’s current mood and state of mind. It turns out that when we are sad or depressed, we are more likely to remember negative events in our past and remember past experiences less favorably.
The one I remember was mostly a toy: molded plastic seat, one inch plastic strap with a buckle, and a plastic steering wheel with a squeeky horn button.
Probably because they were hunting rifles, used for hunting and not assault rifles, used for God knows what.
Well at least the nurse tried to calm her down, though a newborn should not be near smoking!
We had Nitty Nora the head explorer. You were treated then and there. The shame of going back to class was dreadful.
Note: this post originally had 41 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
Bigotry, racism, homophobia, and bullying were acceptable then. Really glad things changed.
Things are much better but i am afraid that we are going backwards.
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My seventh grade school field trip was to a state prison. When we entered the prison, the prisoners on the upper floors threw lit toilet paper at us. We ate lunch in the cafeteria with the prisoners with very little supervision, and we got a tour of death row. John Wayne Gacy was there.
I would love that tour as an adult! Probably a bit frightening for younger folk, though
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Our school bus driver kept a leather belt hanging on a hook beside his seat as a warning not to misbehave. We knew he would gladly use it on a student.
Ours was always tipsy or stoned. Made for some interesting bus rides...
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I sat in a smoking seat once on a flight to Mexico. With all the 2nd hand smoke haze hanging there in the section it was like you were smoking, you didn’t need to actually light up.
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I don't know why people are downvoting peoples' experiences. Telling an experience does not entail endorsing it. If you keep downvoting people they get banned from BP. Please think before you downvote. You should downvote if someone ADVOCATES something horrible like child assault, racism, etc. Not if they say they were a victim of it. Sheesh.
Milk being delivered to houses via a delivery van with teen boys hanging off the back, driving down our street to bring you fresh milk in glass bottles. I’d stand outside and listen for the cow horn and grab the milk from one of the lads and bring it up to the house :)
did you have those weird tokens to pay for the bottles?
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My only weird memory from the 80's is addressing the kindergarten staff as "comrade" - that's because the communist regime had not collapsed yet (that was in 1990).
That's cool, you'll be interested to know in South Africa our politicians (except the whites) still call each other comrade.
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In the 80's I could take a note to the liquor store and buy cigarettes for my mom.
Some things are much better. Some things are much much worse.
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The gym teacher was on cafeteria supervision duty & didn't like one kid tipping back on his chair. He warned him once. Next time he kicked the chair right out from under him. This would be mid seventies.
When my mom was 16 she had to take a permission slip to Girl Scout camp from her mom saying it was ok for her to smoke.
When I was little, everyone sent to the nurse at school for a big plastic spoonful of Pepto Bismal. Bug bite? Pesto. Headache? Pesto. Broken arm? Yep, you guessed it,Pepto!!
We always joked that our school nurse asked everyone if they were pregnant.
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A couple of these were still happening in the 90's... or even early 2000's if you lived in the middle of nowhere
That was a different time. In today's reactions, the teacher wasn't fired. Shockingly. In the mid-80s, she was probably written up. I should ask the girl - we occasionally see each other.
My mum had one of the early ATM cards, although they weren't called that at the time. It was plastic, with punched holes in it, £10 printed on it and that was what you got out of the machine. The machine ate your card and the bank sent it back to you in the post. True story
In grade 4 we had a great teacher (for once). He had a small farm and all kinds of animals and pets. End of year he was actually allowed to have us for an overnight stay at his house. Now, there was (as far as I knew or knowto this day) nothing nefarious in his invitation, just a treat. EXCEPT, it was only the BOYS allowed, because having us girls there too would have been unseemly. I mean, wt heck?
I was born in 1980. One thing I know from my mom was that in the 70's, a lot of school bus drivers were high school kids! We didn't have smoking in my high school, but our church camp still allowed it up until my senior year ('99). I don't know if smoking age is a state law issue, but it used to be 16 (though you had to be 18 to buy them). Parents would have to sign a permission slip and campers would get a bracelet. Half the kids either forged the permission slip or they'd trade the bracelets around. When they moved the age to 18, my camp cut it out because less than 1/4 of the kids would qualify.
We had a smoking area at my high school too. It was called "the hole" and the school security guard (before there were resource officers in schools) would hang out out there with us to make sure there was peace. There always was. We were just smoking cigarettes, talking, and playing hacky sack.
Ha. Ours was called "the pit" and it was exactly the same.
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I was born in '93 and some of these still aply to me! Like we had smoking area for my countrys version of high school (ages 16-18 so technically the older ones were adults) and when I was a child we only had 4 channels in TV too. Did the 70's and 80's come to Finland in the '90s? :D
Parental living like they didn't have children. Adults doing whatever they want. No wonder people want a return to those days. Nothing weird about hitting a kid on thei a*s with a wooden paddle.
My science teacher smoked 19 cigarettes inside the classroom during a 100 minutes class.
My science teacher would leave the room whenever my class frustrated her. Always returned reeking of cigarettes.
Load More Replies... Several of us had wednesday afternoons off in HS. We would all being our rifles to on the bus and leave them in our lockers. One of us had a car and we would take off at noon to a gravel pit for an afternoon of target shooting. Only comment I ever got was one teacher asked to see what type of rifle I had.
Bigotry, racism, homophobia, and bullying were acceptable then. Really glad things changed.
Things are much better but i am afraid that we are going backwards.
Load More Replies... My seventh grade school field trip was to a state prison. When we entered the prison, the prisoners on the upper floors threw lit toilet paper at us. We ate lunch in the cafeteria with the prisoners with very little supervision, and we got a tour of death row. John Wayne Gacy was there.
I would love that tour as an adult! Probably a bit frightening for younger folk, though
Load More Replies... Our school bus driver kept a leather belt hanging on a hook beside his seat as a warning not to misbehave. We knew he would gladly use it on a student.
Ours was always tipsy or stoned. Made for some interesting bus rides...
Load More Replies... I sat in a smoking seat once on a flight to Mexico. With all the 2nd hand smoke haze hanging there in the section it was like you were smoking, you didn’t need to actually light up.
Load More Replies... I don't know why people are downvoting peoples' experiences. Telling an experience does not entail endorsing it. If you keep downvoting people they get banned from BP. Please think before you downvote. You should downvote if someone ADVOCATES something horrible like child assault, racism, etc. Not if they say they were a victim of it. Sheesh.
Milk being delivered to houses via a delivery van with teen boys hanging off the back, driving down our street to bring you fresh milk in glass bottles. I’d stand outside and listen for the cow horn and grab the milk from one of the lads and bring it up to the house :)
did you have those weird tokens to pay for the bottles?
Load More Replies... My only weird memory from the 80's is addressing the kindergarten staff as "comrade" - that's because the communist regime had not collapsed yet (that was in 1990).
That's cool, you'll be interested to know in South Africa our politicians (except the whites) still call each other comrade.
Load More Replies... In the 80's I could take a note to the liquor store and buy cigarettes for my mom.
Some things are much better. Some things are much much worse.
Load More Replies... The gym teacher was on cafeteria supervision duty & didn't like one kid tipping back on his chair. He warned him once. Next time he kicked the chair right out from under him. This would be mid seventies.
When my mom was 16 she had to take a permission slip to Girl Scout camp from her mom saying it was ok for her to smoke.
When I was little, everyone sent to the nurse at school for a big plastic spoonful of Pepto Bismal. Bug bite? Pesto. Headache? Pesto. Broken arm? Yep, you guessed it,Pepto!!
We always joked that our school nurse asked everyone if they were pregnant.
Load More Replies... A couple of these were still happening in the 90's... or even early 2000's if you lived in the middle of nowhere
That was a different time. In today's reactions, the teacher wasn't fired. Shockingly. In the mid-80s, she was probably written up. I should ask the girl - we occasionally see each other.
My mum had one of the early ATM cards, although they weren't called that at the time. It was plastic, with punched holes in it, £10 printed on it and that was what you got out of the machine. The machine ate your card and the bank sent it back to you in the post. True story
In grade 4 we had a great teacher (for once). He had a small farm and all kinds of animals and pets. End of year he was actually allowed to have us for an overnight stay at his house. Now, there was (as far as I knew or knowto this day) nothing nefarious in his invitation, just a treat. EXCEPT, it was only the BOYS allowed, because having us girls there too would have been unseemly. I mean, wt heck?
I was born in 1980. One thing I know from my mom was that in the 70's, a lot of school bus drivers were high school kids! We didn't have smoking in my high school, but our church camp still allowed it up until my senior year ('99). I don't know if smoking age is a state law issue, but it used to be 16 (though you had to be 18 to buy them). Parents would have to sign a permission slip and campers would get a bracelet. Half the kids either forged the permission slip or they'd trade the bracelets around. When they moved the age to 18, my camp cut it out because less than 1/4 of the kids would qualify.
We had a smoking area at my high school too. It was called "the hole" and the school security guard (before there were resource officers in schools) would hang out out there with us to make sure there was peace. There always was. We were just smoking cigarettes, talking, and playing hacky sack.
Ha. Ours was called "the pit" and it was exactly the same.
Load More Replies... I was born in '93 and some of these still aply to me! Like we had smoking area for my countrys version of high school (ages 16-18 so technically the older ones were adults) and when I was a child we only had 4 channels in TV too. Did the 70's and 80's come to Finland in the '90s? :D
Parental living like they didn't have children. Adults doing whatever they want. No wonder people want a return to those days. Nothing weird about hitting a kid on thei a*s with a wooden paddle.
My science teacher smoked 19 cigarettes inside the classroom during a 100 minutes class.
My science teacher would leave the room whenever my class frustrated her. Always returned reeking of cigarettes.
Load More Replies... Several of us had wednesday afternoons off in HS. We would all being our rifles to on the bus and leave them in our lockers. One of us had a car and we would take off at noon to a gravel pit for an afternoon of target shooting. Only comment I ever got was one teacher asked to see what type of rifle I had.
