30 Of The Most Wonderful Things From The Pre-Internet Era, As Told By Members Of This Online Community

Once read this somewhere: A smartphone is like a d**k. Nice to play with when you’re alone, but absolutely rude to bring out at the dinner table 🤷‍♀️

But I love cell phones for texting. I hate talking on the phone. I can text & they can text back at their leisure.

The more important point is that what we did with others was 100% facetime. No virtual anything. It was all immediate and real.

I used to just read a book to occupy my mind. Sometimes when I was hanging with my friend, we’d both just read books together. Not that much difference for me.

I miss those days...(I'm 14)

I have a nonprofit client who says there was a downside to this too - the powerless had fewer means to make their voices heard, which meant that the powerful dominated the narrative to a much greater extent. And the powerful tended to be sexist, racist, etc.

Uh, no. False information has been put out there since we've been printing books. One easy example is history textbooks in US schools. Yellow Journalism is another. And there shouldn't be a filter. Filters (read: censorship) give power to a small group of people to decide what everyone is allowed to see. it does nothing to ensure that what's being put out is truthful.

How I miss knowing for certain that whatever Walter Kronkite said could be relied on as the truth, at least as it was known at that moment—-and he was never above making a correction of a previous report if the facts he had at the time weren’t correct.

News has always been iffy

Whilst that IS true, it is also true that you are able to get MORE information, more in depth knowledge on current affair than ever before. Those who read 'The Daily Mail' before are now simply members of Facebook anti-vaxxer groups. But for those with an interest in news you can actually look at source material for those same stories and confirm that vaccines are safe and worthwhile. More information is available but people will only look as far as their own biases..

My mother rarely knew where my brother and I were. We were told to stay off the railroad tracks and not to bother the neighbors. Come home for dinner or go hungry.

The adventures we had. We’d look for pop and beer bottles so we could return them for change to get treats. I’d always find cash on the railway tracks I guess the workers lost from their pockets. One time I had to battle a prayer mantis for a $10 bill, which was a fortune.

We had freedom, but our parents were unaware of the staggering scale of child abuse. Unaware because cops didn't investigate properly when it WAS brought to their attention. Look at what happened in Oldham..

Was only when I was very young that we had a rule like that.....after about the age of 10 the parents didn't worry. And there was no streetlights where I live so it was just sunset to let us know the time.

There was also more.crime.back then because people thought it was safe. News didn't report nearly what they do now, so everyone thinks it's worse now, but it's not. Crime on a mass scale (like bombings and school shootings) is, but personal scale has gone down. (Though, this was before the defunding of the police, so I'm not so sure now.)

I'm an adult and I still like to go out for a swim, walk, or laying in grass/sand. It's free to access and enjoy. :D

I'm old; I certainly recall pre-Net days. Life was just as complicated then, even without instant access to information and communications via pocket phone, tablet, laptop, whatever. Organizing one's life on paper could be tedious, as was communicating on landline phones or slow mail -- and don't forget to cultivate your memory! Now we store notes on devices, not pocket notepads or loose scraps of paper. Loose your "little black book" of names and numbers, and you are stranded. Yikes.

I'm sure that's just the difference from being a child to being an adult.

I miss the days where going to the beach wasn't a "trend" it was just an activity to do

You know you can still do that right?

Yes! Casper the Friendly Ghost! And the Roadrunner, too.

And Friday nights, T.G.I.F.! If I remember correctly the line up was Step by Step, Boy Meets World, Family Matters, and Full House...something like that lol but Friday nights/Saturday mornings was the best TV!

The original Tarzan came on every Sunday afternoon. My sister and I would bring our Barbie cases out in the living room and play while we watched it. In black and white of course.

Scooby Doo is the greatest cartoon series ever made, I expect no argument on this matter :)

Thundarr the Barbarian!

The internet has definitely changed something inside people. The anonymity of keyboard contact with random people has unleashed incivility on a massive scale. I have shut down all of my social media accounts because of it. I also believe that people are forgetting the social contract of being polite in everyday life.

"If it bleeds, it leads." 24 hour news cycle.