30 Currently Non-Existent Things That Were Part Of Some People’s Childhoods, As Shared Online
One could think that there is “nothing new under the sun”, referring to some important things that stay the same or change very slowly, yet it would be a mistake to underestimate the effect various, even seemingly minor, alterations have in shaping the human world. These people have demonstrated that a single person lives long enough to witness some quite significant changes by answering one Redditor’s question: “What existed when you were a child that doesn’t exist now?”
Do you remember something from your childhood years that no longer exists or is now rare? Please, share your thoughts in the comments!
More info: Reddit
This post may include affiliate links.
Freedom.
Starting around age 10 to around age 14, when I got back from school, nobody knew where I was until dinner, and nobody cared. The only rule was be home before dinner which was about 7:00 PM.
I would just hit my bike, join up with the knot hole gang in the neighborhood, and we would just ride all over the place and go where we wanted and do what we wanted.
Basically, we were the kids from Stranger Things, albeit with a lot less paranormal activity.
No cell phones, not even any pagers.
I'm 46 so this was some 35 years ago.
Seems like it could be 350 years ago now.
Now you almost never see a kid riding anywhere on his bike, and nobody knows their neighbors.
The freedom to be a kid without being influenced by the internet and having your worst moments immortalised on it.
Having your worst moments immortalized on the Internet is horrible for kids. Worse yet is having an influencer for a parent.
A paper TV Guide that you used to find out when TV shows were going to be aired. Usually it came in the Sunday newspaper. Also newspapers.
And if you missed a show then you had to wait for the summer reruns.
Taking pictures with film cameras and waiting for them to get developed until you could see how bad you looked lol
Cost to develop 5 rolls of film left rolling around in the junk drawer since 1982: Priceless.
9 planets
The solar system used to have 9 planets, but now only has 8. <...> Pluto was just reclassified as a dwarf planet, and we always had dozens of dwarf planets like Ceres and Make-Make.
Iampepeu said:
I know it's silly, but we all sort of collectively love and care for Pluto.
It's Eris' fault. Her discoverers pushed for her to be a planet "Just like Pluto" because she's larger; so that made everybody take a step back and realize Pluto is just one in a whole class of between 10 and 150 "large asteroids", now gathered as the TNOs (further-than-Neptune-objects).
Load More Replies...
The new definition of a planet is that it has to be spherical (sorry, flat-earthers) and a clear orbit. Pluto was demoted for being too small to ride the big planet roller coaster. BUT Pluto has four moons. Heck, Earth only has one! Pluto has been hanging out with his buds, orbiting the star he can barely see or feel, just minding his own business for all these millions or billions of years. I say that if he's been doing it all this time, he counts as a planet. He hasn't fallen off the roller coaster, so let him ride!
It wasn’t demoted, it was reclassified. Peter Dinklage is a dwarf, and he and Pluto have one other thing in common: they’re both still f*cking awesome.
Load More Replies...
What possible difference could it make to your life if Pluto is a planet or not? The obsession some people have with inconsequential stuff is mind-numbing.
Right?? I live where Pluto was discovered, and the sentimentality around Pluto's reclassification is seriously weird and disturbing.
Load More Replies...
"My Very Educated Mother Just Showed Us Nine Planets". Now how are we supposed to remember them?
Incorrect. I couldn't care less that Pluto is classified differently. That's just how science works. Deal with it.
Same. I’ve been called too sensitive in my life but I never got offended by scientists reclassifying a celestial body based on scientific criteria.
Load More Replies...
Many, many people’s understanding of science is JUST like the beliefs they started forming in Sunday school — fixed, dogmatic, unchangeable, dearly held as the final word. Those old “science” beliefs came from parents, teachers or fictional works, and when the student moved on in life, her brain remained frozen in the old timeless truths. Pluto as a planet, Neanderthals as brutish cave men, extraterrestrials as secretive abductors, etc etc etc. Too bad they didn’t also learn early on that scientific knowledge is so powerful because it’s always subject to revision, even major revision. Guess they weren’t hearing that in Sunday school either.
The fact that people who agree with the OP are overwhelmingly being upvoted on such an anti-religion website confirms everything I have said about how we atheists are guilty of all the same character flaws as the religious.
Load More Replies... 
It's c**p. It's like all of a sudden saying Dopey be can't be a dwarf anymore because he doesn't have a beard........
In 1801 Ceres was discovered and declared a planet. In 1851, it was reclassified as an asteroid. When Pluto was discovered in 1930, it was assumed to be at least as large as the inner rocky planets, and to have a more standard orbit. If Pluto was discovered today, it would never have been called a planet in the first place. You’ve all heard it before, but I’ll say it again—we either have 20+ planets, or we have 8. It’s fine to disagree with the International Astronomers Union specific criteria, but the “it was a planet when I learned it in elementary school!” argument is childish. There were all kinds of things that I learned in 1976 that simply don’t apply today, and Pluto’s planethood is just one of them.
I'm surprised that there isn't a conspiracy theory connected to this. "Biden made Pluto disappear because that's where Hunter's laptop is hidden!"
Phone books. Every once in a while one would just show up at our front door.
Affordable housing
Thank you airb&b. The people who buy. Houses for side hustle. Displacèin
Playing outdoors without supervision and just returning home once the sun sets
An expectation of being unreachable sometimes. I went to school, and my mom couldn't reach me all the time. She lived. I didn't feel like picking up the phone, no one cared.
No 'Read' messages unanswered causing drama.
Being able to be 'Unplugged' and not getting s**t for it.
Being able to read a physical map and navigate that way.
I used to run deliveries around Northern CA. Had a large canvas shoulder bag with 70 AAA maps and 3 or 4 Thomas Bros Road Atlases(remember those?). Had to plot the whole route and deal with construction, road changes, closures, etc. Now I have Wayz.
A sense of optimism for the future.
A phone number you could call that just told you the time and weather.
Phone booths
I think in the interest of someone stranded there should be a few.
Privacy. Back in the day, the only way someone could know what I was up to was if they physically followed me. Now, my smartphone does that for them
George Orwell predicted Big Brother would surveille citizens 24/7. As it turns out, citizens surveille themselves 24/7.
Getting off the phone so someone can use the internet. Haha
Yugoslavia
Rhodesia. I am wondering if they now call those dogs Zimbabwean Ridgebacks
Typewriters
And White-Out ( which was invented by Monkee Michael Nesmith's Mom).
Blockbuster
The high beam switch in your car was on the floor by your left foot.
Kmart Blue light specials. JC Pennies was upscale for us, and don't even talk about Macy's where the 1%ers shop.
For you youngin's, a blue light special was they'd roll a cart with a blue police light on a pole, then announce some that an item was on sale over the speakers. It was like a IRL pop up ad.
Those are some fond memories. And also all the racist joke books they'd happily sell an 8 year old. I was an adult before I realized the horrible stuff I read.
Omg, the racist jokes everywhere, and sexist ones too. I remember MAD magazine publishing an article titled "American jokes they tell in Poland". Pinup calendars in every repair garage.
McDonald’s ashtrays
So gross. People used to smoke in restaurants. Some restaurants had smoking and non smoking sections. If you went to a buffet then the smoking section was closest to the food. 🤢 There were no good old days.
Woolworths
Note: I'm referring to the business in the UK that dissolved in 2008.
TVs with a fine tuning dial and were part of a huge wooden console.
And a wire hanger antenna, and remote control via youngest sibling.
Cameras that had rolled up film which needed to be developed.
I liked the negatives but I didn't like not knowing if the picture was a good one.
Restaurant smoking sections
Airplane smoking section. You're out of luck if you were one row behind it and you didn't smoke. '
# Dialup Connection Screeching Intensifies
I miss the sound, the anticipation and the satisfaction when it went silent on connection...
Cigarette machines.
Another name for this 'Cigerette Acquisition Appliance for Underage Reform School Applicants'.
Note: this post originally had 42 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
Routine, socially accepted sexual assault - just to balance out the nostalgia. My older sister and I were talking about automatic massage chairs, and she said she hates them because their invasive prodding and grabbing is what it felt like being a young woman on the bus in the 1970s.
This is why I will always try to remanifest things in the present, but NEVER GO BACK
Load More Replies... Hand-drawn animated movies showing in mainstream cinemas! With the advent of CGI, this has gotten rarer and rarer outside of Japan (and even in Japan the hand-drawn stuff gets supplemented quite a bit with CGI). Used to be that every summer or fall a new Disney animated movie would hit the screens, all done in glorious pre-CGI animation.
The whole movie experience. It was a whole day's outing, going to the movie theater. I've said this before, for 35¢ we got a cartoon and 1-2 movies (depended on the movie) and a box of popcorn. It was quite a bike ride to get there, but it was a great time.
Load More Replies...
Only 4 tv stations. And gathering on sunday night around the TV for the weekly movie.
I miss the excitement I felt everytime I stepped into the toystore as a kid, usually it was to just look around, but it was like a themepark
A childhood park near me I spent a lot of time at recently got destroyed in favor of an apartment complex.
Plenty of playgrounds still around. But wooden and steel ones have mostly vanished.
Load More Replies...
People having good mental health. I read somewhere (idk if it's actually true) that a scientific study on the average stress levels of a teenager today are higher than those shown in a study on the stress levels of 1978 mental asylum patients
Pretty sure the mental health of young men took a dive in 1914-18 and 1939-45.
Load More Replies... This is a great post. It's nostalgic and brings out the kid in a lot of us, reminiscing.
Routine, socially accepted sexual assault - just to balance out the nostalgia. My older sister and I were talking about automatic massage chairs, and she said she hates them because their invasive prodding and grabbing is what it felt like being a young woman on the bus in the 1970s.
This is why I will always try to remanifest things in the present, but NEVER GO BACK
Load More Replies... Hand-drawn animated movies showing in mainstream cinemas! With the advent of CGI, this has gotten rarer and rarer outside of Japan (and even in Japan the hand-drawn stuff gets supplemented quite a bit with CGI). Used to be that every summer or fall a new Disney animated movie would hit the screens, all done in glorious pre-CGI animation.
The whole movie experience. It was a whole day's outing, going to the movie theater. I've said this before, for 35¢ we got a cartoon and 1-2 movies (depended on the movie) and a box of popcorn. It was quite a bike ride to get there, but it was a great time.
Load More Replies... Only 4 tv stations. And gathering on sunday night around the TV for the weekly movie.
I miss the excitement I felt everytime I stepped into the toystore as a kid, usually it was to just look around, but it was like a themepark
A childhood park near me I spent a lot of time at recently got destroyed in favor of an apartment complex.
Plenty of playgrounds still around. But wooden and steel ones have mostly vanished.
Load More Replies... People having good mental health. I read somewhere (idk if it's actually true) that a scientific study on the average stress levels of a teenager today are higher than those shown in a study on the stress levels of 1978 mental asylum patients
Pretty sure the mental health of young men took a dive in 1914-18 and 1939-45.
Load More Replies... This is a great post. It's nostalgic and brings out the kid in a lot of us, reminiscing.
