The life of a child who grew up in the 1990s looks undeniably different from that of a kid in the 2020s. Back then, the only way you could reach your friends was by calling a landline phone and asking their parents if you could speak to them. And let’s not forget having to wake up early on a Saturday so you don’t miss a new episode of your favorite cartoon.
It’s quite wild to think that kids today won’t get to know such things. Having a similar thought, redditor Subject_Thorn turned to the AskReddit community with a question, “What is something that 2020s kids will never get to experience?” Striking a nostalgic chord with many older adults, such an inquiry received over 3K comments in just a few weeks.
Scroll down to find the most popular answers that will shortly take you back to the good old days and a conversation with Subject_Thorn, who started this discussion in the first place.
Bored Panda reached out to redditor Subject_Thorn, who started this discussion online, and kindly agreed to answer a few of our questions. Naturally, we were curious to know what inspired him to take this question to Reddit.
He told us, “I was actually in a nostalgic mood that night, so my mind was wandering. I work in an office in an adjacent IT role, so we use the Windows file system in various ways daily for our tasks, and last week I was reading about how kids today don't even know what File Explorer is because of the oversimplification of technology, primarily on smartphones and tablets.
Kids today could never know that you can actually manually change video game files to adjust the game experience, nor how to actually do it. It's made me sure that to teach my future children technology properly, they will need to be exposed to a computer before, or at least around the same time, they are able to use a phone.”
If he were to answer the question himself, he would say that something the 2020s kids will never experience is not being able to connect with other people instantly and lacking a stable or accessible internet connection.
Our interviewee shares, “I remember when I was little and I had just picked up Counter-Strike to play with friends from school, and we needed to install Steam to do it. In the process of that, we found that you can actually talk to other people on Steam! It was crazy that I could type on a chatbox, press enter, and they would see it a few moments later! It was like magic.”
He adds, “When I was young and we visited with my cousins, we would find YouTube videos we thought were cool to watch and some flash games like Stick Fight, and we would open several Internet Explorer windows and let them load so we could check them out later. We did this the moment we woke up, around 8 or 9, and the videos and games had only loaded by the evening!! And we would NOT turn the computer off or the windows with the media on them, so we could access them through our vacation without having to re-download them again. This is not a problem anymore in the developed world.”
Having said all this, the redditor doesn’t think that childhood was better back then compared to now. “I don't believe in the "good old days" sentiment. Kids now will experience different things than my generation did, and they will be similarly nostalgic about their unique experiences the same way I am. And their kids similarly after them, and so on.”
Privacy. Doing stupid things without the whole world knowing about it on TikTok.Waking up early on Saturday morning so you can watch the next episode of your favorite cartoon.Buying a video game and it has everything it should on it without having to provide an update or paying for extra content.Developing a roll of film and all the pictures are bad.Waiting for a new episode to come on at 7:30, yelling into the kitchen that it’s starting.
Calling your crushes house and having to politely ask a very scary dad if you can speak with Tanya. And then they say, that depends, who’s calling?Violence fixing technologies. Remember when we used to slap the television ? for it to work properly or operate CPR on our consoles and game cartridges?Hearing your favorite song on the radio and waiting for it to come on again so you can record it on a blank cassette tape to listen to later.
Having a CD binder the size of Merriam Webster’s dictionary for road trips.
Taking a CD Walkman on a walk and making sure you didnt walk too fast or the CD skipped.The joy of going to school without social media.
I remember getting bullied in middle school and having a terrible time. But all that could have been so much worse if smartphones and apps were a thing back then.
Kids these days must be so stressed out just trying to tune it out.Driving to someplace new with an actual physical map.I was at work the other day when our department's landline phone started ringing. One of my coworkers (my age-ish, 30s) called out "I'll get it!" I felt a weird sort of sad nostalgic pang. You don't hear that much anymore.Going to the movie store.Dial up internet and AOL chat rooms.Exploration.
As kids we played video games but we also got outdoors. Sometimes finding areas of forest to go and investigate. We enjoyed checking out odd areas people generally would never go into such as those little wooded areas in between roads. Our parents didn't care as long we gave them an idea of what we were doing ahead of time in case we got lost or hurt.
We would have a small fire just enough to roast some marshmallows and then put it out and usually make it back in time for supper.Tangled up telephone cords.Being disconnected.
There were periods of my life growing up, hours or even days at a time, where there was genuinely no way to reach me or my parents. In the 90’s, growing up, most people didn’t have cellphones. They existed but they were *really* expensive. I remember when my mom got her first cellphone. She always turned it off when she got home and stuck it in a drawer. Why would she need a cellphone at home?
We had the internet but it was slow and we had limited access to it, often on a family computer visible to everyone and maybe for an hour or two.
And if you go back a little further than that, answering machines were expensive and uncommon so you either reached someone or you didn’t. There was no constant demand from everyone for everyone.
I definitely remember calling a friend to hang out, their parent answering, and telling me they were already hanging out with someone else. “Okay, cool, I’ll try again later.”
I had no way to reach them. Which meant they got to be fully present with whoever they were with and weren’t talking to me or anyone else while they were with that friend.
That level of disconnect is something that, in hindsight, I really miss. You were wherever you were with whomever you were with and that was it. People took hours to reach and that was normal and, I think, a really good thing.Meeting family/friends at the **gate** at the airport instead of baggage claim or the curb.Getting kicked off the internet because mom needs to make a call.Being responsible for zero parental contact and simply just needing to come home when the streetlights come on.Snow on Christmas, at least most of the time.
I’m almost as far north in the USA that you can get and snow just doesn’t stick around anymore. It snows like once or twice in December and it melts in a day. 25 years ago you were lucky if it wasn’t a blizzard on *Halloween.*
But don’t worry, climate change isn’t real! /s.Having to check the newspapers to see when new movies were released, as well as what theater they’re playing at.
Kids today won’t ever experience that.Having to listen/watch the nightly news with your parents because you only have one tv.Fixing the antenna to get a better picture on the TV. Or making one with a coat hanger.Downloading a song for 2 hours and finding out it's a virus.A life without immediate gratification. I feel like 90s/00s kids might be the last to have experienced what its like to have to wait for that good thing you want.Oh, uh, losing hours of work because you forgot to hit save.Watching that ticker at the bottom of the tv to see if school is closed only for them to cut to commercial when it’s time for yours to show up. I watched that thing like an nba draft.Mystery.
“Just Google it” has ruined any sense of wonder in the world.Choking to death on smoke wafting over from the smoking section of every restaurant while you try to eat.Waiting for a video tape to rewind before returning it to the rental shop.That windows opening sound in pc.
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