Meet the Y2K tweenagers going where no one had been before, in 2000

In between age: clever young tweenagers, as examined by Barbara Ellen and Maureen Rice Photograph: Not known

Before beauty serums, smartphones and TikTok dances, what was it like to be a tween? On 3 December 2000, Barbara Ellen, single mother to a tweenage daughter, meditated on the very particular state of being eight, when the only certainties on any given day were ‘Coco Pops and arguments’.

Things had changed since Ellen’s childhood, when ‘You wore dresses your mum picked, went to Brownies, loved pop (music and fizzy drink) and read Enid Blyton.’ At the dawn of the internet age, Y2K tweenagers of her daughter’s generation were on ‘virgin turf. A psycho-sociological space nobody had ever been.’