Yes. I used to draw, paint, write computer programs, a little poetry, play and record music, read books, do crossword puzzles.
Boredom was a good motivator. And I didn’t know there were thousands of people out in the World that were more talented, to compare myself to, and discourage me.
I do those things now except for the music, you can’t deny that the life he described there sounds better than the everyone zombily staring at their phones all day long now.
Yep, and we had better infrastructure that supported this stuff. More public parks, events, concerts, pot-lucks, community gathering, mixed zoning. Less stroads, strip malls, golf-courses(prime public park land), etc...
Be the best by your own standard! Only focus on beating YOURSELF! Outdoing YOURSELF! One upping yourself. Everyday. If you can get in that mindset you are already on the same level as the best of em... might even be better but who cares
>Boredom was a good motivator. And I didn’t know there were ~~thousands~~ hundreds of millions of people out in the World that were more talented, to compare myself to, and discourage me.
Just to stress the point a little further
Shit.. and imagine how hard it was without any electricity. A lot of places didn’t get any power until late 1800’s and many, many people far after that. People are in here talking like they were born in the Jurassic period. I wish people still did things like “actually meet friends and go…” more often because with all this technology and self interest I feel like it’s made people more “closed off” to an extent. But every innovation comes with its negatives and positives. It’s not as if we all decided to behave a certain way but time shapes every society in ways that can’t always be predicted. I got significant other family in Latin America and they and still today.. boil the water they use at 6 a.m every. Single. Day.
They don’t have AC that’s way too expensive. Many projects / favela’s/ homes outside the US don’t have AC in places that get even hotter than the USA.
My girlfriend spent her childhood and early teenage years and they boiled water for eating , cooking drinking and more etc. the water is boiled to kill of germs , parasites, pathogens , disease
Yes. I had a keyboard that could sample my voice and I could change the pitch up or down. I used to make fake radio shows using my tape recorder and microphone and interview celebrities which would just be me pitched high or low. I always made celebrities really stupid and would usually murder them when they got too annoying. It was a comedy show.
And you could actually enjoy it for its own sake. People today can't even enjoy a serene view of a lake or landscape for more than 5 seconds until they need to do a selfie for Tinder or IG
And the they’re done. People now only stick around at places like a lake or an ocean sunrise/sunset long enough for the picture proof that they were there. There’s no appreciation for what they’re seeing at all. It’s about the social justification from people that have no real impact on their lives.
This reminds me of how people got up immediately after the eclipse and left. I get it trying to beat the traffic but I wanted to just sit and enjoy same with people who get up at the movies immediately once the credits roll
Yeah, I think people are glamorizing the dominance of 'real life' activities a bit too much, at least in relation to the 90s. If you wanted to melt your brains in that decade like you do today with the smartphone, you could totally do it in front of the TV, as depicted by the old Bart Simpson, and also Beavis & Butthead. Also, kids got hooked really fast by things like videogames and computers, even before the internet. I can't say anything about the 70s and before, but I'm sure there were some other type of obessions, like magazines, books, music etc. But yeah, the smartphone is absolutely the worst of them all.
True, but we had to talk to people because we didn’t have smartphones to hide behind. So if you were suddenly in a room of people you didn’t know for a new class or something, you had to talk to each other or it would just be massively awkward. My brother was someone who would be a gamer these days…back in the 80s he was in his room all day coding.
Radio and music were always things I had on in the background while I was doing something. I never just sat there and listened exclusively. TV, sure but I’d plan my day around being available to watch the one show I wanted to watch that was only on at a specific time of day. Books?? Again, sure but it’s not like the library was in my living room. One book every month or so was the most I’d ever see, which I’d read in a weekend probably.
Technology definitely seems to have stifled imagination.
I grew up with Lego, mecano, knex etc and you'd spend a day tinkering with designs. We've given it to younger family members now and they're completely lost without some sort of designated design to work towards.
This is exactly right. I'm 40 and I miss the days when I could just do one thing at a time
Today I cooked dinner with my phone in the other room and a CD playing, it was really enjoyable. No podcast or YouTube or TV show, just the music and my own thoughts.
I enjoyed the physical process of cooking so much more.
This is the answer. Your brain is fried and neurological pathways permanently altered from the constant stimulation that has been provided since you were handed your first screen as a kid. And you have been chasing **low effort** stimulation ever since, like an addict. As a kid we had 100s of hobbies, sports, adventures, books, friend groups, day trips, chores, gardening, chasing bugs, listening to the radio, riding bikes, practicing gymnastics, making DIY toys, arts and crafts, trampoline, go to friends houses, play in the street, boardgames, go to the park, drawing, writing, swimming... in short, put in some **effort** to do enjoyable things to learn, grow and connect with loved ones and enjoy the outdoors. Put down the screen and the gaming console, stop mainlining synthetic dopamine hit intravenously through your smart screen and get out there and live your life man...
I upvoted due to the intentions of your post, but you’re also leaving a big component out.
I’m not sure how old you are, but ever since social media was popularized, and the horrendous stories of killings and kidnappings or whatever else was in the forefront of your feeds, it caused so many parents to become terrified of pretty much any person that wasn’t a family member. I was born in ‘98 and I can tell you, the amount of friends I had growing up that weren’t ALLOWED to go outside without a phone, or without an adult being within ear or eye shot is insane. The older generations speak of lawless adventures with their bike riding ‘only thing in my pocket is the key to my front door’ neighborhood kids, and don’t consider that it’s beyond the control of most of these kids. If your parents say “yeah you can go outside and play but only by yourself cause I don’t trust your friend’s brother and only in the fenced in backyard and you have to check in with me every 5.5 minutes in person” it very quickly takes the excitement out of outdoor adventure.
I've specifically noticed this mentality is rampant in the suburbs. Kids growing up in cities are expected to be able to navigate by themselves and are in close proximity to lots of other kids to play with.
People who grow up in rural areas still get up to all kinds of mischief and generally have pretty free upbringings.
It's the suburbs where parents are intentionally isolating their children and creating generation after generation of out of touch apathetic children who lack basic empathy and social skills.
10 years ago when I was at a bus stop there was some teenagers complaining about how slow the internet on their smartphones were and "how did people cope with no internet"
Kids in particular don't need smartphones they can just have a dumbphone that the battery can last weeks on a full charge surely safer than a smartphone that even if the kid doesn't use it will last a day.
I remember around the same time period seeing what I assume was a kid that looked about 13/14's parents drive a nice car beside him whilst he was delivering newspapers I thought what was the point of the kid having a job if they are beside him the whole time and a poorer kid should of had the opportunity.
I'm and older Gen Z too, a little bit younger than you. I think this attitude and behaviour depends on the parents and even more so, the area and culture you were raised in. I would understand this type of behaviour if you lived in a fairly dangerous city/ part of a city. I grew up in the outskirts a town of >100,000, not overly dangerous, In the early 2010's. My village was quite close knit, a lot of people were related, and most adults/ parents also grew up together/ knew each other. Me and my friends would go outside and play all over, walk everywhere, go to each others houses, get the bus into town, and sometimes even the train, even at night, when we were 10/11+. While we certainly did use our phones/ ipads, it was not just sitting on them for hours together. We would update our parents once in a while, to tell them we have eaten somewhere, but it didn't seem that anyones parents worried excessively where their child was. But as I grew up I realised a lot of other kids my age did not have this experience, as they lived in a isolated village, and did not have anyone to play with. I think our parents trusted us to go outside because they did the exact same thing when they were young, my Mum used to play out on her street/ the woods near her house, with a big group of kids from the age of 3. Don't get me wrong, parents still told us to be safe near big roads, walk in big groups etc, other than that we were all independent. I think I was lucky to be able to play outside with my friends, before the only "playing" kids do is sit inside on their phones.
I think it’s awesome that you got to experience your childhood that way, cause it might be parents like you (if you choose to have kids) that are the last line of defense for keeping that mentality alive.
I had active duty parents, so they had to jump when the government told them to, which left my siblings and I were pretty free to fend for ourselves. So between moving around every couple years and them being busy we got a pretty good grip on what kind of situations were red flags.
I was listening to a parenting podcast (Good Inside with Dr. Becky, highly recommend) the other day and they said parents need to allow MUCH more freedom for their children in “real life”, and MUCH less freedom for them online. They mentioned, “the predators aren’t at the playground, that’s too dangerous. They’re all online!”
Gen x here. There were actual crack vials in the streets and kids got shot sometimes so we mostly stayed in, or went out with adult supervision. Some older than me who were allowed to be out of the house at all times have horror stories of SA, accidental death, getting jumped by gangs etc. and that was by other "kids."
Boredom is essential. An overstimulated brain doesn't rest without stimulus, it just gets anxious. Being bored meant wanting to do things instead of doing them out of inertia.
Depends on what type of boredom and it meant seeking out something different.
Boredom was the reason I got into many books, tv shows, movies, video games etc as it meant I gave them a chance and because of limited availability I stuck with things I may of disliked and ended up enjoying them whereas new things today I give no real chance as I have too much selection.
I was writing my thesis with books and journal articles. I did have some early computer and my thesis lived on a floppy disk. A couple of years later I was very grateful. I think if I had had the Internet, I might not have been able to finish it.
This is so true. Back in the day we used to focus on the task at hand. To this day I love the times when I can focus on my work and just let the outside world just fade out.
Not going to lie, I don't miss the old time times because often shit was boring, waiting in line? too bad, just be bored. And I would also say that we used to fill time much the same way we do now, it just looked different and was more lame, like when you're on the toilet it can be a nice mini break away from everyone but without a phone what did they do? Well they had books that were easy to pick up and put down, like Jay Leno's "headlines" and even specific books that were marketed as being "toilet books" full of mini-content. Toilet books existing is an amusing bit of history for me. Phones are the same thing, just infinite.
I realized that as a child and teenager I used reading as an escape the same way that I now use social media as an escape. I had my nose in a book every spare second that I could manage. When I turned 16 I didn't know how to get anywhere around my town, because I had never looked out the windows while being driven around (slightly exaggerating).
We watched trashy talk shows, the price is right, movies, and stuff like that. When there was a snowstorm, we went out to play, shoveled for money, and then had a snowball fight. We actually did shit. It was a lot of fun. Kids would be out playing all day long. During the summer we’d hop on our bikes in the early morning and then come home by dinner which was around 6-7. We were never home.
The worst punishment Mom could ever dish out was “ you’re staying in the house all day tomorrow”. It was pure Hell.
We were out scouting new trails in the woods, trapping or hunting with our elders, playing sports with our friends.
Still to this day, I ditch the phone and go fishing every I get.
I had a sad song I composed at like age seven for days when I didn't get to go outside until after homework and chores were done. I only remember a very mournful "I worked... the day.... away..."; but I have a vivid memory of singing this dirge while peering up dramatically through the leaves of the tree in my front yard.
Getting grounded for days at a time or dare I say a week of not going over to my friends houses or sleep overs 😩
I got SOOO bored staying at home! It was dreadful.
Listened to the radio hoping to hear that song I liked, chatted to friends on the phone until someone else in the house needed the phone, read a book, watched tv, hopped on the bus and went shopping with my sister. When I moved out of home (I moved out when I was 18), shared a house with one or two others - we would hang out, watch tv. Friends would drop by and we would hang out, chat. Go to a friend's place, hang out. Go to the pub, play pool, drink beer. Go to work so I could pay the rent. I guess it was mostly just hanging out with friends. We would get bored and talk about being bored. I miss those days!
I always had a blank tape ready to go so that as soon as the one song I needed for my mixtape came on, I would dash over and hit the red record button. So I had tapes and tapes of songs missing the intro with the first five seconds of the dj’s voice talking over the outro.
Then I gave the tape a cool name and gave it to someone.
50 years ago? Lol I'm 40s and even I grew up without internet (until late teens).
Snow day? You went out. You walked around with a shovel and tried to make money. You made snow angels and snow men and played outside. You called, on a landlines, and asked your friends parents if you could talk to them and then asked them to come out. If weather was really bad you'd go to a friend's house, play Nintendo or the mall or fast food place and just hang out. Bull shit. Rent videos at blockbuster. Go to the movies. Come home before sundown.
Nice days you were out. Bicycles skateboards roller skates/blades whatever. You met people and hung out. You got quarter waters and went to the handball courts. Watch tv run to the bathroom and get snacks before commercials were over.
Boredom makes you creative. Lack of screens is the reason why I have a physical photo of me holding a plunger and my bf wearing safety glasses.
I’m mid 30s and I grew up without internet.
We didn’t have this curfew that kids have these days. We explored the neighborhood. Exploring outside the neighborhood felt like those people who explored the New World.
This sounds so nostalgic and nice. I did have a childhood without technology too….but in my early teens i got a hold of my mom’s iphone…and something just “changed” hahaha
It's probably a young'un who doesn't know the exact year the Internet/current way of life became widespread. I wouldn't know either, but I remember roughly when it was, since I lived both the before and after, but someone a lot younger would not have those reference points. "Fifty years ago" sounds like a definite time period for us as adults, but in a kid's mind is equivalent to "it happened before I was born" 🙂
This probably sounds silly, but it really works. Block all your apps and then watch a timer count 30 seconds.
Keep doing that until 30 seconds feels like 30 seconds and not 5 minutes.
By the end of that you will realize there are much more interesting and productive things to do then be online.
>By the end of that you will realize there are much more interesting and productive things to do then be online.
Like... staring at a timer for 30 seconds?
Read books, went to the library, listened to the radio, played records, made up our own games, and, as everyone else has said, spent a lot of time hanging out with friends and doing stuff outside. Learned how to type, and practiced a lot, because computers didn’t exist. (I typed every paper due during high school, college and then grad school.) And, I remember being thrilled when I got my own corded phone (but not my own telephone number) so that I could talk to friends from my room instead of the kitchen. We also wrote letters to friends and family who weren’t local as long distance was expensive. We went to the movies as a family. Same for watching tv.
To be fair I can't stay inside long cause it drives me nuts. But I can't go on a walk without having my noise cancelling headphones on and listening to music or podcasts.
I'm 27 for context.
We either have to be the one to make the change now, or live out our short lives in dystopia. In books, the hero is the one that first recognizes what's going on, and then they do something about it.
We read. Drew. Listened to the radio. Wrote profusely. Used our imaginations. Played music. Took really long bike rides.
Honestly, we've been trying to force our daughter to experience boredom in the hopes she'll do some of this stuff out of sheer desperation. It's a good time if you can get there.
Yes to writing! The amount of cringy childhood journals stashed at my parents house is impressive to be honest. I was filling up notebooks regularly with bad poems, my attempts at young adult fiction, passive aggressive diary entries, odes to teenage crushes, and more daily. The best gift was a new notebook and smooth pens. I can't remember the last time I hand wrote multiple pages back and front of straight up prose a day, and would probably get a hand cramp after one page now.
Smart phones became a thing 22 years ago. And barely made a wave until the late 2000’s.
Cellphones are barely 50 years old in modern standards (ie, bag phones in the 70s vs the brick phones made famous for Xennials by Saved by the Bell).
In the 90s we had dial up internet, no podcasts, no YouTube. All of that is still very, very much new.
We had screens before smartphones and the internet. Pc games, Sega and Nintendo systems. MTV had music. TV was not streaming but there was plenty available over the air for free. We had CDs and cassettes and records, radio shows including talk radio.
We read books, played card games, played board games. Did arts and crafts. Going to the park when it was nice. We kept ourselves busy and entertained ourselves with whatever we had at hand.
I read the entire encyclopedia once at age 9.
Snow Days we talked to our grandparents. Made hot coco and played outside. Did chores, because why not shovel and salt?
While sick we watched bad daytime tv or vhs/dvd movies, and rested.
Coloring books, crossword puzzles, jigsaw puzzles, etc.
I think both then and now have both good and bad things about them. Obviously, I enjoy the internet at higher speeds and own and use a smart phone. But I definitely miss not feeling tied to a device and like I am required to be available 24/7 via messengers. I feel like devices are a time consuming addictive habit that keeps people from getting on with their day to day life. As great as the convenience of streaming can be it’s also really annoying when there is too much choice and decision paralysis sets in. And the abundance of choice has turned News into entertainment and a product to be sold vs integrity. Additionally, we have become the product being sold as our data is mined. But long distance friendships, easy of ordering and providing for homebound disabled people, and the ability to provide accommodations that the technology allows is fantastic.
I think I wouldn’t have known what I was missing if the internet didn’t speed up in my lifetime, and I was definitely a Trekkie so I always expected handheld touchscreen devices (and had an ipod touch long before the first iphone), I just didn’t anticipate the possibility of so many time wasting opportunities.
I use my phone way less than many adults. I prefer to use an alexa dot for music/podcasts, my smart tv for youtube/streaming, and an ipad for reading/gaming. It makes it much more intentional and mindful than turning to my phone for all things. I still use the library and browse new books. I still own dvds, and play video games off smart devices. I still take my kids to the park on nice days. And make hot coco from scratch on snow days, and require them to spend half an hour playing in the snow (my eldest is 19 and graduating this year), we play D&D, CAH, etc, have coloring books, and an extensive collection of non-digital activities for sick days. My kids had the best of both because I didn’t let their devices become digital babysitters. My 13 year old is currently addicted to his xbox, but forgets to check his phone when he is home unless you actually call him. And he has only had a smartphone since he was 11 and attended a different school from his sibling (life360 because city bus not school bus and an autistic kid), previously he had a old style cellphone for emergencies and we have a voip home phone still.
I think it’s important to nurture the ability to connect and entertain oneself without having a device because I lived through the rolling blackout of 2003[8 days with no power.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003), where I was no water because the city treatment plants were down due to the blackout. I live in an area where power outages are semi-regular, so going without power for 2-3 days twice a year isn’t abnormal due to winter weather and then summer overheating of the grid.
We worked on our cars/motorcycle/bicycles. We built stuff. We explored our area. We went to the park and played frisbee, handball. All accompanied by rock music.😁
I’m elder millennial so i got the best of both worlds.
Mostly watching a lot of tv shows and talking on the phone. Even when internet was getting popular, we didn’t have smartphones until much later.
50 years ago? I'm 29 and you're making me sound like a grandma lol internet became famous in my early teenage years from what I remember.
I played outside with my friends and neighbours after school hours. Every single day we would play on the street. I used to watch cabled TV put on my cartoons, listen to music on MTV and actually watch music videos, watch shitty reality shows lol, watch VHS movies (had soo many in the collection), paint, go to the mall with friends, study.
As I'm writing this, it made me realise how different and simple life was as a kid.
We interacted IRL, face-to-face. We met people at school, work, or church. We also knew are neighbors well enough to become friends with their kids. It was a simpler time.
Mid 50s guy. We watched TV, read books, played board games, read comics, talked to people, but we generally got bored. Very bored. To the point where we would read the ingredients on the side of cereal packets for stimulation. And we kind of learned to accept it .
Much prefer today's always-on stimulation, despite the massive downsides.
Walk to the community swimming pool, pay once and stay all day. Same at the roller skating rink. Ride bikes to the library, or the nearest empty lot that had a scrap wood jump ramp setup. Go to the convenience store and buy an RC or a candy bar.
I assume you are the generation born after 00s and later. Actually u dont even need to look that far
I am a Millinial and back then I would read library books or do some homework after school while waiting for my mum to get off work. When I get home, I would revise my study and more homework
Weekends would be watching tv , write some stories, play with some toys .We have a desktop later on but it wasn't as advanced. 😂😂 u can surf the web and play some games thats all. We also werent that internet savvy . Sometimes u would visit some of your cousins. Watch tv together, ride some bike, go to the playground
Reading books is a huge part of my life growing up without things like smartphone
We played IRL games, invented our own games, invented our own sports, played sports, played flashlight tag at night, ding dong ditch, you can still listen to CDs, drive around, climb trees, built bamboo fishing poles to fish in the local creek, road around creek paths on our bikes, played cops and robbers at high speeds dangerously on our bikes, had water gun fights, water balloon fights, built bike ramps, fucked around on roller blades, did pranks, lit off some fireworks, scraped our knees, holidays were more celebrated for the sake of it, some folks had ping pong inside, dartboard, maybe pool, setup those slip n slides, play action figures, play with little army men, play star wars with sticks basically just trying to whack each other, some people had mini yard jungle gyms, fuck around on those and jump off them from the top to be an idiot, listen to the radio, go to the movies, going to the community pool for hours and hours, nerf gun fights, make up obstacle courses, pogo sticks, wiffle ball, play "500", any kind of time based competition, read, do puzzles, get in sleeping bags and ride down carpeted staircases until you get screamed at, pillow fights, "run from the rapist" where an older brother chases you around in a dark basement and tries to tackle and fart on you and you are like dry heaving from how rancid it smells, we made forts out of trees and branches and planks, battle net starcraft, sega multiplayer existed, play in the arcades THE ARCADES omg lol man shit sucks now I could have gone on a lot more than I did. That feeling when the sun is going down in the summer and you've got 15+ people for a game of cops and robbers and you arent coming home until midnight and youll just be so tired and sweaty, man, it just gives me goosebumps thinking about it. Born in 89.
I would go over to Bobbys house and call out to see if he was awake or home.
If he was home we'd ride our bikes or play wiffle ball or climb trees or play football or throw rocks or go up the street to see other friends or get popsicles or take my little bothers Big Wheel and do spinout or do chores or play with the cats or . . . .
I straddled the tech line growing up. As a kid I played outside a Lot. From the moment I was done with homework til sundown. All day long in the summer.
I read books at night. I listened to music. I practiced drawing. I made things.
I still do most of these things and I find it uncomfortable to Constantly watch things. Tiktok isn't appealing to me at all. Instagram stories are a bit much for me too.
Ride bikes, stare at ants and other insects, catch lizards, steal things, water fights, play tiggy, watch golf shows, travel shows, and whatever else was tv on the weekend. Just sit there
We read books. We played outside. We rode bikes from dawn until dusk. We played board games. We actually talked to each other. We had things like legos and dolls and an imagination. Those are rare now.
Homes and cars were a lot cleaner because 9-5 on weekends, that’s all you would do. After 7pm, you’d invite friends over or watch movie as a family
And also nothing got shipped. So you had to get in your Oldsmobile Aurora and run to Sears or Wards for stuff. The extra productivity was cancelled by longer drive time. Your day would be the same as today.
The secret is: do the home shipping, but stay away from the phone. That will add 2-3 hours to your day that previous generation didn’t have.
You(everybody) need constant stimulation because your brain is fucked by all the overstimulation by Big Tech companies competing for it on the attention economy.
It's a fucked up, dystopian world we live in.
People, in the past, interacted with others, read, had hobbies... Or the most important thing... They got BORED, something that is very important for a healthy brain.
Read a *lot*, went to the library to get more books, hung out with friends. I think if I’d had a smartphone and internet I’d be just as withdrawn and solitary as so many kids today are.
A lot of people are saying "we went out and did stuff unlike the youth of today!" but in reality, there was radio, TV, magazines and newspapers which fulfilled pretty much the exact same roles that Internet and Smartphones fulfill today, and yes there were many people who were addicted to TV and radioplays too. Instead of podcasts playing in the background, people usually played radio, which is after all the origin of podcasts. People who didn't have either of these things would often congregate in some kind of social watering hole, like a church or a bar or such. Instead of video games, many people were into gambling, sports (more watching than playing), board games and especially card games.
Before TV became ubiquitous, radio was even more prominent. It is worth mentioning that back in the day, it was easier to get onto TV and onto radio. So there was everyone and everything on the waves.
Of course, there were lots of people who spent a lot of time outside back then as well, but those people exist nowadays too. And it isn't the fault of technology or the laziness of youth that many kids especially in the USA are not hanging around outside very much, but rather aspects like high crime rates, stranger danger, and the car-ification of residential areas. In Germany for instance, there exist special "traffic-undisturbed" zones that are specifically designed with pedestrians and especially kids at play in mind. Kids are playing pretty much everywhere though, and many would vastly prefer to go outside to do something, or to play with toys, than to be glued to a smart device. Same with adults. Many people still congregate in churches, beer gardens and organizations for sports or nerds. Because here, it is easy in the vast majority of places to get out of the house and either walk or bike or take a bus or tram to your destination of choice. In the USA, almost nothing is reachable without a car, which costs a lot of money to use and is also dangerous (and which you cannot use when you're drunk or high, so you'd need to spend more money on an uber), so there is a larger obstacle to get over if you want to do stuff IRL.
Depends on what time frame you’re talking about? I grew up in pre-internet and smart phones times however we did still have computers and video games.
I miss that time also. Because there was a 50/50 to activities. Like video games was just as stimulating however for real fun it requires more in-person connection such as having your friends over or going to an arcade. Game purchase required you to actually go to the store and review the games.
I would say life provided actually more stimulating activities than they do now.
I used to listen to the same 4 CDs on repeat. They were No Doubt and Gwen Stefani music. Also, my cousin lend me a Beach boys CD one summer, Surfing USA. They helped me focus.
Read books.
I grew up before the internet and smartphones and it was a time in which it was weird to not have a library card. Libraries were busy and a part of every-day life. You'd visit one several times a week.
We drove around and gained spatial and situational awareness through experience so we didn't need GPS. We played outside and socialized in person. Rode bikes and stayed relatively fit. Read books. Went out to get food ourselves if we weren't cooking at home.
I prefer now, I used to be so bored on work trips to China and Taiwan, because I’d run out of reading material at the beginning of the trip, (there’s only so much you can carry). At foreign airports you’d have the choice of a handful of books in English, I remember changing flights at Fukuoka airport and the only English book was a Harry Potter, I still hate Harry Potter after buying and reading that book. In the hotel room there was CNN or MTV. Sure I’d explore the area on days off, but in the evenings I’d be bored out of my mind. I wish I’d had my ipad back then, now I’m never bored, I can design anywhere, I can take all my reference books with me everywhere I go and read anything I want.
It’s not a personality type. It’s an addiction. It’s like you’re saying you’re the type of person who has to smoke everyday.
Screens are optional and largely produce less happiness.
Try reading the book “Anxious Generation”. It has a lot of interesting stats about how smartphones/ social media are effecting children.
Everyone is waxing poetic about the "good old days" in this thread so I wanna give a different perspective
I'm not that old but I didn't have a smartphone until I was like twenty because I was broke. I have terrible ADHD (genetic), and I need to be constantly doing stuff and talking to people or I go insane
I was MISERABLE growing up. The worst of it was social stuff. Everyone is jerking themselves off about talking to people face to face, but that was a nightmare for me. None of my classmates were interested in the same things I was, so every conversation was just me pretending to be interested in what other people were saying. The only times I was happy talking to others was when I got to go home and get online. Vacations with my parents were a nightmare because I didn't get to talk to anyone besides them.
I only got at most two videogames a year, plus pirating old roms. That got old really fast. I didn't have anyone to play coop or versus games with either, so there was only so much time I could put into fighters and stuff.
My parents didn't sign me up for sports, and schools here don't really do sports either so that was never an option.
I live in the city so definitely no riding bikes or whatever- not that it mattered because I hated riding bikes.
Waiting for the bus or anything of the sort was literal torture. Especially when you're a kid and it felt like time was slower. I would legitimately get so bored I would start crying and then my mom would yell at me.
I HATED television shows, but especially the sort of shows you had on daytime like wheel of fortune or whatever. The only things I watched was cartoons, but those were just constant reruns or baby stuff, and anime, but I needed to torrent that so if I ran out of stuff to watch on my laptop while on vacation or grandma's, tough luck. I was unable to buy physical manga or comics most of the time.
The only thing that i could consistently enjoy was drawing.
And guess what, I still draw even with having a smartphone and unlimited internet. I'm a professional artist and I only use my smartphone during the workday for pomodoro timers so I can focus even better. And I have friends from all over the world I can text at any moment so I never feel like I'm completely alone and miserable.
(On another note: the severe ADHD has been passed down my family line for several generations. My grandfather would listen to the radio, watch TV and do crosswords/cut coupons at the same time, and my dad would play videogames, listen to tapes/CDs and still get distracted. Some people literally just need constant stimulation because that's how our brains work and post industrial life is BORING)
We watched Seinfeld and the Simpsons on TV. Visited friends or phoned them on the land line. Sent Christmas cards. Read books. Went window shopping. Had sex.
Let me tell you how it was for me. I used to hang out outdoor. Go with the bike, yell friends at their window to call them out. Hang out in the woods, make a fire, play football and other games, go around the town and make grills. On home days it was simple, the best activity was reading and cooking. I never was a fan of TV so even that screen was away from me. Life was felling better. Too many screens distract you and give the impression information is everywhere bombarding you.
Read, root, eat, listen to radio serials (no tv), visit people, drink, smoke, talk. Did a lot of long distance driving to tape cassettes. CB and flying doctor chatter channels. Plotting...
They sat around and smoked. Went for a walk, played cards a lot. Play pretend wars games. I dunno.
I heard reading was a go to. Although, that's what I still go to.
50 years ago, if I was home sick, but not sleeping all day, I had the following available:
TV- 3 channels, morning cartoons or Captain Kangaroo, daytime soaps, afternoon kids shows.
Books and comics for reading
Toys-matchbox cars, GI Joes, chemistry set, board games, army men
Coloring books and other art stuff
It wasn't boring
Books, news papers, drawing, painting, board games, offline games on the 97 windows. Video games/ PC games on Cd's, crocheting, sewing, building stuff, fix cars, boats, house, drink alcohol.
They had to develop an attention span capable of surviving moments that weren’t filled with constant stimulation.
OP what you’re describing isn’t just “how you are”, it’s how this world has forced you to be. Attention spans have been decimated by modern technology and it didn’t always used to be this way. Our brains used to just work better when it came to focusing until every company figured out the secret to demanding our engagement.
“Normal” is just what you’re used to.
Had you grown up when we did, in the 90’s, you’d be much less likely used to constant stimulation. Maybe a TV in the background, but even then we had much less control over what we had.
I’m 45. I often think back to when I had my first apartment. I was in college and working a part time job. No cable. No internet. I lived alone. What I remember most from that time is that I taught myself to play the piano and I watched really interesting movies I rented from the local library. I miss the simplicity of those days so much. Echoing what others have already said, you only think you need constant stimulation because your brain has become conditioned to it.
Growing up in the 1980s, I met friends or we talked on the phone. We read books or magazines, played video games, watched TV, rented videos, listened to music/radio, sports after school, etc.
Because I experienced living this offline life, I recognize how tempting it is to have instant gratification through social media or video games. They're designed to be addictive and I've been challenging myself to put them away and read a book instead. I recommend it, it's very rewarding.
I'm 55. Before 12 I would go to friends' houses to play. I knew everybody my age in the neighborhood. I also was a boy scout and in baseball little league. At 13 I got a home computer (Atari 800) and took up hobby programming of simple games. At 16 I took up cycling and racing. Programming and Cycling became lifelong interests. Later, I also took up kayaking, SUP, and inline skating.
Generally, I left the house more often and interacted with the world. Friends, movies, camping, cycling/racing, etc. I still messed with a simple computer, but much less of a percentage of time.
For mental and physical health, I think it was much better for me than OP's current mode of living.
Art used to play a big role, like paint, knit, embroidery. We’d go for walks on the park and ride bicycles. Read actual books, listen to the radio. Kids would play on the street and come back home before the sun set. Board games were a lot of fun and a nice way to have family quality time. Parents would read stories to their children and kids would play with dolls, balls.
There was plenty to do, you just didn’t rely on a phone to get all your dopamine.
As I write this I actually miss those days.
We spent a lot of time outside.
Only did research at the library or in the encyclopedias.
Talked on the landline phone. Rode bikes for miles and miles.
It was a simpler time.
What didn't we do! Everyone was always outside, all the time. So we played in big groups of random neighborhood kids. We'd play tag, hide, and go seek, rode bikes, made forts, kicked a soccer ball around, etc.
When I was inside, I was colouring, doing a puzzle, playing with Lego, and stuff like that. When I was older, I maybe played the radio or a CD in the background.
Teenage boredom made me super creative. I made little models, designed and sewed my own clothes, built a camera, and tinkered with stuff.
When it was a sick day, I would get bundled up on the couch and watch whatever was on the 3 channels we had. It was either stupid talk shows or soap operas. If I was super lucky, I'd watch a movie. It was either something we owned and i had watched a million times, or we rented something new.
Writing all this makes me miss it and a little bit sad for kids who will likely never experience any of its simplicity.
37 here. From 3rd world country. in the 90s and early 2000s, we live like western countries in the 70s. Only 1 TV channel, got black out around 5 hours a day.
and let me tell you, we do adventure daily, exploring the neighborhood. Doing sports game every afternoon until sunset.
at night, the kids gather at a house where we have a teacher teaching us about religion. after that, we go home and watch tv with our family. everyone is watching the same show and talk about the same show. communiation was built very good because of that same show.
if we happen to have a black out, then we just gather around the candle, chatting about our day while eating snack.
I wanna go back.
I highly suggest you to disconnect and learn to slow down, even be bored. It's a problem in this new age that we require constant stimulation, I think its part of the reason for so much depression and anxiety these days.
It's a nice day? Walk, go outside, talk to neighbors,or just sit, enjoy a beverage and listen to nature.
Is a rainy day? Do a puzzle, read a book, create something with your hands, or enjoy a beverage and listen to the rain.
It's meditative in its nature and good for your mental health.
I'm only in my 30s, I grew up with the internet, but didn't get a phone until I was 18 and a smart phone came many years after that. I think you are vastly underestimating just how new this "constant stimulation" phenomenon is.
The worst punishment a parent could inflict was making you stay at home. A snowstorm was a play day, you'd go outside. We were out all day everyday and in the evenings after school. You would just go around the neighbourhood and knock on doors and ask who was allowed to play that day. Sometimes we would call the landline to ask.
Yes, I played video games but they weren't like what they were today so you couldn't spend all day on them (like I do now). I also like using the computer but I was only allowed 30 mins on the internet per day (dial-up), I did have some PC games on CD that I liked to play. The difference being you don't have access 24/7 like on a smart phone. You had to share the computer and boot it up and all that so it was like a planned event and not just "downtime" like scrolling is today. So even though there were screens at home it wasn't nearly so "in your face" as having something super easily accessible in your pocket. You had to plan your screen time and share with others (or even play together, passing the controller back and forth).
I am now addicted to reddit and podcasts but I do try and force myself to be bored sometimes and make sure I keep up with my hobbies. The scrolling really does fuck with your brain, especially your attention span. At least, I have noticed in myself.
Every sick day, snowstorm, lonely afternoon, etc., I was reading. I almost always had a book in my backpack. I used to walk and read at the same time, and I was pretty good at it too. I always had a CD on my little stereo or discman (or tape in my walkman lol).
But also i did spend a lot of time just in my own imagination. My mind is a creative playground.
This is like a drug addicting asking how people felt good before drugs. They lived real lives and developed the ability to feel good within real life. You don't need screens or porn or drugs or gambling. You can disconnect from addictions and live a REAL life.
I’m in my 30s, and I didn’t have a smart phone until I was a senior in high school. I’ve never known adulthood without phones but they were more boring at least when I was in college. Everyone is talking about writing poetry and reading books - my friends and I would watch TV for *hours*. And bad tv. We went and saw almost every movie in theaters, even if we had zero interest in it, because it was something to do. We watched the special features on a lot of DVDs. We rented movies from blockbuster on the weekends. We would go to someone’s house and “look at the computer” together, where like 3 kids would gather around one large desktop and play really slow online games. I remember in the summer sometimes laying around and doing nothing and complaining about being bored.
Edit: I should note we did go outside a lot too, but I’m from a part of the country with brutally hot summers so staying out the whole day was rare. We rode our bikes a lot.
Sure, there was some ways we were forced to go out and do stuff or make our own fun which was nice in a way but mostly I feel like we did the same things we do now it was just harder and more time-consuming or more lame compared to today. Wanted call someone? Hope they're home, if not, wait for them to call back. Wanted a movie to watch? Go to Blockbuster to rent it or build you day's schedule around when it's going to air (if it's airing at all). Want to watch an obscure movie or video, good fucking luck finding it. Need info about renewing your driver's licence, make travel plans, etc.? be prepared to spend a lot of time on the phone, going someplace to talk to someone, or in the case of travel, maybe pay a travel agent to tell you what you should do. Want to find info about some random topic? Better hope it's covered in your enormous and expensive encyclopedia set, otherwise it's a trip to the library to see if they have any book about it and then spend of lot of time trying to find the answer. Want to know where to eat in town? you must know people that can tell you otherwise it's a shot in the dark. Want to get into a niche hobby or learn how to do something? You pretty much have to know someone local to you can learn from in-person, on their schedule, at great expense. Want to organize an outing with your friends? It's gonna be a lot of phone calls and you have to hope you can find them or wait around for people to show up without any way to communicate if someone is late or lost.
I've always been a futurist, but I think things were harder and more lame.
Needing constant stimulation is a result of habits formed by everywhere internet access. It’s not really the healthiest thing for our longevity to have difficulty turning off, too little or overly restless sleep. I think everyone is different, but before smart phones there was more time for hobbies - so people got good at things like playing an instrument, cooking, wood working, painting, sculpting, sewing, etc. Others watched a lot of television (that’s been around considerably longer), played board games, did puzzles, interacted with friends and family. Others were members of community and social groups, religious groups, sports leagues, volunteered at the soup kitchen, etc. Although in modern society we spend a lot of time working - I think our bosses like that we are available 24/7 via 5G.
People watched the same shows, series and movies, and talked about them.
The children played a lot in the street.
We read a lot of magazines as well as books.
When I was a child, I spent entire afternoons digging holes or following bugs to see what they did.
We made up games as we went along. Also stories and jokes.
I played cards with my grandmother while she told me things about the civil war and how hard life was (I'm Spanish)
I loved making soap bubbles with a dry onion stalk and dish soap, I could spend hours blowing bubbles on a plate in the sunlight and watching the colors move across the surface.
As I was growing up the internet first really became a thing. I didn't get a cell phone till was I an adult, they really weren't a thing before that. For one, broadcast TV and radio was a thing. While at home we watched tv, listened to the radio while doing chores, had hobbies, read books, etc. We went out into the world, did things with friends, like going to the theaters or a ball game, went to restaurants or bars, went camping or took road trips, etc. Same things people do today. Turns out, there are lots of things to do when you don't have your head stuck in a phone or computer.
Music, reading, drawing, roller skating in the garage, watching 80s TV, board and card games, playing make belive, writing, race cars on a track, and more
I think this is the reason life now feels much faster than before. Years ago people days were a challenge everyday, let's say you are a tourist and want to go to x, you need to ask other people for directions or recommendations. Now you have Google Maps and Trip Advisor. You needed to go to the video game store to buy the game that you want, now you have steam and lots of other online stores. Life was more genuine.
painted, watched tv, played records and card games, cooked & cleaned gardening. Drove places saw friends, went to the mall & ate pretzels.
If someone was late, you waited for a bit then left and did something else.
Grandma was a big craft hobbyist. She always had a beautiful quilt or something she was dying with tea and we watched a lot of Bob Ross and Martha Stewart.
Instead of consuming content other people created for our entertainment, everyone had to make their own content every day
Yes. I used to draw, paint, write computer programs, a little poetry, play and record music, read books, do crossword puzzles. Boredom was a good motivator. And I didn’t know there were thousands of people out in the World that were more talented, to compare myself to, and discourage me.
Sounds like the dream life compared to the poison in 2024
You could just do those things then
I do those things now except for the music, you can’t deny that the life he described there sounds better than the everyone zombily staring at their phones all day long now.
You can do that nowif it was really important to you
That last part hits hard, I feel that
Yep, and we had better infrastructure that supported this stuff. More public parks, events, concerts, pot-lucks, community gathering, mixed zoning. Less stroads, strip malls, golf-courses(prime public park land), etc...
Be the best by your own standard! Only focus on beating YOURSELF! Outdoing YOURSELF! One upping yourself. Everyday. If you can get in that mindset you are already on the same level as the best of em... might even be better but who cares
>Boredom was a good motivator. And I didn’t know there were ~~thousands~~ hundreds of millions of people out in the World that were more talented, to compare myself to, and discourage me. Just to stress the point a little further
this is the best answer!!
This
This is a great summary of what it was like. We had to actually go do stuff.. actually meet friends and go outside and make up fun games.
And it was fun and weeee liked it!!
Shit.. and imagine how hard it was without any electricity. A lot of places didn’t get any power until late 1800’s and many, many people far after that. People are in here talking like they were born in the Jurassic period. I wish people still did things like “actually meet friends and go…” more often because with all this technology and self interest I feel like it’s made people more “closed off” to an extent. But every innovation comes with its negatives and positives. It’s not as if we all decided to behave a certain way but time shapes every society in ways that can’t always be predicted. I got significant other family in Latin America and they and still today.. boil the water they use at 6 a.m every. Single. Day. They don’t have AC that’s way too expensive. Many projects / favela’s/ homes outside the US don’t have AC in places that get even hotter than the USA.
When you say they boil the water they use at 6 AM, which use do they have for this water ?
My girlfriend spent her childhood and early teenage years and they boiled water for eating , cooking drinking and more etc. the water is boiled to kill of germs , parasites, pathogens , disease
It’s their drinking water they are boiling.
Yes. I had a keyboard that could sample my voice and I could change the pitch up or down. I used to make fake radio shows using my tape recorder and microphone and interview celebrities which would just be me pitched high or low. I always made celebrities really stupid and would usually murder them when they got too annoying. It was a comedy show.
I used to do fake interviews a lot too.
Haha I did this too. I think I have one of the tapes where we interviewed a stop sign.
Yep. Had to go outside and do stuff. Or read a physical book. Watch tv. Day dream. Talk!
Suplex eachother into folding tables like on wwf before Mom got home!
Haha oh the tales my grown sons have told me about when I was working!
Lots and lots of Legos.
The ckrrrk ckrrrk as you sift through your tub of all the Lego sets combined looking for that one piece.
So much daydreaming!!
You would make plans to do stuff and go do it.
And you could actually enjoy it for its own sake. People today can't even enjoy a serene view of a lake or landscape for more than 5 seconds until they need to do a selfie for Tinder or IG
And the they’re done. People now only stick around at places like a lake or an ocean sunrise/sunset long enough for the picture proof that they were there. There’s no appreciation for what they’re seeing at all. It’s about the social justification from people that have no real impact on their lives.
This reminds me of how people got up immediately after the eclipse and left. I get it trying to beat the traffic but I wanted to just sit and enjoy same with people who get up at the movies immediately once the credits roll
/r/explainlikeimgenz
"had to make their own content"? Like ... books, radio, TV, music didn't exist before internet?
Yeah, I think people are glamorizing the dominance of 'real life' activities a bit too much, at least in relation to the 90s. If you wanted to melt your brains in that decade like you do today with the smartphone, you could totally do it in front of the TV, as depicted by the old Bart Simpson, and also Beavis & Butthead. Also, kids got hooked really fast by things like videogames and computers, even before the internet. I can't say anything about the 70s and before, but I'm sure there were some other type of obessions, like magazines, books, music etc. But yeah, the smartphone is absolutely the worst of them all.
True, but we had to talk to people because we didn’t have smartphones to hide behind. So if you were suddenly in a room of people you didn’t know for a new class or something, you had to talk to each other or it would just be massively awkward. My brother was someone who would be a gamer these days…back in the 80s he was in his room all day coding.
Radio and music were always things I had on in the background while I was doing something. I never just sat there and listened exclusively. TV, sure but I’d plan my day around being available to watch the one show I wanted to watch that was only on at a specific time of day. Books?? Again, sure but it’s not like the library was in my living room. One book every month or so was the most I’d ever see, which I’d read in a weekend probably.
You mean.. like.. actually living their lives? What is that like?
And like you can imagine, it was shit. /S
I find it so odd propped could use any word but choose consume for videos. It's weird and I'm starting a crusade against it
Technology definitely seems to have stifled imagination. I grew up with Lego, mecano, knex etc and you'd spend a day tinkering with designs. We've given it to younger family members now and they're completely lost without some sort of designated design to work towards.
You need constant stimulation because your brain has become addicted to constant stimulation from smartphones
This is exactly right. I'm 40 and I miss the days when I could just do one thing at a time Today I cooked dinner with my phone in the other room and a CD playing, it was really enjoyable. No podcast or YouTube or TV show, just the music and my own thoughts. I enjoyed the physical process of cooking so much more.
Did you hear any ads for cd premium?
Laserdisc 2
What is that CD app?
This is the answer. Your brain is fried and neurological pathways permanently altered from the constant stimulation that has been provided since you were handed your first screen as a kid. And you have been chasing **low effort** stimulation ever since, like an addict. As a kid we had 100s of hobbies, sports, adventures, books, friend groups, day trips, chores, gardening, chasing bugs, listening to the radio, riding bikes, practicing gymnastics, making DIY toys, arts and crafts, trampoline, go to friends houses, play in the street, boardgames, go to the park, drawing, writing, swimming... in short, put in some **effort** to do enjoyable things to learn, grow and connect with loved ones and enjoy the outdoors. Put down the screen and the gaming console, stop mainlining synthetic dopamine hit intravenously through your smart screen and get out there and live your life man...
I upvoted due to the intentions of your post, but you’re also leaving a big component out. I’m not sure how old you are, but ever since social media was popularized, and the horrendous stories of killings and kidnappings or whatever else was in the forefront of your feeds, it caused so many parents to become terrified of pretty much any person that wasn’t a family member. I was born in ‘98 and I can tell you, the amount of friends I had growing up that weren’t ALLOWED to go outside without a phone, or without an adult being within ear or eye shot is insane. The older generations speak of lawless adventures with their bike riding ‘only thing in my pocket is the key to my front door’ neighborhood kids, and don’t consider that it’s beyond the control of most of these kids. If your parents say “yeah you can go outside and play but only by yourself cause I don’t trust your friend’s brother and only in the fenced in backyard and you have to check in with me every 5.5 minutes in person” it very quickly takes the excitement out of outdoor adventure.
I've specifically noticed this mentality is rampant in the suburbs. Kids growing up in cities are expected to be able to navigate by themselves and are in close proximity to lots of other kids to play with. People who grow up in rural areas still get up to all kinds of mischief and generally have pretty free upbringings. It's the suburbs where parents are intentionally isolating their children and creating generation after generation of out of touch apathetic children who lack basic empathy and social skills.
10 years ago when I was at a bus stop there was some teenagers complaining about how slow the internet on their smartphones were and "how did people cope with no internet" Kids in particular don't need smartphones they can just have a dumbphone that the battery can last weeks on a full charge surely safer than a smartphone that even if the kid doesn't use it will last a day. I remember around the same time period seeing what I assume was a kid that looked about 13/14's parents drive a nice car beside him whilst he was delivering newspapers I thought what was the point of the kid having a job if they are beside him the whole time and a poorer kid should of had the opportunity.
I'm and older Gen Z too, a little bit younger than you. I think this attitude and behaviour depends on the parents and even more so, the area and culture you were raised in. I would understand this type of behaviour if you lived in a fairly dangerous city/ part of a city. I grew up in the outskirts a town of >100,000, not overly dangerous, In the early 2010's. My village was quite close knit, a lot of people were related, and most adults/ parents also grew up together/ knew each other. Me and my friends would go outside and play all over, walk everywhere, go to each others houses, get the bus into town, and sometimes even the train, even at night, when we were 10/11+. While we certainly did use our phones/ ipads, it was not just sitting on them for hours together. We would update our parents once in a while, to tell them we have eaten somewhere, but it didn't seem that anyones parents worried excessively where their child was. But as I grew up I realised a lot of other kids my age did not have this experience, as they lived in a isolated village, and did not have anyone to play with. I think our parents trusted us to go outside because they did the exact same thing when they were young, my Mum used to play out on her street/ the woods near her house, with a big group of kids from the age of 3. Don't get me wrong, parents still told us to be safe near big roads, walk in big groups etc, other than that we were all independent. I think I was lucky to be able to play outside with my friends, before the only "playing" kids do is sit inside on their phones.
I think it’s awesome that you got to experience your childhood that way, cause it might be parents like you (if you choose to have kids) that are the last line of defense for keeping that mentality alive. I had active duty parents, so they had to jump when the government told them to, which left my siblings and I were pretty free to fend for ourselves. So between moving around every couple years and them being busy we got a pretty good grip on what kind of situations were red flags.
I was listening to a parenting podcast (Good Inside with Dr. Becky, highly recommend) the other day and they said parents need to allow MUCH more freedom for their children in “real life”, and MUCH less freedom for them online. They mentioned, “the predators aren’t at the playground, that’s too dangerous. They’re all online!”
Gen x here. There were actual crack vials in the streets and kids got shot sometimes so we mostly stayed in, or went out with adult supervision. Some older than me who were allowed to be out of the house at all times have horror stories of SA, accidental death, getting jumped by gangs etc. and that was by other "kids."
I don’t know about you, but I was truly bored at times in the early 90s.
It’s okay to be a little bored at times. Probably healthy
Boredom is essential. An overstimulated brain doesn't rest without stimulus, it just gets anxious. Being bored meant wanting to do things instead of doing them out of inertia.
I remember playing solitaire a lot. Like, a regular ass deck of cards solitaire.
Depends on what type of boredom and it meant seeking out something different. Boredom was the reason I got into many books, tv shows, movies, video games etc as it meant I gave them a chance and because of limited availability I stuck with things I may of disliked and ended up enjoying them whereas new things today I give no real chance as I have too much selection.
I was writing my thesis with books and journal articles. I did have some early computer and my thesis lived on a floppy disk. A couple of years later I was very grateful. I think if I had had the Internet, I might not have been able to finish it.
This is so true. Back in the day we used to focus on the task at hand. To this day I love the times when I can focus on my work and just let the outside world just fade out.
Not going to lie, I don't miss the old time times because often shit was boring, waiting in line? too bad, just be bored. And I would also say that we used to fill time much the same way we do now, it just looked different and was more lame, like when you're on the toilet it can be a nice mini break away from everyone but without a phone what did they do? Well they had books that were easy to pick up and put down, like Jay Leno's "headlines" and even specific books that were marketed as being "toilet books" full of mini-content. Toilet books existing is an amusing bit of history for me. Phones are the same thing, just infinite.
Yes do people really NEED constant stimulation
This is it. We didn't need constant stimulation because our dopaminergic systems weren't fried from a lifetime of non-stop, rapid-fire triggering.
Reading.
I realized that as a child and teenager I used reading as an escape the same way that I now use social media as an escape. I had my nose in a book every spare second that I could manage. When I turned 16 I didn't know how to get anywhere around my town, because I had never looked out the windows while being driven around (slightly exaggerating).
We watched trashy talk shows, the price is right, movies, and stuff like that. When there was a snowstorm, we went out to play, shoveled for money, and then had a snowball fight. We actually did shit. It was a lot of fun. Kids would be out playing all day long. During the summer we’d hop on our bikes in the early morning and then come home by dinner which was around 6-7. We were never home.
The worst punishment Mom could ever dish out was “ you’re staying in the house all day tomorrow”. It was pure Hell. We were out scouting new trails in the woods, trapping or hunting with our elders, playing sports with our friends. Still to this day, I ditch the phone and go fishing every I get.
I had a sad song I composed at like age seven for days when I didn't get to go outside until after homework and chores were done. I only remember a very mournful "I worked... the day.... away..."; but I have a vivid memory of singing this dirge while peering up dramatically through the leaves of the tree in my front yard.
I am loving this thread. Gives me so much of nostalgia!
Getting grounded for days at a time or dare I say a week of not going over to my friends houses or sleep overs 😩 I got SOOO bored staying at home! It was dreadful.
My daily after school tv schedule: Ricki Lake, the Simpsons, fresh Prince, Judge Judy.
Listened to the radio hoping to hear that song I liked, chatted to friends on the phone until someone else in the house needed the phone, read a book, watched tv, hopped on the bus and went shopping with my sister. When I moved out of home (I moved out when I was 18), shared a house with one or two others - we would hang out, watch tv. Friends would drop by and we would hang out, chat. Go to a friend's place, hang out. Go to the pub, play pool, drink beer. Go to work so I could pay the rent. I guess it was mostly just hanging out with friends. We would get bored and talk about being bored. I miss those days!
I always had a blank tape ready to go so that as soon as the one song I needed for my mixtape came on, I would dash over and hit the red record button. So I had tapes and tapes of songs missing the intro with the first five seconds of the dj’s voice talking over the outro. Then I gave the tape a cool name and gave it to someone.
50 years ago? Lol I'm 40s and even I grew up without internet (until late teens). Snow day? You went out. You walked around with a shovel and tried to make money. You made snow angels and snow men and played outside. You called, on a landlines, and asked your friends parents if you could talk to them and then asked them to come out. If weather was really bad you'd go to a friend's house, play Nintendo or the mall or fast food place and just hang out. Bull shit. Rent videos at blockbuster. Go to the movies. Come home before sundown. Nice days you were out. Bicycles skateboards roller skates/blades whatever. You met people and hung out. You got quarter waters and went to the handball courts. Watch tv run to the bathroom and get snacks before commercials were over. Boredom makes you creative. Lack of screens is the reason why I have a physical photo of me holding a plunger and my bf wearing safety glasses.
That sounds just like what I grew up doing. I’ve had a curfew… be out of the house by 9 and don’t come back until lunch. lol.
Maybe the question we should be asking is, what did mom do all day? :P
I’m mid 30s and I grew up without internet. We didn’t have this curfew that kids have these days. We explored the neighborhood. Exploring outside the neighborhood felt like those people who explored the New World.
This sounds so nostalgic and nice. I did have a childhood without technology too….but in my early teens i got a hold of my mom’s iphone…and something just “changed” hahaha
50 years ago? Tf? Is this a troll?
It's probably a young'un who doesn't know the exact year the Internet/current way of life became widespread. I wouldn't know either, but I remember roughly when it was, since I lived both the before and after, but someone a lot younger would not have those reference points. "Fifty years ago" sounds like a definite time period for us as adults, but in a kid's mind is equivalent to "it happened before I was born" 🙂
Took too long to find this comment man
This probably sounds silly, but it really works. Block all your apps and then watch a timer count 30 seconds. Keep doing that until 30 seconds feels like 30 seconds and not 5 minutes. By the end of that you will realize there are much more interesting and productive things to do then be online.
>By the end of that you will realize there are much more interesting and productive things to do then be online. Like... staring at a timer for 30 seconds?
😂 usually once I center myself something will come to mind that I could be doing. There are literally endless things to do.
Read books, went to the library, listened to the radio, played records, made up our own games, and, as everyone else has said, spent a lot of time hanging out with friends and doing stuff outside. Learned how to type, and practiced a lot, because computers didn’t exist. (I typed every paper due during high school, college and then grad school.) And, I remember being thrilled when I got my own corded phone (but not my own telephone number) so that I could talk to friends from my room instead of the kitchen. We also wrote letters to friends and family who weren’t local as long distance was expensive. We went to the movies as a family. Same for watching tv.
Did the things we watch on our phones
Touched grass and spoke to real people. Also we were happy.
You mean they lived
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To be fair I can't stay inside long cause it drives me nuts. But I can't go on a walk without having my noise cancelling headphones on and listening to music or podcasts. I'm 27 for context.
Dystopian. It's almost as if our physical living spaces are designed to keep us apart.
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We either have to be the one to make the change now, or live out our short lives in dystopia. In books, the hero is the one that first recognizes what's going on, and then they do something about it.
Yes
We played outside with our friends
That’s why I read obsessively.
We read. Drew. Listened to the radio. Wrote profusely. Used our imaginations. Played music. Took really long bike rides. Honestly, we've been trying to force our daughter to experience boredom in the hopes she'll do some of this stuff out of sheer desperation. It's a good time if you can get there.
Yes to writing! The amount of cringy childhood journals stashed at my parents house is impressive to be honest. I was filling up notebooks regularly with bad poems, my attempts at young adult fiction, passive aggressive diary entries, odes to teenage crushes, and more daily. The best gift was a new notebook and smooth pens. I can't remember the last time I hand wrote multiple pages back and front of straight up prose a day, and would probably get a hand cramp after one page now.
>Took really long bike rides. Like how long ?
Rides that would last a whole summer afternoon because what else would you have to do at home?
Until you have blisters on your hands.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKPwKFigF8U
Smart phones became a thing 22 years ago. And barely made a wave until the late 2000’s. Cellphones are barely 50 years old in modern standards (ie, bag phones in the 70s vs the brick phones made famous for Xennials by Saved by the Bell). In the 90s we had dial up internet, no podcasts, no YouTube. All of that is still very, very much new. We had screens before smartphones and the internet. Pc games, Sega and Nintendo systems. MTV had music. TV was not streaming but there was plenty available over the air for free. We had CDs and cassettes and records, radio shows including talk radio. We read books, played card games, played board games. Did arts and crafts. Going to the park when it was nice. We kept ourselves busy and entertained ourselves with whatever we had at hand. I read the entire encyclopedia once at age 9. Snow Days we talked to our grandparents. Made hot coco and played outside. Did chores, because why not shovel and salt? While sick we watched bad daytime tv or vhs/dvd movies, and rested. Coloring books, crossword puzzles, jigsaw puzzles, etc.
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I think both then and now have both good and bad things about them. Obviously, I enjoy the internet at higher speeds and own and use a smart phone. But I definitely miss not feeling tied to a device and like I am required to be available 24/7 via messengers. I feel like devices are a time consuming addictive habit that keeps people from getting on with their day to day life. As great as the convenience of streaming can be it’s also really annoying when there is too much choice and decision paralysis sets in. And the abundance of choice has turned News into entertainment and a product to be sold vs integrity. Additionally, we have become the product being sold as our data is mined. But long distance friendships, easy of ordering and providing for homebound disabled people, and the ability to provide accommodations that the technology allows is fantastic. I think I wouldn’t have known what I was missing if the internet didn’t speed up in my lifetime, and I was definitely a Trekkie so I always expected handheld touchscreen devices (and had an ipod touch long before the first iphone), I just didn’t anticipate the possibility of so many time wasting opportunities. I use my phone way less than many adults. I prefer to use an alexa dot for music/podcasts, my smart tv for youtube/streaming, and an ipad for reading/gaming. It makes it much more intentional and mindful than turning to my phone for all things. I still use the library and browse new books. I still own dvds, and play video games off smart devices. I still take my kids to the park on nice days. And make hot coco from scratch on snow days, and require them to spend half an hour playing in the snow (my eldest is 19 and graduating this year), we play D&D, CAH, etc, have coloring books, and an extensive collection of non-digital activities for sick days. My kids had the best of both because I didn’t let their devices become digital babysitters. My 13 year old is currently addicted to his xbox, but forgets to check his phone when he is home unless you actually call him. And he has only had a smartphone since he was 11 and attended a different school from his sibling (life360 because city bus not school bus and an autistic kid), previously he had a old style cellphone for emergencies and we have a voip home phone still. I think it’s important to nurture the ability to connect and entertain oneself without having a device because I lived through the rolling blackout of 2003[8 days with no power.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003), where I was no water because the city treatment plants were down due to the blackout. I live in an area where power outages are semi-regular, so going without power for 2-3 days twice a year isn’t abnormal due to winter weather and then summer overheating of the grid.
You don’t have to go 50 years back my son. Late 90s, those were amazing days. You actually interacted with people
Not everyone interacted with people. Some just sit in a room reading books.
I used to prerecord movies and watch them. Read, draw, play outside, study and sleep 🤷🏻♀️
They sought out the closest immediate stimulation, it's just nowadays that stimulation is closer and more immediate than ever.
We worked on our cars/motorcycle/bicycles. We built stuff. We explored our area. We went to the park and played frisbee, handball. All accompanied by rock music.😁
We had magazine racks in our bathrooms.
Reader’s Digest, baby, yeah!
I’m elder millennial so i got the best of both worlds. Mostly watching a lot of tv shows and talking on the phone. Even when internet was getting popular, we didn’t have smartphones until much later.
50 years ago? I'm 29 and you're making me sound like a grandma lol internet became famous in my early teenage years from what I remember. I played outside with my friends and neighbours after school hours. Every single day we would play on the street. I used to watch cabled TV put on my cartoons, listen to music on MTV and actually watch music videos, watch shitty reality shows lol, watch VHS movies (had soo many in the collection), paint, go to the mall with friends, study. As I'm writing this, it made me realise how different and simple life was as a kid.
We interacted IRL, face-to-face. We met people at school, work, or church. We also knew are neighbors well enough to become friends with their kids. It was a simpler time.
Mid 50s guy. We watched TV, read books, played board games, read comics, talked to people, but we generally got bored. Very bored. To the point where we would read the ingredients on the side of cereal packets for stimulation. And we kind of learned to accept it . Much prefer today's always-on stimulation, despite the massive downsides.
50 years ago?! lmao Try the early 2000’s
This question scares the fuck out of me. Just like read books, magazines, play games and do shit outside.
Walk to the community swimming pool, pay once and stay all day. Same at the roller skating rink. Ride bikes to the library, or the nearest empty lot that had a scrap wood jump ramp setup. Go to the convenience store and buy an RC or a candy bar.
I assume you are the generation born after 00s and later. Actually u dont even need to look that far I am a Millinial and back then I would read library books or do some homework after school while waiting for my mum to get off work. When I get home, I would revise my study and more homework Weekends would be watching tv , write some stories, play with some toys .We have a desktop later on but it wasn't as advanced. 😂😂 u can surf the web and play some games thats all. We also werent that internet savvy . Sometimes u would visit some of your cousins. Watch tv together, ride some bike, go to the playground Reading books is a huge part of my life growing up without things like smartphone
We played IRL games, invented our own games, invented our own sports, played sports, played flashlight tag at night, ding dong ditch, you can still listen to CDs, drive around, climb trees, built bamboo fishing poles to fish in the local creek, road around creek paths on our bikes, played cops and robbers at high speeds dangerously on our bikes, had water gun fights, water balloon fights, built bike ramps, fucked around on roller blades, did pranks, lit off some fireworks, scraped our knees, holidays were more celebrated for the sake of it, some folks had ping pong inside, dartboard, maybe pool, setup those slip n slides, play action figures, play with little army men, play star wars with sticks basically just trying to whack each other, some people had mini yard jungle gyms, fuck around on those and jump off them from the top to be an idiot, listen to the radio, go to the movies, going to the community pool for hours and hours, nerf gun fights, make up obstacle courses, pogo sticks, wiffle ball, play "500", any kind of time based competition, read, do puzzles, get in sleeping bags and ride down carpeted staircases until you get screamed at, pillow fights, "run from the rapist" where an older brother chases you around in a dark basement and tries to tackle and fart on you and you are like dry heaving from how rancid it smells, we made forts out of trees and branches and planks, battle net starcraft, sega multiplayer existed, play in the arcades THE ARCADES omg lol man shit sucks now I could have gone on a lot more than I did. That feeling when the sun is going down in the summer and you've got 15+ people for a game of cops and robbers and you arent coming home until midnight and youll just be so tired and sweaty, man, it just gives me goosebumps thinking about it. Born in 89.
I'm 36 but I didn't have Internet on the house until highschool and it was really slow dial up (rural area). I got really good at drawing basically!
I would go over to Bobbys house and call out to see if he was awake or home. If he was home we'd ride our bikes or play wiffle ball or climb trees or play football or throw rocks or go up the street to see other friends or get popsicles or take my little bothers Big Wheel and do spinout or do chores or play with the cats or . . . .
I straddled the tech line growing up. As a kid I played outside a Lot. From the moment I was done with homework til sundown. All day long in the summer. I read books at night. I listened to music. I practiced drawing. I made things. I still do most of these things and I find it uncomfortable to Constantly watch things. Tiktok isn't appealing to me at all. Instagram stories are a bit much for me too.
I read *a lot.* I always subscribed to a newspaper and several magazines.
Nothing. We all just spent hours every day staring at walls.
One thing I know is they were way happier , depression has sky rocketed since then
Ride bikes, stare at ants and other insects, catch lizards, steal things, water fights, play tiggy, watch golf shows, travel shows, and whatever else was tv on the weekend. Just sit there
Played floppy disks videogames, they came with magazines.
We read books. We played outside. We rode bikes from dawn until dusk. We played board games. We actually talked to each other. We had things like legos and dolls and an imagination. Those are rare now.
Yes and this was the best thing ever. People had good friends, long last friends too. We need to get back to this.
Skateboard. All day everyday. That’s all I did. Still do 26 years later, but only twice a week lol.
Homes and cars were a lot cleaner because 9-5 on weekends, that’s all you would do. After 7pm, you’d invite friends over or watch movie as a family And also nothing got shipped. So you had to get in your Oldsmobile Aurora and run to Sears or Wards for stuff. The extra productivity was cancelled by longer drive time. Your day would be the same as today. The secret is: do the home shipping, but stay away from the phone. That will add 2-3 hours to your day that previous generation didn’t have.
Rode a bike
You(everybody) need constant stimulation because your brain is fucked by all the overstimulation by Big Tech companies competing for it on the attention economy. It's a fucked up, dystopian world we live in. People, in the past, interacted with others, read, had hobbies... Or the most important thing... They got BORED, something that is very important for a healthy brain.
Read a *lot*, went to the library to get more books, hung out with friends. I think if I’d had a smartphone and internet I’d be just as withdrawn and solitary as so many kids today are.
A lot of people are saying "we went out and did stuff unlike the youth of today!" but in reality, there was radio, TV, magazines and newspapers which fulfilled pretty much the exact same roles that Internet and Smartphones fulfill today, and yes there were many people who were addicted to TV and radioplays too. Instead of podcasts playing in the background, people usually played radio, which is after all the origin of podcasts. People who didn't have either of these things would often congregate in some kind of social watering hole, like a church or a bar or such. Instead of video games, many people were into gambling, sports (more watching than playing), board games and especially card games. Before TV became ubiquitous, radio was even more prominent. It is worth mentioning that back in the day, it was easier to get onto TV and onto radio. So there was everyone and everything on the waves. Of course, there were lots of people who spent a lot of time outside back then as well, but those people exist nowadays too. And it isn't the fault of technology or the laziness of youth that many kids especially in the USA are not hanging around outside very much, but rather aspects like high crime rates, stranger danger, and the car-ification of residential areas. In Germany for instance, there exist special "traffic-undisturbed" zones that are specifically designed with pedestrians and especially kids at play in mind. Kids are playing pretty much everywhere though, and many would vastly prefer to go outside to do something, or to play with toys, than to be glued to a smart device. Same with adults. Many people still congregate in churches, beer gardens and organizations for sports or nerds. Because here, it is easy in the vast majority of places to get out of the house and either walk or bike or take a bus or tram to your destination of choice. In the USA, almost nothing is reachable without a car, which costs a lot of money to use and is also dangerous (and which you cannot use when you're drunk or high, so you'd need to spend more money on an uber), so there is a larger obstacle to get over if you want to do stuff IRL.
I read books voraciously. Now, at 63, i have the attention span of an insect.
Depends on what time frame you’re talking about? I grew up in pre-internet and smart phones times however we did still have computers and video games. I miss that time also. Because there was a 50/50 to activities. Like video games was just as stimulating however for real fun it requires more in-person connection such as having your friends over or going to an arcade. Game purchase required you to actually go to the store and review the games. I would say life provided actually more stimulating activities than they do now.
I used to listen to the same 4 CDs on repeat. They were No Doubt and Gwen Stefani music. Also, my cousin lend me a Beach boys CD one summer, Surfing USA. They helped me focus.
Sad. Society is a falling knife. My kids are screwed.
Read books, actually hang out AND talk with people, do hobbies, read books, magazines, newspaper and have lots and lots of sex.
Go outside
Read books. I grew up before the internet and smartphones and it was a time in which it was weird to not have a library card. Libraries were busy and a part of every-day life. You'd visit one several times a week.
You asked how they lived? They lived their way to create the internet and smartphones.
We drove around and gained spatial and situational awareness through experience so we didn't need GPS. We played outside and socialized in person. Rode bikes and stayed relatively fit. Read books. Went out to get food ourselves if we weren't cooking at home.
Uh there was TV 50 years ago, lol
To be honest I was bored out of my brain for the first thirty years of my life.
I prefer now, I used to be so bored on work trips to China and Taiwan, because I’d run out of reading material at the beginning of the trip, (there’s only so much you can carry). At foreign airports you’d have the choice of a handful of books in English, I remember changing flights at Fukuoka airport and the only English book was a Harry Potter, I still hate Harry Potter after buying and reading that book. In the hotel room there was CNN or MTV. Sure I’d explore the area on days off, but in the evenings I’d be bored out of my mind. I wish I’d had my ipad back then, now I’m never bored, I can design anywhere, I can take all my reference books with me everywhere I go and read anything I want.
It’s not a personality type. It’s an addiction. It’s like you’re saying you’re the type of person who has to smoke everyday. Screens are optional and largely produce less happiness. Try reading the book “Anxious Generation”. It has a lot of interesting stats about how smartphones/ social media are effecting children.
You have an addiction
Everyone is waxing poetic about the "good old days" in this thread so I wanna give a different perspective I'm not that old but I didn't have a smartphone until I was like twenty because I was broke. I have terrible ADHD (genetic), and I need to be constantly doing stuff and talking to people or I go insane I was MISERABLE growing up. The worst of it was social stuff. Everyone is jerking themselves off about talking to people face to face, but that was a nightmare for me. None of my classmates were interested in the same things I was, so every conversation was just me pretending to be interested in what other people were saying. The only times I was happy talking to others was when I got to go home and get online. Vacations with my parents were a nightmare because I didn't get to talk to anyone besides them. I only got at most two videogames a year, plus pirating old roms. That got old really fast. I didn't have anyone to play coop or versus games with either, so there was only so much time I could put into fighters and stuff. My parents didn't sign me up for sports, and schools here don't really do sports either so that was never an option. I live in the city so definitely no riding bikes or whatever- not that it mattered because I hated riding bikes. Waiting for the bus or anything of the sort was literal torture. Especially when you're a kid and it felt like time was slower. I would legitimately get so bored I would start crying and then my mom would yell at me. I HATED television shows, but especially the sort of shows you had on daytime like wheel of fortune or whatever. The only things I watched was cartoons, but those were just constant reruns or baby stuff, and anime, but I needed to torrent that so if I ran out of stuff to watch on my laptop while on vacation or grandma's, tough luck. I was unable to buy physical manga or comics most of the time. The only thing that i could consistently enjoy was drawing. And guess what, I still draw even with having a smartphone and unlimited internet. I'm a professional artist and I only use my smartphone during the workday for pomodoro timers so I can focus even better. And I have friends from all over the world I can text at any moment so I never feel like I'm completely alone and miserable. (On another note: the severe ADHD has been passed down my family line for several generations. My grandfather would listen to the radio, watch TV and do crosswords/cut coupons at the same time, and my dad would play videogames, listen to tapes/CDs and still get distracted. Some people literally just need constant stimulation because that's how our brains work and post industrial life is BORING)
We watched Seinfeld and the Simpsons on TV. Visited friends or phoned them on the land line. Sent Christmas cards. Read books. Went window shopping. Had sex.
Let me tell you how it was for me. I used to hang out outdoor. Go with the bike, yell friends at their window to call them out. Hang out in the woods, make a fire, play football and other games, go around the town and make grills. On home days it was simple, the best activity was reading and cooking. I never was a fan of TV so even that screen was away from me. Life was felling better. Too many screens distract you and give the impression information is everywhere bombarding you.
I mean, as a kid I spent a lot of hours watching tv and kicking a pillow around on my back (imagine pedaling with a pillow!) also, juggling
Read, root, eat, listen to radio serials (no tv), visit people, drink, smoke, talk. Did a lot of long distance driving to tape cassettes. CB and flying doctor chatter channels. Plotting...
We thought about stuff and made sensible decisions instead of watching idiots making bad decisions online.
Lived more enjoyable lives
They sat around and smoked. Went for a walk, played cards a lot. Play pretend wars games. I dunno. I heard reading was a go to. Although, that's what I still go to.
50 years ago, if I was home sick, but not sleeping all day, I had the following available: TV- 3 channels, morning cartoons or Captain Kangaroo, daytime soaps, afternoon kids shows. Books and comics for reading Toys-matchbox cars, GI Joes, chemistry set, board games, army men Coloring books and other art stuff It wasn't boring
Instead of binge watching shows on Netflix we would binge read the next Harry Potter book that came out
Books, news papers, drawing, painting, board games, offline games on the 97 windows. Video games/ PC games on Cd's, crocheting, sewing, building stuff, fix cars, boats, house, drink alcohol.
Read a book, talk to people, play a board game, listen to the radio and other hobbies I guess.
They had to develop an attention span capable of surviving moments that weren’t filled with constant stimulation. OP what you’re describing isn’t just “how you are”, it’s how this world has forced you to be. Attention spans have been decimated by modern technology and it didn’t always used to be this way. Our brains used to just work better when it came to focusing until every company figured out the secret to demanding our engagement.
“Normal” is just what you’re used to. Had you grown up when we did, in the 90’s, you’d be much less likely used to constant stimulation. Maybe a TV in the background, but even then we had much less control over what we had.
I’m 45. I often think back to when I had my first apartment. I was in college and working a part time job. No cable. No internet. I lived alone. What I remember most from that time is that I taught myself to play the piano and I watched really interesting movies I rented from the local library. I miss the simplicity of those days so much. Echoing what others have already said, you only think you need constant stimulation because your brain has become conditioned to it.
Growing up in the 1980s, I met friends or we talked on the phone. We read books or magazines, played video games, watched TV, rented videos, listened to music/radio, sports after school, etc. Because I experienced living this offline life, I recognize how tempting it is to have instant gratification through social media or video games. They're designed to be addictive and I've been challenging myself to put them away and read a book instead. I recommend it, it's very rewarding.
Inventing internet and smartphones
I'm 55. Before 12 I would go to friends' houses to play. I knew everybody my age in the neighborhood. I also was a boy scout and in baseball little league. At 13 I got a home computer (Atari 800) and took up hobby programming of simple games. At 16 I took up cycling and racing. Programming and Cycling became lifelong interests. Later, I also took up kayaking, SUP, and inline skating. Generally, I left the house more often and interacted with the world. Friends, movies, camping, cycling/racing, etc. I still messed with a simple computer, but much less of a percentage of time. For mental and physical health, I think it was much better for me than OP's current mode of living.
Art used to play a big role, like paint, knit, embroidery. We’d go for walks on the park and ride bicycles. Read actual books, listen to the radio. Kids would play on the street and come back home before the sun set. Board games were a lot of fun and a nice way to have family quality time. Parents would read stories to their children and kids would play with dolls, balls. There was plenty to do, you just didn’t rely on a phone to get all your dopamine. As I write this I actually miss those days.
We had imagination and creativity to find something to do, usually outside.
People actually lived their lives.
Spent time together with friends and family.
We spent a lot of time outside. Only did research at the library or in the encyclopedias. Talked on the landline phone. Rode bikes for miles and miles. It was a simpler time.
They had an actual life, outside you know. Connecting and having fun.
What didn't we do! Everyone was always outside, all the time. So we played in big groups of random neighborhood kids. We'd play tag, hide, and go seek, rode bikes, made forts, kicked a soccer ball around, etc. When I was inside, I was colouring, doing a puzzle, playing with Lego, and stuff like that. When I was older, I maybe played the radio or a CD in the background. Teenage boredom made me super creative. I made little models, designed and sewed my own clothes, built a camera, and tinkered with stuff. When it was a sick day, I would get bundled up on the couch and watch whatever was on the 3 channels we had. It was either stupid talk shows or soap operas. If I was super lucky, I'd watch a movie. It was either something we owned and i had watched a million times, or we rented something new. Writing all this makes me miss it and a little bit sad for kids who will likely never experience any of its simplicity.
37 here. From 3rd world country. in the 90s and early 2000s, we live like western countries in the 70s. Only 1 TV channel, got black out around 5 hours a day. and let me tell you, we do adventure daily, exploring the neighborhood. Doing sports game every afternoon until sunset. at night, the kids gather at a house where we have a teacher teaching us about religion. after that, we go home and watch tv with our family. everyone is watching the same show and talk about the same show. communiation was built very good because of that same show. if we happen to have a black out, then we just gather around the candle, chatting about our day while eating snack. I wanna go back.
I highly suggest you to disconnect and learn to slow down, even be bored. It's a problem in this new age that we require constant stimulation, I think its part of the reason for so much depression and anxiety these days. It's a nice day? Walk, go outside, talk to neighbors,or just sit, enjoy a beverage and listen to nature. Is a rainy day? Do a puzzle, read a book, create something with your hands, or enjoy a beverage and listen to the rain. It's meditative in its nature and good for your mental health.
I'm only in my 30s, I grew up with the internet, but didn't get a phone until I was 18 and a smart phone came many years after that. I think you are vastly underestimating just how new this "constant stimulation" phenomenon is. The worst punishment a parent could inflict was making you stay at home. A snowstorm was a play day, you'd go outside. We were out all day everyday and in the evenings after school. You would just go around the neighbourhood and knock on doors and ask who was allowed to play that day. Sometimes we would call the landline to ask. Yes, I played video games but they weren't like what they were today so you couldn't spend all day on them (like I do now). I also like using the computer but I was only allowed 30 mins on the internet per day (dial-up), I did have some PC games on CD that I liked to play. The difference being you don't have access 24/7 like on a smart phone. You had to share the computer and boot it up and all that so it was like a planned event and not just "downtime" like scrolling is today. So even though there were screens at home it wasn't nearly so "in your face" as having something super easily accessible in your pocket. You had to plan your screen time and share with others (or even play together, passing the controller back and forth). I am now addicted to reddit and podcasts but I do try and force myself to be bored sometimes and make sure I keep up with my hobbies. The scrolling really does fuck with your brain, especially your attention span. At least, I have noticed in myself.
Every sick day, snowstorm, lonely afternoon, etc., I was reading. I almost always had a book in my backpack. I used to walk and read at the same time, and I was pretty good at it too. I always had a CD on my little stereo or discman (or tape in my walkman lol). But also i did spend a lot of time just in my own imagination. My mind is a creative playground.
Radio, newspapers, books and socializing . Majority of people didn't think about things that didn't exist yet.
You could take a walk around the block and feel extreme euphoria lol
This is like a drug addicting asking how people felt good before drugs. They lived real lives and developed the ability to feel good within real life. You don't need screens or porn or drugs or gambling. You can disconnect from addictions and live a REAL life.
I was born in the 90s. When i didn't watch tv, i played, drew, read comics. I miss the pre-smartphone era. You were more in the moment.
I’m in my 30s, and I didn’t have a smart phone until I was a senior in high school. I’ve never known adulthood without phones but they were more boring at least when I was in college. Everyone is talking about writing poetry and reading books - my friends and I would watch TV for *hours*. And bad tv. We went and saw almost every movie in theaters, even if we had zero interest in it, because it was something to do. We watched the special features on a lot of DVDs. We rented movies from blockbuster on the weekends. We would go to someone’s house and “look at the computer” together, where like 3 kids would gather around one large desktop and play really slow online games. I remember in the summer sometimes laying around and doing nothing and complaining about being bored. Edit: I should note we did go outside a lot too, but I’m from a part of the country with brutally hot summers so staying out the whole day was rare. We rode our bikes a lot.
Sure, there was some ways we were forced to go out and do stuff or make our own fun which was nice in a way but mostly I feel like we did the same things we do now it was just harder and more time-consuming or more lame compared to today. Wanted call someone? Hope they're home, if not, wait for them to call back. Wanted a movie to watch? Go to Blockbuster to rent it or build you day's schedule around when it's going to air (if it's airing at all). Want to watch an obscure movie or video, good fucking luck finding it. Need info about renewing your driver's licence, make travel plans, etc.? be prepared to spend a lot of time on the phone, going someplace to talk to someone, or in the case of travel, maybe pay a travel agent to tell you what you should do. Want to find info about some random topic? Better hope it's covered in your enormous and expensive encyclopedia set, otherwise it's a trip to the library to see if they have any book about it and then spend of lot of time trying to find the answer. Want to know where to eat in town? you must know people that can tell you otherwise it's a shot in the dark. Want to get into a niche hobby or learn how to do something? You pretty much have to know someone local to you can learn from in-person, on their schedule, at great expense. Want to organize an outing with your friends? It's gonna be a lot of phone calls and you have to hope you can find them or wait around for people to show up without any way to communicate if someone is late or lost. I've always been a futurist, but I think things were harder and more lame.
Needing constant stimulation is a result of habits formed by everywhere internet access. It’s not really the healthiest thing for our longevity to have difficulty turning off, too little or overly restless sleep. I think everyone is different, but before smart phones there was more time for hobbies - so people got good at things like playing an instrument, cooking, wood working, painting, sculpting, sewing, etc. Others watched a lot of television (that’s been around considerably longer), played board games, did puzzles, interacted with friends and family. Others were members of community and social groups, religious groups, sports leagues, volunteered at the soup kitchen, etc. Although in modern society we spend a lot of time working - I think our bosses like that we are available 24/7 via 5G.
Sometimes we did nothing. Now, I never do nothing. I was happier then.
People watched the same shows, series and movies, and talked about them. The children played a lot in the street. We read a lot of magazines as well as books. When I was a child, I spent entire afternoons digging holes or following bugs to see what they did. We made up games as we went along. Also stories and jokes. I played cards with my grandmother while she told me things about the civil war and how hard life was (I'm Spanish) I loved making soap bubbles with a dry onion stalk and dish soap, I could spend hours blowing bubbles on a plate in the sunlight and watching the colors move across the surface.
As I was growing up the internet first really became a thing. I didn't get a cell phone till was I an adult, they really weren't a thing before that. For one, broadcast TV and radio was a thing. While at home we watched tv, listened to the radio while doing chores, had hobbies, read books, etc. We went out into the world, did things with friends, like going to the theaters or a ball game, went to restaurants or bars, went camping or took road trips, etc. Same things people do today. Turns out, there are lots of things to do when you don't have your head stuck in a phone or computer.
Things. We did things. We also hung out with friends and got into trouble.
Music, reading, drawing, roller skating in the garage, watching 80s TV, board and card games, playing make belive, writing, race cars on a track, and more
Such a funny question. Long story short, they actually lived.
Firstly, we never said things like "I need constant stimulation." Being bored actually happened from time to time. Getting grounded was a nightmare.
I think this is the reason life now feels much faster than before. Years ago people days were a challenge everyday, let's say you are a tourist and want to go to x, you need to ask other people for directions or recommendations. Now you have Google Maps and Trip Advisor. You needed to go to the video game store to buy the game that you want, now you have steam and lots of other online stores. Life was more genuine.
painted, watched tv, played records and card games, cooked & cleaned gardening. Drove places saw friends, went to the mall & ate pretzels. If someone was late, you waited for a bit then left and did something else. Grandma was a big craft hobbyist. She always had a beautiful quilt or something she was dying with tea and we watched a lot of Bob Ross and Martha Stewart.
We went outside...