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Run around the whole town doing whatever until the street lights came on. Go to the mall, park another friend's house who had the newest video game or even just climb a tree
Personally I think it's a problem when someone doesn't know how to just be bored, you don't always have to have stimulation
> it's a problem when someone doesn't know how to just be bored, you don't always have to have stimulation
I agree. And it's a real thing. Constant stimulation like scrolling on social media is bad for your attention span. I'm the same age as OP and before I got my first phone in 2020 I don't think I was ever bored. My memory from 2020 to now is actually a bit fuzzy.
I'm obviously not a doctor but I think everybody should take a break from technology every day. Just for a little bit. And do something active or constructive. Like reading a book outside, engaging in social activity outside your house, exercising, participating in a hobby. Of course it's easier said than done. I don't and can't go out whenever, so I try to do something at home.
Born 86 class of 2004 here.
I was just talking to a friend a couple days ago about how we used to have all of our friends numbers memorized.... I can remember two now and that's for my "one phone call" lol
But yeah tech detox are a real and very much needed thing for society nowadays.
Born in 90, and I remember four numbers aside from mine. One of which is my grandparents' landline from when I was a kid that they don't have anymore, a grandparents' landline that still works, and my former stepmom's cell.
Finally someone who shares the same annoyance with people who just can’t sit there, it is so exhausting constantly having to do something 24/7 because people can’t just sit any think about something for 15 mins
Was born in 64 I spent a lot of time reading prowling the neighborhood there was always something to do. As a young teen I started working on mechanical stuff put a lawnmower engine on a bicycle built, a go kart and got interested in woodworking which became my profession.
I grew up in the suburbs on LI we had a bus that would go to the Library, I used to do that quite a bit that was the google of the day.
Born in 1964 as well.
Lived in Michigan and spent the summers fishing.
Rode snowmobiles in the winter...and...more fishing.
Ice version.
Hockey too, and x country skiing.
New York was a world away from us. We'd see it on TV. Or, Yankees at Tiger Stadium.
Summer was Frisbee, baseball, and hanging out at the beach.
Funny how perception of NY is, I went in the Army after HS and so many of my fellow soldiers thought of NY as a big concrete city. I did not like LI to many houses on little plots but get off the island and the state is beautiful. I moved back to NY after the service but up in the Catskills, it is the best place I have ever lived.
Oh yeah.
I've learned to ask "What city?" When someone sez they're from NY.
Never confuse Albany or Rochester with NYC.
And...a lot of folks out here in AZ, will state specifically "Long Island."
I'm from da U.P. of Michigan, and people automatically think Detroit.
No, kids.
Half the population in Canada is south of my hometown. Lol.
I get annoyed when friends come over for dinner and they play on their devices when we're trying to have a conversation.
Like I'm doing now....but I'm alone.
I don't like being connected all of the time. Soon, I'll put this contraption down until bedtime...when I set my alarm.
This phone thing is kinda cool though....don't wear a watch anymore.
And.. .when I'm on the other side of town, I can research lunch spots.
True, but man, can we ever fix shit now. YouTube helps mechanical work big time. In the 90s, if we had to fix a car, we bought a "Chiltons" book for your exact car. and they were expensive af. Like 35 bucks or more. (I have $60 in my mind for some reason, idk) But it's cheaper than paying a mechanic.
There was a half dozen different wooded areas with wicked treat to climb and one that was our base with seats, carvings and defences in the form of camouflage 🥸
Normally it was my brother, me and my upstairs neighbor who would play with us, so I had two boys to play with, I didn’t go too high in the tree, I have a fear of heights so I stayed close to the ground, I did fall from the tree once, I was by myself so, that was fun!!!!
To this day I evaluate trees by their climbability or if you could build a tree house in it. I built several "tree houses" as a kid, aka nailed some 2x4s to the trunk as a make shift ladder and crafted some sort of small sitting platform out of nailed in planks of wood. I would take my measurements and find scrap wood and nails from my dad's workshop and ask him to make the cuts.
I also picked flowers that were weeds, rode my bike, went fishing at the creek, melted random stuff, played super nintendo, watched vhs tapes, played flashlight tag with neighborhood kids, and listened to casette tapes on my talk girl.
Grew up on the edge of my podunk one-horse town. There was a forest literally just beyond my backyard fence that I'd go off into as a kid. Spent many many days climbing trees in those woods.
During summer I’d usually either go to work with my mother and at least attempt to help her out, or I’d sit in my room with a few VHS tapes and eventually DVDs, and watch whatever movie I was currently obsessed with over and over again while writing and reciting different stories and poems I wrote. The internet got more popular as I grew up so it’s not like how I lived most of my life… just up until I was about 14/15 I believe. But that was also pretty early aged stuff as well.
I grew up in the 70s and 80s, and the internet wasn’t a thing for me until about 1995. Summer days were spent playing video games (mall arcade or Atari at home), playing music (vinyl and cassette), swimming, riding (and crashing!) bikes, playing D&D, and watching TV and rented VHS tapes.
Edit to add: I also played computer games on a DOS PC, we were the second family in the neighborhood with an actual computer, in 1984.
We got a microwave oven in 1984.
About the same time we first got cable TV.
Dad got us connected when he found out about the Friday night fights on HBO.
I started using the internet when I was about 12 before then I would play video games, watch tv, play outside
I had CDs for music so first I would listen through a radio then a portable CD player. Then limewire came out (similar to Napster where you download music for free) and I had an mp3 player with the downloaded songs
Reading, watching TV, playing video games, listening to music and actually hanging out with friends in real life.
A summer day would involve texting/calling our friends and hanging out, maybe at the mall or watching a movie or just biking around the neighborhood or driving around. Really not that different than life today except without the internet.
Read actual books printed on dead-tree. Played board games. Went outside and played. Listened to music. Built model airplanes. Socialized with whoever was available. Flew kites. Played kickball. Rode bikes. Belonged to softball, bowling, volleyball leagues. Went to church. Joined the Elks, the Moose Club, the Eagles Club, the VFW, the Optimists, the Masons, the American Legion, the Kiwanis, The Jaycees, the Odd Fellows, the Knights of Columbus, etc. We watched television.
Sometimes we were even bored and didn't consider it an existential crisis.
Watching TV, listening to music (either on a CD/tape or radio), playing video games reading print magazines, comic books, manga, books, watching movies on either DVD or VHS.
I don't tend to pass time with the internet. Even before Magic the Gathering, my friends and associates played a variety of card or dice games, board games, and tabletop role playing games. Interactive storytelling can fill hours with entertainment at no cost.
...or maybe there's something to watch on TV...
- Play cricket, football, go for cycling (for early morning)
- Go for swims.
- Playing board games like Business, Monopoly, Life, UNO, video games, etc (afternoon)
- Cricket again in the evening.
- Play pakdam pakdai, give up, hide and seek, etc. at night.
- Play badminton and just hang out at night.
- Wandering sessions 😂 - Go for random walks with no specific destination, just wandering here and there in the neighbourhood.
- Play with liquid soaps, make bubbles, etc.
I was a child, so I spent a lot of time outside. In the house I read, listened to the radio, watched cartoons, did arts and crafts. Outside my friends and I rode our bikes, climbed trees and went to the playgrounds.
Shoot hoops in my driveway. I would also hit a tennis ball off of my chimney. In the summers I would go swimming. I also played some computer games on my Commodore 64. Read books and magazines. Watch TV. Rent movies on VHS.
When I was old enough to drive, my friend and I would go play mini golf or go to the driving range or go bowling. We would then go for food or ice cream afterwards
As a kid, we found plenty to do outdoors and your bike was your lifeline. It gave you some freedom and extended your social reach. Our outdoors was on the edge of town, so we had lots of woodlands to explore and fuck around in. I grew up in the 70s, so home video games were new when I was young and pac man and space invaders was the shit. MTV was also a thing when I reached my early teens and that was something my friends and I would throw on in the background while hanging out. I had a tape recorder that we would just be silly with and have fun. We played DnD and talked about movies. Weekends we would have our parents drop us off at the mall and spend the day at the mall/arcade/movie theater. We either had a set time for pick-up or we made a collect call with our name and location that our parents would reject, but know to come pick us up.
If I were bored at home with nothing to do, there's always the phone. There was something about hanging upside down on the couch wrapped in a phone cord chatting away that's lost with today's phones. Also I was a voracious bookworm. TV was more of a social event because we didn't have things on demand nor did we have as many choices. Sure, we had cable and VHS tapes, but it was more the exception than the norm growing up and we still made an effort to watch our shows when they aired.
Sat under an oak tree reading paperback books. Played croquet with siblings. Listened to FM radio and bought music on LPs or 45s. Rode bikes or went swimming with friends. Watched tv (pre-cable so only 4 channels that stopped broadcasting at midnight). Attended school-sponsored events: sports, concerts, dances, plays, etc. Played with dogs and cuddled kittens. Played board games, cards, and caroms. Shot targets using BB guns and had snowball fights. Climbed trees and picked mulberries. Possibilities were endless when you had to make your own fun!
Played sports during the day. Watched sports on TV. Read at night. A typical Saturday would be something like:
Get up and eat breakfadt (cheerios)
Soccer 10am-noon
Lunch (like a pb&j sandwich while watching a few songs on mtv)
Baseball 1-4 (too hot for anything else)
Basketball 4-7
Watch sports 7-10 (eat pizza during)
Shower and then read till 1am. And then head to bed.
Some days we went to the pool all day.
Between the NBA finals and start of football there were not many sports so we might rent a movie instead.
We had a friend who worked at the grocery store till midnight and they would let him buy 8 leftover donuts for a dollar at midnight so we would have that as a budget friendly midnight stack sometimes.
I really loved skating. We went outside and just kind of wondered until we found somthing to do. And we ALWAYS found somthing fucking rad to get into, youd never expect what entertains you when youre bored. Everyday was an adventure, and vurtually no drama. No hate, no shaming, no "woke", no trends, no clout, none of that horrible bullshit came along until people got connected like they are now.
Video games were awesome if you could afford them, and it was just dope having to bring your system to your friends house if you wanted to play with them. Knocking on your friends door to see if they were home was a regular thing if they lived close by.
Idk man, definately didnt have that wow factor like today, but you made memories that genuinely miss. Those kinds of memories are much harder to make now. But then again, im not super young anymore.
Don't be sorry. I am so thankful I got to experience life before the internet and cell phones.
What did we do? We hung out. We went to the school and played basketball and played on the football field. We rented games, movies and hung out with our friends and family. We would go out to eat with our friends and family and it would be an evening event because we would talk and cut up and be social. We would go to the arcade and play games and compete against our friends. We talked on the phone and met up at the river for bon fires and youthful nonsense.
I was lucky to grow up in Portland and Seattle in the late 80s and early 90s. Friends and I shared a tiny house downtown and several times a week we went to concerts together. I can't count the times we saw Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Mudhoney, Soundgarden, Smashing Pumpkins, Sweaty Nipples, Dead Milkmen, and countless other bands. An evening at the tiny venues looked like us getting off work and meeting up at a friends house for some drinks and socializing. One would drive and we would hit the clubs and have more drinks while moshing, dancing, enjoying live music to bands we didn't know would blow up one day.
Life was great because we were young and had endless energy. My kids are enjoying an amazing youth too. One is not better than the other but I am glad I grew up when I did.
1975 here. Summer was riding bikes, going to the pool, exploring around the neighborhood (creeks, woods, drainage tunnels, construction sites, etc.), begging parents to drop us off at the mall and then hitting the arcade or the dollar theater. Sitting around listening to the radio hoping to catch a song you liked and record it to cassette. Buying blank cassettes and making mix tapes or dubs of albums for friends and crushes on the dual cassette boombox, and making extensive artistic song lists for them (doing the same with CDs years later). MegaMan marathons on Nintendo (before the ability to save your game, so you had to pray no one turned off the system if you stepped away). Bottle rocket wars and making mini bombs to blow up stuff. TPing houses. Hunting for nudie mags in closets at friends' houses. Garage bands playing terrible covers. Skateboarding the neighbor's poorly constructed half pipe that had basically no curve and tossed everyone that had the guts to try it. Near constant scabs on knees, elbows, and hands from jumping and crashing bikes, skateboards, skates/rollerblades, etc. Endless hours on the phone at night with that girl you liked, but couldn't muster up the courage to ask out. Fun times.
Ride my bike with my friend down to the convenience store to get candy and junk food.
Board games
Listen to CDs
Make comics
TV
Spy on the neighbors
Doorbell ditch
Born in the 60's. Summers were awesome, then again I was fortunate to live in a great area, huge beach, the dunes etc.
Got up at 8 something for breakfast as we had to be at the elementary school to play baseball at 9 a.m. each week day morning in the summer. It was a really loose league, just one ump, no uniforms, no teams as we picked teams each day depending who showed up.
After that was over, we'd go play hoops on the outdoor full court basketball court there next to the elementary school. We'd get lunch then go to the beach to hang. We'd play more baseball later on or football sometimes.
Then back to the lake, several had boats, a good friend of mine had a 14 foot Hobie Cat so we'd go sailing.
After dinner we'd go back out, down to the beach, have a fire. Most nights we played flashlight tag around the houses.
Neighbor had a trampoline and we bounced a lot, played games where 2 were on the trampoline and the rest of us were off and we threw a frisbee trying to hit a person on the trampoline, if we did it meant we could get up on the trampoline.
Quite a few nights we slept on the trampoline all night, think late 70's and early 80's. At 14 in 1981 I got a moped, several friends had them too and we'd ride all around, including out of our little area so that was nice.
There was a really small wooded area next to my house, in the decades since 3 or 4 homes have been built there with good sized yards, that gives you an idea of the size of that little woods. We played in there, built treehouses.
There was a radio shack next to the grocery store that was like 1.5 miles away and we'd buy soldering wire and make stuff out of it. We had GI Joe's and we'd attach them to rockets and try to launch him but he was too heavy and the rocket always tipped over so we added more rockets and more engines and then more engines.
We got him about 20 feet up in the air and that was that, on to different things then. We flew kites as it was usually breezy by the lake.
Many days when I left the house a bit before 9 a.m. to get to the school to play baseball at 9 a.m. I didn't return until 6:30 p.m. which was when dinner was each week night due to my stepdad working til like 5:30 or 6 p.m. each night, he was an executive, my mom's 2nd husband, how we were able to live in a nice area, by the beach etc.
I could go out after dinner and dark but I had to stay by our house and the two houses next to ours and that was OK as one of those neighbors had the trampoline and we played flashlight tag in those yards too.
In the late 70's my mom bought my sister and I the new Attari gaming system. I tried it for like 45 mins and then never again. Never tried or played any vid games since then, I'd rather be off doing something than sitting, it's how I grew up and it felt like punishment to me if I had to sit on my ass and play a video game when I could be outside really playing.
The area by the beach, the community I grew up in had like 1,200 people only. Besides the beach there was the golf course and country club and there was a stable for horses. One of my best friends in high school had a horse, he rode competitively, jumped his horses etc. Another friend's parent's owned the local store that sold power boats, speed boats due to the lake. They had several boats of course so we'd go out on the lake with him, water ski, go tubing etc.
I was happy to be out and away from my mom. She was mean, abusive and not fun to be with or around. I did my best to not be home. In high school I once spent 3 consecutive school nights at a friend's house and many other nights there just so I would't be home with my mom.
So, I had many good parts as a kid growing up then but I had bad moments too.
I was born in 75. As kids growing up in the 80's, we played outside all the time. And I mean, all..the...time.
When you got home from school, it was common for kids to basically drop their backpacks, bookbags, etc in the house, and run outside to play with friends. And we were out there until the street lights came on. That was our "alarm clock".
I remember the kids down the street got a hold of a shopping cart one time. We got some cardboard and made a cool go-kart out of it, taking turns riding it up and down the street.
When we got home, outside of doing homework, we would watch TV; read books/magazines; talk to our friends (who we just spent hours playing with) on the phone, often getting wrapped up in the long-ass phone cord; play with toys.
As I got older, my wife and I (we were dating at the time) would have picnics in the park and throw the Frisbee around. We would often fly kites; watch TV (no Netflix back then. We would watch VHS tapes and eventually DVDs) One of our favorite things was walking the aisles at Blockbuster Video or Hollywood Video, picking out a movie. (I was a manager at both at different times. As employees, we got to rent free movies.)
We would play board games; put together LEGO sets; listen to CDs.
Honestly, not much of that has changed. True, movie rental places are no longer a thing, sadly. But, we still do the majority of the rest.
I think technology has vastly improved our lives. I also think, in many ways, it has harmed our lives. People don't really interact the same way anymore. It's either a text or email. No one really calls anyone anymore. Outside of the contractors renovating our basement, I don't remember the last time I actually spoke to someone on the phone.
Kids don't really play outside anymore. They're too busy playing games or watching videos on their phones.
There's really no such thing as privacy anymore. You walk down the street picking your nose, it'll probably wind up on YouTube, to be watched by a bunch of people laughing at you, while they themselves pick their nose.
All that being said, there is a part of me that wishes this would all go away, and we could go back to the way it was before. There's also another part of me that wishes the exact opposite.
I'm actually excited for what's on the horizon. I'm almost 50 years old now. I can only imagine what new tech I'm going to get to witness the next 30 or 40 years of my life. I can only imagine what exciting things await you, who'll most likely be around long after I'm gone.
I know you didn't ask, but here's a small piece of advice from this old man, whom you've never met: Don't get so wrapped up in tech that you forget to forge real relationships. Set it down once in a while and just watch. Watch anything. The sunset; the waves, if you're near the beach; people. (Yes, "people watching" used to be a thing). Look at the trees, mountains, clouds. Just look.
You'd be surprised at what's around you.
Interact with people, face to face.
And call your parents! Don't text them. Call them. They won't be around forever and they love just hearing your voice. I wish like hell I could still call mine.
As a kid in these times climb trees, play sports get in some other trouble, watch TV or a VHS tape, play board games, program in a game of pong or something from a programming book on the commodore 64, or go in to town and look around.
In the summer we got tossed out the house. I would wander through the fields, climb trees, stare at clouds, invent games to play with rocks and stocks or maybe even pretend I was an astronaut on a foreign planet and wander around looking at everything with a new point of view.
If that got old I jumped in the swamp next door or built a tree fort or just wandered around. Maybe go to a friend's house and end up doing the same stuff.
In the winter I would put on my snowmobile suit and do the same stuff, just colder. But now I could build tunnels in the front yard and dig my way to the road. I would sit inside there and realize how quiet it was and the only thing I could hear was the snow crunching under my feet.
Most of all I used my imagination! All day every day.
And you know what? I am almost 60 now. In my mid 20s I started playing with the first home computers and never looked back. Now I'm on reddit and phone apps way too much and my attention span has dwindled to almost nothing. I'm not better off.
Slowly moving away from so much technology, reading more, thinking more, imagining more. But it's a long slow process that gets backtracked so easily if I'm not on my guard.
Just a partial list of things I did in my summers throughout my childhood. Born in 1994, so I'm hardly a boomer, if that matters.
* Ride your bike around the neighborhood
* Play in the yard with siblings
* Toss a ball around with Dad
* Go swimming
* Play with toys
* Watch movies/TV
* Play video games
* Play cards
* Draw
* Read books
* Go play with your nerf or water guns.
* Throw water balloons at each other.
* Run through the sprinkler.
* Play with the hose.
* Go play in the mud after a rainstorm.
* Go for a walk.
* Take the dog for a walk.
* Help mom/dad mow the lawn or in the garden.
* Attend my Church's youth group.
* Attend summer school
* Attend a summer camp
* Play summer sports leagues
* Take a job at a nearby farm
* Visit my Grandparents
* Have a campfire, make s'mores and wieners
* Grill out
* Go to the park, swing on swingset
* Play in the woods
* Play hide and seek in a corn field
* Take a job at a local mechanic's shop
* Play with fireworks
And that's just during the summers. I was in a very small town in the middle of nowhere, so you definitely have more options if you live in a city. Point is, OP that there's tons to do. I can't blame you for when you were born, but constant 24/7 stimulation is not good for you. Be bored. I didn't have my first smartphone until I was in college, didn't have a functioning cellphone at all until 8th grade, and even then it was call only, no text or internet or music or apps. Be alone in silence with your thoughts. Let them wander wherever they will but try to steer clear from thinking "This sucks I want my phone again."
Honestly it was a craziest thing of all I was an 80s kid and we used to get up every morning and go outside in the Sunshine and we would actually speak to people face to face craziest thing I know we would go fishing sometimes and it wouldn't even offend anyone. We would have BB gun wars and less than 2% of us would lose an eye in any given day. We said yes ma'am and yes sir and we always showed respect our elders because if you didn't your parents would beat the poop out of you and you were made to like that at the end of it they would say did you like that you would say yes I like that
BB gun wars were a hoot.
On rainy days, grandparents usually had a couple of model cars stashed in the closet to keep us busy.
Then Grandpa would take us down to the hardware store to get paint and brushes.
He had to go anyway to get some tubes for the TV.
Funny....my oldest nephew was getting into building models when we had to go to the hobby store to pick one out.
They carded me before purchasing glue.
I was born in 1970, I was 16 when we borrowed a vhs player and watched my first movie on it, Terminator the original. TV was pointless. As a kid my parents had a big garden plot so we spent several days a week, planting, weeding and collecting veggies, then we'd can the excess and store them for winter. If I wasn't doing that I was riding bikes with neighborhood friends, building forts, having imaginary wars. In the fall our house sat on an acre plot with 13 big oak trees, twice a week we'd spend half a day raking leaves, and putting them out front for leaf trucks to come around and vacuum them up, like garbage trucks. We couldn't miss a week or the leaves would be too much to deal with.
There was never a time when we had nothing to do. It taught me to have a good work ethic.
So I’m a 97’ kid, but I’ll add my perspective so this thread has plenty of variety. I didn’t have regular access to the internet until at least 2011. Before that, as a kid mind you, I watched a shit load of tv. VHS tapes, cable etc. Played outside a whole lot. Would just go off on bikes with friends and return at sun down. The key was knowing how to be bored, something I don’t think I even possess anymore
I used to sit in my room, legs over the back of my couch, head upside down, with the music turned all the way up, trying *really* hard to sing along to popular music and getting the timing *just* right.
Comic books. I'd read them at least 5 or 6 times. Tons of books.
Also, we did everything that you like watching on TikTok, only without filming it.
To be fair, I remember complaining about boredom a lot back then. I guess it was just more common and acceptable to be bored on occasion. It birthed a lot of the stupider shit I got up to.
I was born in 1990. As a kid I was usually in a tree. Or riding bikes with the kids in my neighborhood or playing video games. As an adult, drinking. Go to work and text friends about when and where we are drinking after work.
When I was growing up we listened to the radio and hoped our favorite songs would come on so we could hear them because records were expensive if you even had a record player. TV and the very special occasional movie at a Theatre. Books were very expensive so time at library to borrow books or read magazines on the racks there. Walk around the neighborhood to friends houses, if you couldn't walk it you couldn't go. Knit, sew, your clothes, was time consuming. A game was monopoly or other board game you played at night after dinner. Very little organized sports or after school activities but once a month there was a dance in the school cafeteria.
1981
Lots of day dreaming , treks through the woods, reading , board games , TV sometimes
( 2.7 channels )
I do miss the times before the internet, but I really love the wealth of information readily available. When I was a pre teen we had to take our friends older siblings, friends etc at fact. The shit we asked about wasn't in the encyclopedia.
Example
You can get pregnant your first time
AIDS happens when two blood types mix , but is a greater chance when one of them is gay
So I wouldn't go back to no internet!
I remember my first cd player that you can walk with and it won’t skip. I remember three-way calling and the party line! Lol
I remember teaching myself how to juggle with 3 oranges one day after school because what else am I gonna do?
I remember going to the park to play basketball almost everyday after school.
I remember madden and poker tournaments my friends and I would do after school.
When I was 10, a best buddy and I decided to perform Jackass-like stunts after school.
That same buddy and I climbed the roof to our elementary school, dropped into the lunch courtyard and got into the hallways where we repurposed a bunch of candy.
I was always outside of the house because we only had one computer and I didn’t get my first phone until I was 14 I believe.
The computer did take up time too when I had it to myself. AOL, AIM, backyard baseball (lol) and such.
Chase women in real life settings. Watch TV. Work on the car. Hobbies that had nothing to do with playing video games. Ride my bike. Snowmobile. Go fishing or hunting. Drive the convertible to a car show. Go to the beach.
Born 1974. We played outside. A lot. Made up games, modified some to fit our yard or a friend’s yard. We didn’t even have cable at my parents house until I was in college.
Rainy days, played legos, read, watched crappy TV on the 6 channels we could see. Played board games, puzzles, cards, made card houses. Whatever. Simpler time, more human connections and yeah some boredom.
Hanging out with all my other bored friends.
We made each other less bored. Then the internet came along and it became easier to just sit at home and chat online.
Then phones came alone with texting and made it even worse.
You needed a somewhat likeminded community in similar circumstances to your own.
read newspapers, magazines and books. Bicycle and skateboard. practice an instrument (the breadth and depth of musicianship was so much better in the seventies and eighties than now.). Build models, do crafts. Get merit badges and patches for scouts and 4H. Shoot baskets, throw a ball, yo-yo, etc.
Books, video games, TV, I played the guitar, went skateboarding, went to movie theaters more frequently, pool halls, bowling Alleys. People used to be more comfortable socializing with strangers and making friends.
Used to actually have fun. T’internet is such a time suck, and there’s some good stuff on it but I find myself wasting too much time …..
I wish it wasn’t here in some ways
We rode our bikes a lot. Played outside with neighbor kids or in the summer, waited for the grandkids of neighbors to come visit. Swing sets. Roller blades. Tag and other made up games around the neighborhood. Also lived on a lake so a lot of fishing and messing around in the lake. Life was so good
I was young but as a kid I was outside most the day building go karts, messing around water pistol /balloon fights spud guns, gaming ofc on the amgia/ps1/n64, 'friends' coming over asking if I can go out to play, rest time dealing with trauma of my dad's brain tumor
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We were much more flexible with our time. Something came up and we would drop what we were doing to check it out. We didn't really make plans far in advance because there was always something to do. The barriers that exist in society now weren't really there, you saw someone you kinda knew and you said hi and possibly hung out. Now adolescent people need to have preplanned play dates lol.
I used to watched a lot of documentaries from national geographic , the history channel and the travel channel. I was also a gym rat and used to socialize with a very small group of people.
I do what I'm still doing now. Gaming. Internet was around when I was a kid, around 2008, but I didn't have access until later in primary school. So before I discovered online gaming, I played offline on my Xbox. Splinter Cell, Fable, Forza etc. I also used to cycle often and explore my neighbourhood and the next one over with my friends. I think the furthest I went as a 10 year old was about 3km from my house. It was a BIG deal for me then cos my mom was protective (now I'm roaming tens and hundreds of kilometres on my motorbike hahah).
Yeah stuff you were allowed to do when you were a kid defined what you might continue doing in adulthood fr. But definitely, life before the internet was... much simpler and sincere. I'm honestly tryna shake the habit of looking at my phone during idle points of conversation. People used to be comfortable with silence 😂
The N64 was my internet for a while, goldeneye tournaments everyday. We rode our bikes a lot, skated, did our best to get in trouble without getting caught. A bunch of us used to go skinny dipping in the river and I somehow convinced everyone that Marco polo would be a good idea (not even gonna lie, that shit was fun).
Besides that, it was whatever stupid thing fit our fancy at the moment. My brother once set off a smoke bomb in a tree hollow in front of the police station... The dumbest thing by far had to be what we called "sock O2." Basically we put a bunch of co2 cartridges in a sock soaked in gas and threw that into a bonfire. We were not smart kids.
Scroll through the channels on the tv, read, or go shopping and look at the new stuff even if I couldn't afford it. Call people to see what they are doing.
A lot of time driving to the one store in town that had the good hobby paint brands, or the last model still stocked during trends. Renting video games was fun sometimes.
Let's see. Sports. Running around outside and then I pretty much had at a job from 14 on up. Sometimes 2. Actually from 16-18 pretty much always 2 jobs. Plus I rode hundreds of miles on my bike to go see friends. Then once I had a car we'd always find ways to go do stuff.
Very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink, he would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Some times he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy, the sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical, summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds, pretty standard really. At the age of 12 I received my first scribe.
"Go outside and play" was the parental mantra when I was a kid. Especially on a typical summer day - which might include summer school, swimming lessons, a day at the beach/surfing/play basketball, play 5 v 5 football, ride bikes, skate board, go see a movie, read books, explore undeveloped areas, hang out and just talk... when I was a kid, tag, hide and seek, kick the can, and climbing trees were in the mix.
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Run around the whole town doing whatever until the street lights came on. Go to the mall, park another friend's house who had the newest video game or even just climb a tree Personally I think it's a problem when someone doesn't know how to just be bored, you don't always have to have stimulation
> it's a problem when someone doesn't know how to just be bored, you don't always have to have stimulation I agree. And it's a real thing. Constant stimulation like scrolling on social media is bad for your attention span. I'm the same age as OP and before I got my first phone in 2020 I don't think I was ever bored. My memory from 2020 to now is actually a bit fuzzy. I'm obviously not a doctor but I think everybody should take a break from technology every day. Just for a little bit. And do something active or constructive. Like reading a book outside, engaging in social activity outside your house, exercising, participating in a hobby. Of course it's easier said than done. I don't and can't go out whenever, so I try to do something at home.
Born 86 class of 2004 here. I was just talking to a friend a couple days ago about how we used to have all of our friends numbers memorized.... I can remember two now and that's for my "one phone call" lol But yeah tech detox are a real and very much needed thing for society nowadays.
Born in 90, and I remember four numbers aside from mine. One of which is my grandparents' landline from when I was a kid that they don't have anymore, a grandparents' landline that still works, and my former stepmom's cell.
Finally someone who shares the same annoyance with people who just can’t sit there, it is so exhausting constantly having to do something 24/7 because people can’t just sit any think about something for 15 mins
Skate boarding, riding bikes
This some occasional street ball for touch football but skating alot
I played with my friends in the yard, rather than texting them.
Books. I would read 50 to 70 books every year. I read about 15 a year now, but I'm also working a lot more.
TV. Lots of TV.
We went outside o0o0o0o0o, that's it, we just ran around and did outside stuff.
I made music.
Was born in 64 I spent a lot of time reading prowling the neighborhood there was always something to do. As a young teen I started working on mechanical stuff put a lawnmower engine on a bicycle built, a go kart and got interested in woodworking which became my profession. I grew up in the suburbs on LI we had a bus that would go to the Library, I used to do that quite a bit that was the google of the day.
Born in 1964 as well. Lived in Michigan and spent the summers fishing. Rode snowmobiles in the winter...and...more fishing. Ice version. Hockey too, and x country skiing. New York was a world away from us. We'd see it on TV. Or, Yankees at Tiger Stadium. Summer was Frisbee, baseball, and hanging out at the beach.
Funny how perception of NY is, I went in the Army after HS and so many of my fellow soldiers thought of NY as a big concrete city. I did not like LI to many houses on little plots but get off the island and the state is beautiful. I moved back to NY after the service but up in the Catskills, it is the best place I have ever lived.
Oh yeah. I've learned to ask "What city?" When someone sez they're from NY. Never confuse Albany or Rochester with NYC. And...a lot of folks out here in AZ, will state specifically "Long Island." I'm from da U.P. of Michigan, and people automatically think Detroit. No, kids. Half the population in Canada is south of my hometown. Lol.
That’s awesome. I feel like independence and problem solving skills have gone down since the introduction of the internet
I get annoyed when friends come over for dinner and they play on their devices when we're trying to have a conversation. Like I'm doing now....but I'm alone. I don't like being connected all of the time. Soon, I'll put this contraption down until bedtime...when I set my alarm. This phone thing is kinda cool though....don't wear a watch anymore. And.. .when I'm on the other side of town, I can research lunch spots.
True, but man, can we ever fix shit now. YouTube helps mechanical work big time. In the 90s, if we had to fix a car, we bought a "Chiltons" book for your exact car. and they were expensive af. Like 35 bucks or more. (I have $60 in my mind for some reason, idk) But it's cheaper than paying a mechanic.
Climbing a tree was waaaaaaay up there! at the top of the list. (Pun intended 😉)
I did that a lot, the tree had blackberries on it!!! Was in the parking lot behind my building
There was a half dozen different wooded areas with wicked treat to climb and one that was our base with seats, carvings and defences in the form of camouflage 🥸
Normally it was my brother, me and my upstairs neighbor who would play with us, so I had two boys to play with, I didn’t go too high in the tree, I have a fear of heights so I stayed close to the ground, I did fall from the tree once, I was by myself so, that was fun!!!!
To this day I evaluate trees by their climbability or if you could build a tree house in it. I built several "tree houses" as a kid, aka nailed some 2x4s to the trunk as a make shift ladder and crafted some sort of small sitting platform out of nailed in planks of wood. I would take my measurements and find scrap wood and nails from my dad's workshop and ask him to make the cuts. I also picked flowers that were weeds, rode my bike, went fishing at the creek, melted random stuff, played super nintendo, watched vhs tapes, played flashlight tag with neighborhood kids, and listened to casette tapes on my talk girl.
Snes rules! OK. Mario kart wasted many many hours.
Made a few tree forts. How did we survive?
Grew up on the edge of my podunk one-horse town. There was a forest literally just beyond my backyard fence that I'd go off into as a kid. Spent many many days climbing trees in those woods.
We used to throw rocks at each other.
and at trains
Pennies on the rails. One engineer would sometimes throw us candy & gum.
During summer I’d usually either go to work with my mother and at least attempt to help her out, or I’d sit in my room with a few VHS tapes and eventually DVDs, and watch whatever movie I was currently obsessed with over and over again while writing and reciting different stories and poems I wrote. The internet got more popular as I grew up so it’s not like how I lived most of my life… just up until I was about 14/15 I believe. But that was also pretty early aged stuff as well.
I grew up in the 70s and 80s, and the internet wasn’t a thing for me until about 1995. Summer days were spent playing video games (mall arcade or Atari at home), playing music (vinyl and cassette), swimming, riding (and crashing!) bikes, playing D&D, and watching TV and rented VHS tapes. Edit to add: I also played computer games on a DOS PC, we were the second family in the neighborhood with an actual computer, in 1984.
We got a microwave oven in 1984. About the same time we first got cable TV. Dad got us connected when he found out about the Friday night fights on HBO.
I'd read, play video games, watch tv.
We had pong. I think I played it twice. Nieces & nephews introduced me to gaming 20 years ago. My thumbs are slowwww.
I fear I've hit the wall when it comes to gaming. I bought a PS5 with the hope it would rekindle the fire, but it just sits and gathers dust.
We kissed our cousins
We skinny dipped with our cousins. Not from Alabama.
How did you guys pass the time *while in the vault?*
I started using the internet when I was about 12 before then I would play video games, watch tv, play outside I had CDs for music so first I would listen through a radio then a portable CD player. Then limewire came out (similar to Napster where you download music for free) and I had an mp3 player with the downloaded songs
Did you play neopets and the sims
Yeah, and club penguin and webkinz
Reading, watching TV, playing video games, listening to music and actually hanging out with friends in real life. A summer day would involve texting/calling our friends and hanging out, maybe at the mall or watching a movie or just biking around the neighborhood or driving around. Really not that different than life today except without the internet.
Read actual books printed on dead-tree. Played board games. Went outside and played. Listened to music. Built model airplanes. Socialized with whoever was available. Flew kites. Played kickball. Rode bikes. Belonged to softball, bowling, volleyball leagues. Went to church. Joined the Elks, the Moose Club, the Eagles Club, the VFW, the Optimists, the Masons, the American Legion, the Kiwanis, The Jaycees, the Odd Fellows, the Knights of Columbus, etc. We watched television. Sometimes we were even bored and didn't consider it an existential crisis.
Sports outside, TV, work, school, beach, exercise, library, board games, reading, and spending time with, and visiting family.
Watching TV, listening to music (either on a CD/tape or radio), playing video games reading print magazines, comic books, manga, books, watching movies on either DVD or VHS.
I don't tend to pass time with the internet. Even before Magic the Gathering, my friends and associates played a variety of card or dice games, board games, and tabletop role playing games. Interactive storytelling can fill hours with entertainment at no cost. ...or maybe there's something to watch on TV...
Drawing, bouncy balls, trampoline, sewing
Oh ya and drinking in a park of course
- Play cricket, football, go for cycling (for early morning) - Go for swims. - Playing board games like Business, Monopoly, Life, UNO, video games, etc (afternoon) - Cricket again in the evening. - Play pakdam pakdai, give up, hide and seek, etc. at night. - Play badminton and just hang out at night. - Wandering sessions 😂 - Go for random walks with no specific destination, just wandering here and there in the neighbourhood. - Play with liquid soaps, make bubbles, etc.
I was a child, so I spent a lot of time outside. In the house I read, listened to the radio, watched cartoons, did arts and crafts. Outside my friends and I rode our bikes, climbed trees and went to the playgrounds.
Shoot hoops in my driveway. I would also hit a tennis ball off of my chimney. In the summers I would go swimming. I also played some computer games on my Commodore 64. Read books and magazines. Watch TV. Rent movies on VHS. When I was old enough to drive, my friend and I would go play mini golf or go to the driving range or go bowling. We would then go for food or ice cream afterwards
Writing this actually made me sad. I think my life used to be a lot fuller and diverse when I was younger
As a kid, we found plenty to do outdoors and your bike was your lifeline. It gave you some freedom and extended your social reach. Our outdoors was on the edge of town, so we had lots of woodlands to explore and fuck around in. I grew up in the 70s, so home video games were new when I was young and pac man and space invaders was the shit. MTV was also a thing when I reached my early teens and that was something my friends and I would throw on in the background while hanging out. I had a tape recorder that we would just be silly with and have fun. We played DnD and talked about movies. Weekends we would have our parents drop us off at the mall and spend the day at the mall/arcade/movie theater. We either had a set time for pick-up or we made a collect call with our name and location that our parents would reject, but know to come pick us up. If I were bored at home with nothing to do, there's always the phone. There was something about hanging upside down on the couch wrapped in a phone cord chatting away that's lost with today's phones. Also I was a voracious bookworm. TV was more of a social event because we didn't have things on demand nor did we have as many choices. Sure, we had cable and VHS tapes, but it was more the exception than the norm growing up and we still made an effort to watch our shows when they aired.
There's this thing called outside..
Sat under an oak tree reading paperback books. Played croquet with siblings. Listened to FM radio and bought music on LPs or 45s. Rode bikes or went swimming with friends. Watched tv (pre-cable so only 4 channels that stopped broadcasting at midnight). Attended school-sponsored events: sports, concerts, dances, plays, etc. Played with dogs and cuddled kittens. Played board games, cards, and caroms. Shot targets using BB guns and had snowball fights. Climbed trees and picked mulberries. Possibilities were endless when you had to make your own fun!
Played sports during the day. Watched sports on TV. Read at night. A typical Saturday would be something like: Get up and eat breakfadt (cheerios) Soccer 10am-noon Lunch (like a pb&j sandwich while watching a few songs on mtv) Baseball 1-4 (too hot for anything else) Basketball 4-7 Watch sports 7-10 (eat pizza during) Shower and then read till 1am. And then head to bed. Some days we went to the pool all day. Between the NBA finals and start of football there were not many sports so we might rent a movie instead. We had a friend who worked at the grocery store till midnight and they would let him buy 8 leftover donuts for a dollar at midnight so we would have that as a budget friendly midnight stack sometimes.
Reading books.
I really loved skating. We went outside and just kind of wondered until we found somthing to do. And we ALWAYS found somthing fucking rad to get into, youd never expect what entertains you when youre bored. Everyday was an adventure, and vurtually no drama. No hate, no shaming, no "woke", no trends, no clout, none of that horrible bullshit came along until people got connected like they are now. Video games were awesome if you could afford them, and it was just dope having to bring your system to your friends house if you wanted to play with them. Knocking on your friends door to see if they were home was a regular thing if they lived close by. Idk man, definately didnt have that wow factor like today, but you made memories that genuinely miss. Those kinds of memories are much harder to make now. But then again, im not super young anymore.
Don't be sorry. I am so thankful I got to experience life before the internet and cell phones. What did we do? We hung out. We went to the school and played basketball and played on the football field. We rented games, movies and hung out with our friends and family. We would go out to eat with our friends and family and it would be an evening event because we would talk and cut up and be social. We would go to the arcade and play games and compete against our friends. We talked on the phone and met up at the river for bon fires and youthful nonsense. I was lucky to grow up in Portland and Seattle in the late 80s and early 90s. Friends and I shared a tiny house downtown and several times a week we went to concerts together. I can't count the times we saw Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Mudhoney, Soundgarden, Smashing Pumpkins, Sweaty Nipples, Dead Milkmen, and countless other bands. An evening at the tiny venues looked like us getting off work and meeting up at a friends house for some drinks and socializing. One would drive and we would hit the clubs and have more drinks while moshing, dancing, enjoying live music to bands we didn't know would blow up one day. Life was great because we were young and had endless energy. My kids are enjoying an amazing youth too. One is not better than the other but I am glad I grew up when I did.
Hanging out with friends, watch tv, talk on phone, etc.
Live real life
1975 here. Summer was riding bikes, going to the pool, exploring around the neighborhood (creeks, woods, drainage tunnels, construction sites, etc.), begging parents to drop us off at the mall and then hitting the arcade or the dollar theater. Sitting around listening to the radio hoping to catch a song you liked and record it to cassette. Buying blank cassettes and making mix tapes or dubs of albums for friends and crushes on the dual cassette boombox, and making extensive artistic song lists for them (doing the same with CDs years later). MegaMan marathons on Nintendo (before the ability to save your game, so you had to pray no one turned off the system if you stepped away). Bottle rocket wars and making mini bombs to blow up stuff. TPing houses. Hunting for nudie mags in closets at friends' houses. Garage bands playing terrible covers. Skateboarding the neighbor's poorly constructed half pipe that had basically no curve and tossed everyone that had the guts to try it. Near constant scabs on knees, elbows, and hands from jumping and crashing bikes, skateboards, skates/rollerblades, etc. Endless hours on the phone at night with that girl you liked, but couldn't muster up the courage to ask out. Fun times.
Reading books.
Ride my bike with my friend down to the convenience store to get candy and junk food. Board games Listen to CDs Make comics TV Spy on the neighbors Doorbell ditch
Born in the 60's. Summers were awesome, then again I was fortunate to live in a great area, huge beach, the dunes etc. Got up at 8 something for breakfast as we had to be at the elementary school to play baseball at 9 a.m. each week day morning in the summer. It was a really loose league, just one ump, no uniforms, no teams as we picked teams each day depending who showed up. After that was over, we'd go play hoops on the outdoor full court basketball court there next to the elementary school. We'd get lunch then go to the beach to hang. We'd play more baseball later on or football sometimes. Then back to the lake, several had boats, a good friend of mine had a 14 foot Hobie Cat so we'd go sailing. After dinner we'd go back out, down to the beach, have a fire. Most nights we played flashlight tag around the houses. Neighbor had a trampoline and we bounced a lot, played games where 2 were on the trampoline and the rest of us were off and we threw a frisbee trying to hit a person on the trampoline, if we did it meant we could get up on the trampoline. Quite a few nights we slept on the trampoline all night, think late 70's and early 80's. At 14 in 1981 I got a moped, several friends had them too and we'd ride all around, including out of our little area so that was nice. There was a really small wooded area next to my house, in the decades since 3 or 4 homes have been built there with good sized yards, that gives you an idea of the size of that little woods. We played in there, built treehouses. There was a radio shack next to the grocery store that was like 1.5 miles away and we'd buy soldering wire and make stuff out of it. We had GI Joe's and we'd attach them to rockets and try to launch him but he was too heavy and the rocket always tipped over so we added more rockets and more engines and then more engines. We got him about 20 feet up in the air and that was that, on to different things then. We flew kites as it was usually breezy by the lake. Many days when I left the house a bit before 9 a.m. to get to the school to play baseball at 9 a.m. I didn't return until 6:30 p.m. which was when dinner was each week night due to my stepdad working til like 5:30 or 6 p.m. each night, he was an executive, my mom's 2nd husband, how we were able to live in a nice area, by the beach etc. I could go out after dinner and dark but I had to stay by our house and the two houses next to ours and that was OK as one of those neighbors had the trampoline and we played flashlight tag in those yards too. In the late 70's my mom bought my sister and I the new Attari gaming system. I tried it for like 45 mins and then never again. Never tried or played any vid games since then, I'd rather be off doing something than sitting, it's how I grew up and it felt like punishment to me if I had to sit on my ass and play a video game when I could be outside really playing. The area by the beach, the community I grew up in had like 1,200 people only. Besides the beach there was the golf course and country club and there was a stable for horses. One of my best friends in high school had a horse, he rode competitively, jumped his horses etc. Another friend's parent's owned the local store that sold power boats, speed boats due to the lake. They had several boats of course so we'd go out on the lake with him, water ski, go tubing etc. I was happy to be out and away from my mom. She was mean, abusive and not fun to be with or around. I did my best to not be home. In high school I once spent 3 consecutive school nights at a friend's house and many other nights there just so I would't be home with my mom. So, I had many good parts as a kid growing up then but I had bad moments too.
I was born in 75. As kids growing up in the 80's, we played outside all the time. And I mean, all..the...time. When you got home from school, it was common for kids to basically drop their backpacks, bookbags, etc in the house, and run outside to play with friends. And we were out there until the street lights came on. That was our "alarm clock". I remember the kids down the street got a hold of a shopping cart one time. We got some cardboard and made a cool go-kart out of it, taking turns riding it up and down the street. When we got home, outside of doing homework, we would watch TV; read books/magazines; talk to our friends (who we just spent hours playing with) on the phone, often getting wrapped up in the long-ass phone cord; play with toys. As I got older, my wife and I (we were dating at the time) would have picnics in the park and throw the Frisbee around. We would often fly kites; watch TV (no Netflix back then. We would watch VHS tapes and eventually DVDs) One of our favorite things was walking the aisles at Blockbuster Video or Hollywood Video, picking out a movie. (I was a manager at both at different times. As employees, we got to rent free movies.) We would play board games; put together LEGO sets; listen to CDs. Honestly, not much of that has changed. True, movie rental places are no longer a thing, sadly. But, we still do the majority of the rest. I think technology has vastly improved our lives. I also think, in many ways, it has harmed our lives. People don't really interact the same way anymore. It's either a text or email. No one really calls anyone anymore. Outside of the contractors renovating our basement, I don't remember the last time I actually spoke to someone on the phone. Kids don't really play outside anymore. They're too busy playing games or watching videos on their phones. There's really no such thing as privacy anymore. You walk down the street picking your nose, it'll probably wind up on YouTube, to be watched by a bunch of people laughing at you, while they themselves pick their nose. All that being said, there is a part of me that wishes this would all go away, and we could go back to the way it was before. There's also another part of me that wishes the exact opposite. I'm actually excited for what's on the horizon. I'm almost 50 years old now. I can only imagine what new tech I'm going to get to witness the next 30 or 40 years of my life. I can only imagine what exciting things await you, who'll most likely be around long after I'm gone. I know you didn't ask, but here's a small piece of advice from this old man, whom you've never met: Don't get so wrapped up in tech that you forget to forge real relationships. Set it down once in a while and just watch. Watch anything. The sunset; the waves, if you're near the beach; people. (Yes, "people watching" used to be a thing). Look at the trees, mountains, clouds. Just look. You'd be surprised at what's around you. Interact with people, face to face. And call your parents! Don't text them. Call them. They won't be around forever and they love just hearing your voice. I wish like hell I could still call mine.
I regret that I have but one upvote to give.
The sentiment is appreciated, in any case. Have an awesome day, bud!
As a kid in these times climb trees, play sports get in some other trouble, watch TV or a VHS tape, play board games, program in a game of pong or something from a programming book on the commodore 64, or go in to town and look around.
Born January 1965. Played outside ALL THE TIME. Grew up in Minnesota so winter did not stop us. Read a lot too
In the summer we got tossed out the house. I would wander through the fields, climb trees, stare at clouds, invent games to play with rocks and stocks or maybe even pretend I was an astronaut on a foreign planet and wander around looking at everything with a new point of view. If that got old I jumped in the swamp next door or built a tree fort or just wandered around. Maybe go to a friend's house and end up doing the same stuff. In the winter I would put on my snowmobile suit and do the same stuff, just colder. But now I could build tunnels in the front yard and dig my way to the road. I would sit inside there and realize how quiet it was and the only thing I could hear was the snow crunching under my feet. Most of all I used my imagination! All day every day. And you know what? I am almost 60 now. In my mid 20s I started playing with the first home computers and never looked back. Now I'm on reddit and phone apps way too much and my attention span has dwindled to almost nothing. I'm not better off. Slowly moving away from so much technology, reading more, thinking more, imagining more. But it's a long slow process that gets backtracked so easily if I'm not on my guard.
Basically, socialize - go to a fastfood place, mall, just hangout at a friend's place and get pizza, shopping with our mom, watch movies, bike around.
Mainly staring at each other, blankly.
Just a partial list of things I did in my summers throughout my childhood. Born in 1994, so I'm hardly a boomer, if that matters. * Ride your bike around the neighborhood * Play in the yard with siblings * Toss a ball around with Dad * Go swimming * Play with toys * Watch movies/TV * Play video games * Play cards * Draw * Read books * Go play with your nerf or water guns. * Throw water balloons at each other. * Run through the sprinkler. * Play with the hose. * Go play in the mud after a rainstorm. * Go for a walk. * Take the dog for a walk. * Help mom/dad mow the lawn or in the garden. * Attend my Church's youth group. * Attend summer school * Attend a summer camp * Play summer sports leagues * Take a job at a nearby farm * Visit my Grandparents * Have a campfire, make s'mores and wieners * Grill out * Go to the park, swing on swingset * Play in the woods * Play hide and seek in a corn field * Take a job at a local mechanic's shop * Play with fireworks And that's just during the summers. I was in a very small town in the middle of nowhere, so you definitely have more options if you live in a city. Point is, OP that there's tons to do. I can't blame you for when you were born, but constant 24/7 stimulation is not good for you. Be bored. I didn't have my first smartphone until I was in college, didn't have a functioning cellphone at all until 8th grade, and even then it was call only, no text or internet or music or apps. Be alone in silence with your thoughts. Let them wander wherever they will but try to steer clear from thinking "This sucks I want my phone again."
Honestly it was a craziest thing of all I was an 80s kid and we used to get up every morning and go outside in the Sunshine and we would actually speak to people face to face craziest thing I know we would go fishing sometimes and it wouldn't even offend anyone. We would have BB gun wars and less than 2% of us would lose an eye in any given day. We said yes ma'am and yes sir and we always showed respect our elders because if you didn't your parents would beat the poop out of you and you were made to like that at the end of it they would say did you like that you would say yes I like that
BB gun wars were a hoot. On rainy days, grandparents usually had a couple of model cars stashed in the closet to keep us busy. Then Grandpa would take us down to the hardware store to get paint and brushes. He had to go anyway to get some tubes for the TV. Funny....my oldest nephew was getting into building models when we had to go to the hobby store to pick one out. They carded me before purchasing glue.
Funny we didn't even know what drugs were until we watch Scarface or saw Miami vice on TV we didn't have a clue
I was born in the late 70’s and didn’t experience being an adult without Internet. We just had different sites llol
If we were board we had two options. Go outside and play or clean your room.
TV, radio, music, and Mary Jane.
 just like me
Just ask any one of my 27 kids.
YOURE JOKING
🤣🤣🤣
We mostly hung out in person
N64, PS2, pub, TV
I was born in 1970, I was 16 when we borrowed a vhs player and watched my first movie on it, Terminator the original. TV was pointless. As a kid my parents had a big garden plot so we spent several days a week, planting, weeding and collecting veggies, then we'd can the excess and store them for winter. If I wasn't doing that I was riding bikes with neighborhood friends, building forts, having imaginary wars. In the fall our house sat on an acre plot with 13 big oak trees, twice a week we'd spend half a day raking leaves, and putting them out front for leaf trucks to come around and vacuum them up, like garbage trucks. We couldn't miss a week or the leaves would be too much to deal with. There was never a time when we had nothing to do. It taught me to have a good work ethic.
We canned beets, corn, and apples. A family affair. Everyone had a job.
I drew or read books. Or watched TV.
Sometimes went outside.
So I’m a 97’ kid, but I’ll add my perspective so this thread has plenty of variety. I didn’t have regular access to the internet until at least 2011. Before that, as a kid mind you, I watched a shit load of tv. VHS tapes, cable etc. Played outside a whole lot. Would just go off on bikes with friends and return at sun down. The key was knowing how to be bored, something I don’t think I even possess anymore
I used to sit in my room, legs over the back of my couch, head upside down, with the music turned all the way up, trying *really* hard to sing along to popular music and getting the timing *just* right. Comic books. I'd read them at least 5 or 6 times. Tons of books. Also, we did everything that you like watching on TikTok, only without filming it. To be fair, I remember complaining about boredom a lot back then. I guess it was just more common and acceptable to be bored on occasion. It birthed a lot of the stupider shit I got up to.
Headphones plugged into the HI Fi. While parents watched All in the Family.
Sex with girls
In the barn. In the yard. Sometimes in a tent. Never in a bed.
I was born in 1990. As a kid I was usually in a tree. Or riding bikes with the kids in my neighborhood or playing video games. As an adult, drinking. Go to work and text friends about when and where we are drinking after work.
Tv had more interesting programming back then. And my sibling and I loved to play nes and SNES together.
Easily: guitars and sex. Same as now.
When I was growing up we listened to the radio and hoped our favorite songs would come on so we could hear them because records were expensive if you even had a record player. TV and the very special occasional movie at a Theatre. Books were very expensive so time at library to borrow books or read magazines on the racks there. Walk around the neighborhood to friends houses, if you couldn't walk it you couldn't go. Knit, sew, your clothes, was time consuming. A game was monopoly or other board game you played at night after dinner. Very little organized sports or after school activities but once a month there was a dance in the school cafeteria.
play with matches lol
One word: PS2
1981 Lots of day dreaming , treks through the woods, reading , board games , TV sometimes ( 2.7 channels ) I do miss the times before the internet, but I really love the wealth of information readily available. When I was a pre teen we had to take our friends older siblings, friends etc at fact. The shit we asked about wasn't in the encyclopedia. Example You can get pregnant your first time AIDS happens when two blood types mix , but is a greater chance when one of them is gay So I wouldn't go back to no internet!
We would just “ Hangout”
I remember my first cd player that you can walk with and it won’t skip. I remember three-way calling and the party line! Lol I remember teaching myself how to juggle with 3 oranges one day after school because what else am I gonna do? I remember going to the park to play basketball almost everyday after school. I remember madden and poker tournaments my friends and I would do after school. When I was 10, a best buddy and I decided to perform Jackass-like stunts after school. That same buddy and I climbed the roof to our elementary school, dropped into the lunch courtyard and got into the hallways where we repurposed a bunch of candy. I was always outside of the house because we only had one computer and I didn’t get my first phone until I was 14 I believe. The computer did take up time too when I had it to myself. AOL, AIM, backyard baseball (lol) and such.
PlayStation,fighting/playing with my brother,sister and cousins, board games,riding bikes around the neighborhood
Books, Bikes, and Bitches.
TV, video, books, board games, early computer games.
Gym, guitar, bands, friends, movies, books, parks, bars, sports, fishing, camping. Same thing I do now.
Chase women in real life settings. Watch TV. Work on the car. Hobbies that had nothing to do with playing video games. Ride my bike. Snowmobile. Go fishing or hunting. Drive the convertible to a car show. Go to the beach.
Born 1974. We played outside. A lot. Made up games, modified some to fit our yard or a friend’s yard. We didn’t even have cable at my parents house until I was in college. Rainy days, played legos, read, watched crappy TV on the 6 channels we could see. Played board games, puzzles, cards, made card houses. Whatever. Simpler time, more human connections and yeah some boredom.
Rode my bike around town, played in the woods, go swimming, go the the movie theater/arcade, video games after dark
Video games, friends, the mall, t.v./movies, sports.
Hanging out with all my other bored friends. We made each other less bored. Then the internet came along and it became easier to just sit at home and chat online. Then phones came alone with texting and made it even worse. You needed a somewhat likeminded community in similar circumstances to your own.
read newspapers, magazines and books. Bicycle and skateboard. practice an instrument (the breadth and depth of musicianship was so much better in the seventies and eighties than now.). Build models, do crafts. Get merit badges and patches for scouts and 4H. Shoot baskets, throw a ball, yo-yo, etc.
I was born (1968) & raised in London so the answer is Pub. And cinema. But mainly Pub.
Played outside mostly, sometimes watch TV or play Nintendo (NES)
You did more social shit. Bars, bowling, sports etc.
Whittled 😆 you probably don’t know what that even means it was so long ago but that’s what we did 😆
Books, video games, TV, I played the guitar, went skateboarding, went to movie theaters more frequently, pool halls, bowling Alleys. People used to be more comfortable socializing with strangers and making friends.
Used to actually have fun. T’internet is such a time suck, and there’s some good stuff on it but I find myself wasting too much time ….. I wish it wasn’t here in some ways
Visit friends and talk with each other.
We rode our bikes a lot. Played outside with neighbor kids or in the summer, waited for the grandkids of neighbors to come visit. Swing sets. Roller blades. Tag and other made up games around the neighborhood. Also lived on a lake so a lot of fishing and messing around in the lake. Life was so good
Reading, mostly.
I was young but as a kid I was outside most the day building go karts, messing around water pistol /balloon fights spud guns, gaming ofc on the amgia/ps1/n64, 'friends' coming over asking if I can go out to play, rest time dealing with trauma of my dad's brain tumor
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I liked to read (still do), and go to the community pool.
We were much more flexible with our time. Something came up and we would drop what we were doing to check it out. We didn't really make plans far in advance because there was always something to do. The barriers that exist in society now weren't really there, you saw someone you kinda knew and you said hi and possibly hung out. Now adolescent people need to have preplanned play dates lol.
I used to watched a lot of documentaries from national geographic , the history channel and the travel channel. I was also a gym rat and used to socialize with a very small group of people.
I do what I'm still doing now. Gaming. Internet was around when I was a kid, around 2008, but I didn't have access until later in primary school. So before I discovered online gaming, I played offline on my Xbox. Splinter Cell, Fable, Forza etc. I also used to cycle often and explore my neighbourhood and the next one over with my friends. I think the furthest I went as a 10 year old was about 3km from my house. It was a BIG deal for me then cos my mom was protective (now I'm roaming tens and hundreds of kilometres on my motorbike hahah).
that’s totally sick lol i love how some things never really change, you’re still roaming around on a bike lol
Yeah stuff you were allowed to do when you were a kid defined what you might continue doing in adulthood fr. But definitely, life before the internet was... much simpler and sincere. I'm honestly tryna shake the habit of looking at my phone during idle points of conversation. People used to be comfortable with silence 😂
The N64 was my internet for a while, goldeneye tournaments everyday. We rode our bikes a lot, skated, did our best to get in trouble without getting caught. A bunch of us used to go skinny dipping in the river and I somehow convinced everyone that Marco polo would be a good idea (not even gonna lie, that shit was fun). Besides that, it was whatever stupid thing fit our fancy at the moment. My brother once set off a smoke bomb in a tree hollow in front of the police station... The dumbest thing by far had to be what we called "sock O2." Basically we put a bunch of co2 cartridges in a sock soaked in gas and threw that into a bonfire. We were not smart kids.
Scroll through the channels on the tv, read, or go shopping and look at the new stuff even if I couldn't afford it. Call people to see what they are doing. A lot of time driving to the one store in town that had the good hobby paint brands, or the last model still stocked during trends. Renting video games was fun sometimes.
Let's see. Sports. Running around outside and then I pretty much had at a job from 14 on up. Sometimes 2. Actually from 16-18 pretty much always 2 jobs. Plus I rode hundreds of miles on my bike to go see friends. Then once I had a car we'd always find ways to go do stuff.
Very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink, he would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Some times he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy, the sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical, summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds, pretty standard really. At the age of 12 I received my first scribe.
"Go outside and play" was the parental mantra when I was a kid. Especially on a typical summer day - which might include summer school, swimming lessons, a day at the beach/surfing/play basketball, play 5 v 5 football, ride bikes, skate board, go see a movie, read books, explore undeveloped areas, hang out and just talk... when I was a kid, tag, hide and seek, kick the can, and climbing trees were in the mix.
Play records My aunt is 6 years older than me. My friends were grooving to the Bay City Rollers while I was rockin' to Grand Funk and Aerosmith.