9 Things We Did In The 90s That Today’s Kids Will Never Experience (And That’s Too Bad)
Today's average teenager doesn't realize just how good they have it.
Thanks to the fine folks at Buzzfeed there is never a shortage of lists when it comes to the days of yesteryear, and one of their recent lists really speaks volumes to anyone who was a teenager in the 90s.
To put things into perspective, today's 13 year-old kids showed up on this planet a year before Hurricane Katrina did. This means that the iPhone came out just as they were learning to form sentences.
Basically, today's standard teenager is oblivious to a world where any and everything they want to know or have isn't a click away or within arm's reach of their mobile device.
While that is definitely convenient, they are missing out on all kinds of things that most of us were fortunate enough to experience. Things that built character and gave us some of the best memories to look back on.
Here are just a few examples:
LOOKING UP MOVIE TIMES IN AN ACTUAL NEWSPAPER
Your favorite movie is coming out this weekend. You're totally going to go and check it out with friends, but before you can even being to make plans, you have to check out the showtimes at your favorite theater. Today, we would just grab our smartphone and hit up the Moviefone app or Google the showtimes. Back in the day, it wasn't that easy. You either had to pick up the phone and call the theater, which played a long recording of all the movies and their respective movie times or you had to find a physical newspaper and scope out the times there. As inconvenient as that may sound, there was a sense of accomplishment that made seeing the movie that much better.
THE "SHOCK" OF "FINDING" A HIDDEN SONG ON A CD
With a lot of our personal music collections based on personal iTunes playlists or streaming apps it's pretty much impossible to stumble upon a "hidden" track, but nothing was cooler than listening to your favorite CD front to back, then just when you thought it was over, another song starts 30 seconds to a minute after what you THOUGHT was the last track ends. It was one of the coolest feelings ever, and one of the coolest personal connections you could make with your favorite artist.
LONG MOVIES CAME ON TWO VHS TAPES
Anyone who owns Titanic on videotape totally knows what I'm talking about. Today, we can literally stream our movies from a cloud, but back when you used to have to fire up mom's van and drive to a VHS rental store, sometimes the BIG movies were so long they came on TWO video cassettes. I gotta be honest, this is definitely one old school thing that I definitely don't miss at all—but, nostalgic nevertheless.
CHANNEL 3 OR 4 WAS REQUIRED FOR ANY VCR OR VIDEO GAME SYSTEM
Today's technology gives us a ridiculous amount of HDMI and digital video inputs on our televisions, but back in the day the television you used for video games was usually a 13" tv with one coaxial input that required the TV to be on either channel 3 or channel 4. When you finally got everything right and made that connection it was like heaven on earth.
PRINTING OUT DIRECTIONS
Before we barked out commands to Apple Maps via Siri or used Waze, the way that we got around depended on handwritten or spoken word directions. When websites like Mapquest and Yahoo Maps came on the scene, it was very common to see people riding around with full sheets of paper scattered all over their cars after printing out directions. Arriving at your destination was a true accomplishment. Destin anyone?
MOUSE BALLS
Before we were able to swipe across trackpads or navigate effortlessly on our tablets or smartphones, we had to steer a mouse to get our commands in. Before the fancy laser type mouse models, there was the legendary mouse ball. A sphere that rolled within the housing of the actual mouse, and if that mouse ball wasn't there the user would be rendered helpless. It should come as no surprise that stealing mouse balls was also one of the most popular pranks in the 90s.
TV GUIDE CHANNEL
Believe it or not there was a time when people watched live, non-DVR television. You would be sitting at home, and if you were lucky enough to have cable, you also had the channel guide station. It was literally a guide of what programs were currently playing and also a look ahead to what would be playing soon. The worst part about this experience was when you would be waiting to see what was playing on a specific channel, and somehow you missed it—forcing you to wait for the entire scroll for your next opportunity to see what programs would be playing next on your favorite channel.
CALLING AFTER 9 P.M.
Believe it or not, there was a time when all cellular providers were pretty much comparable in terms of service, and the only way they differentiated depended on what promotion they would offer—especially when it came to nights and weekends. It was a free for all after 9 p.m. so it wasn't uncommon to receive a phone call from a friend around 8:30 p.m. and actually tell them to call you back after 9 p.m. when your minutes would be free.
See the entire list here at Buzzfeed and tell us what YOU miss about being a kid in the 90s.