Things Kids Today Will Never Understand

Not a complaint. Half of these were genuinely awful and nobody misses them. But every one of them shaped how a childhood felt.

Read it out at a party and watch the room split by age.

Waiting

• Waiting a week for the next episode. Not a day. A week.
• Waiting for a film to come on television, four years after the cinema, and never being able to see it before then.
• Waiting a fortnight for photographs to come back from the chemist, and finding out then that your thumb was over half of them.
• Waiting for the tape to rewind before you could watch anything.
• Waiting for the phone to be free because somebody was on it.
• Waiting for Saturday to find out what was number one.
• Waiting all summer for the Argos catalogue's toy pages.
• Waiting for the ice cream van, which was the only way to know the time on a summer evening.

Music and television

• Taping the chart off the radio and having the DJ talk over the last four seconds.
• Having to be in the room when a programme was on, because there was no other way.
• Finding out who won by watching it, because nobody could tell you first.
• Three channels, then four, and the argument about which one.
• Standing up to turn it over.
• The videotape with your cousin's christening on one side and Terminator 2 on the other.
• Setting the video, getting the timer wrong, and recording forty minutes of snooker.
• The test card, and the fact that television stopped at night.
• Long play mode, and the picture going grainy to fit an extra film on.

The telephone

• The phone lived in the hall, on a table, with a chair nobody sat in.
• The cord, which stretched to exactly the doorway and no further.
• Ringing a friend and having to speak to their mum first.
• Knowing seven phone numbers by heart and not knowing a single one now.
• The engaged tone.
• Answering it without knowing who it was, every single time.
• Phone boxes, and the coin dropping while you were mid-sentence.
• Reverse charge calls, and the shame of them.
• Peak and off-peak rates, and being told to hang up.

Computers and the internet

• The dial-up handshake, and nobody being able to use the phone while you were online.
• Waiting eleven minutes for one photograph to appear line by line.
• Games loading off a cassette tape, and failing at 98 per cent.
• Saving your homework on a floppy disc that then didn't work.
• Encarta on a CD-ROM being the whole of human knowledge.
• Having to ask an adult a question they didn't know the answer to, and that being the end of it.
• Not being contactable. At all. For hours.
• MSN Messenger nudges.
• Printing out directions before you drove anywhere.

Out and about

• Leaving the house with no way for anybody to reach you and nobody minding.
• Meeting at a time and a place, with no ability to change the plan.
• Knocking on a door to see if someone was coming out.
• Going to the library because that's where information was.
• A road atlas in the boot, and an argument about it.
• Sitting in the back of a car with no belt, no screen and no air conditioning.
• Being bored. Properly, achingly bored, with nothing to do about it.
• Coming home when the streetlights came on.

Money and shopping

• Going to the bank to find out how much money you had.
• Cheque books, and writing one in a queue.
• Sunday, when everything was shut and there was nothing to do.
• Half day closing on a Wednesday in a lot of towns.
• Video shops, late fees, and the film you wanted always being out.
• Buying a single because you liked one song.
• Saving up for weeks for something that cost a fiver.
• Penny sweets, actually costing a penny.

Shop cards

How to write it so it lands

• Read it out at a milestone birthday and watch the room split.
• Half of these were awful. That's part of the point.
• The shared schedule is the thing that actually disappeared.

Where to shop next

• Out until the streetlights came on
• What childhood cost then vs now
• Why 90s Christmas felt different
• Why nostalgia makes us feel good
• Growing up in the 80s and 90s
• Playground games we all played
• Test card, Ceefax and the three-channel years
• Adverts we can all still recite
• Sweets quiz
• 70s quiz questions
• 80s quiz questions
• 90s quiz questions
• Guess the year quiz
• Care home reminiscence quiz
• Christmas TV of the 70s, 80s and 90s
• 80s and 90s party ideas
• Free feel good tools
• Shop cards
• Planning the party? Birthday party ideas
• How to make a balloon arch
• Photo booth prop ideas
• Birthday cards for kids
• Mother's Day gifts
• New baby cards
• Pin badges
• All guides

Frequently asked questions

What do kids today never experience?

Waiting a week between episodes, rewinding a video, taping the charts off the radio, dial-up internet, a phone fixed to the hall wall, and being completely uncontactable for an afternoon.

Was childhood really better before smartphones?

Not better - different. There was more boredom and less information, and both of those cut in two directions. What's genuinely gone is the shared schedule: everybody watching the same thing at the same time.

What's the best way to use a list like this?

Read it out at a party or a family gathering and let each generation argue. It works particularly well at a milestone birthday.

Do you sell anything to do with this?

We make greeting cards, prints and pin badges. This page is free to read and free to copy.