Older Generations Explain Which Things Young Folks Get Wrong About Past Decades

As a young person, I was fascinated with the idea my maternal Grandmother lived through the transition from horses to combustion engine vehicles, the inception of commercial air travel, the creation of the motion picture industry and the invention of television.

But I've lived through vinyl LPs and 45s, 8-tracks, cassettes, CDs and digital music players.

If I wanted to see a movie as a kid, I went to a theater—or drive-in—or waited for an often heavily edited version to air on TV. Then cable movie channels were introduced, followed by LP size video disc players, then Betamax and VHS, DVDs, HD and Blu-ray and now?

Digital downloads and streaming services—I haven't been to a theater in years.

TV

"Up until video rental stores in the early 80's, at school the next day every kid was talking about what was on TV the night before, as every single family was watching tv together every single night."

"With some exceptions, most people watched the same thing as their schoolmates or co-workers, just to be a part of the conversation."

~ Grimjack2

"There's something very isolating about modern media.

"You can be into a TV show, or YouTube series, and nobody else you know has heard of it."

"I'm a fan of aYouTube series—RedLetterMedia—that's pretty popular and very well regarded amongst its fans, and only one of my friends has heard about it.

~ SlashThingy

Unanswered Questions

"Probably just how often you had to accept that you couldn't find out the answer to something."

"If you had a question you could ask your family, maybe your friends, maybe your teachers, and your last chance was the check the library."

"But if the library didn't have the answer, then you just had to accept that you weren't going to get an answer (or you'd have to hope to come across that answer someday in the future)."

"Now you just ask Google and get 10 answers in just seconds."

~ john_jdm

One & Done

"How on-time you had to be for your favorite shows because there was little to no chance you’d see that same episode again until they (hopefully) did re-runs during summer."

"I remember waiting anxiously for the nightly news to be over so I could watch my favorite TV shows."

"Commercial breaks were just mad rushes for the bathroom, or to the kitchen to get something quick to drink."

~ ladyeclectic79

"Once it was done, it was gone."

"The happy tears I cried when they finally released The Stand miniseries on DVD about a decade after airing."

~ Barrys_Fic

"I feel I was in the last generation of this, even though channels were much more prevalent and reruns of everything was the norm."

"I remember rushing off the bus with all my friends because we were absolutely SURE Goku was gonna defeat Frieza this episode. And it was a crap shoot whether or not the driver would be fast enough for us to make it."

"Years later when DVDs started becoming more prevalent, they STILL didn't put shows on collectable media regularly. You couldn't just get an entire season of a show and binge it."

"At most you could find a 'best-of' compilation of five or six of the most popular episodes, and that was only if the show was incredibly popular."

"And what I am describing here was considered 'having it good' compared to older people." 

~ McFlyyouBojo

Say Cheese!

"That it was incredibly common to just not have pictures of events or other things we see as important now."

"Not only did we have entire vacations where no pictures were taken, we could go months without a single picture being taken of any member of our family unless it was particularly notable."

"A trip to St Louis? No pictures. A trip to Disneyland? Maybe a picture at the entry gate or one of the souvenir pictures of us with a character."

"A trip to zoo? No pictures. An average day? Forget about it!"

"Frequently, the only pictures taken were at major holidays like Christmas or on someone's birthday."

~ bbbbbthatsfivebees

"I explained that to my kids the other day."

"What if every picture you took cost a dollar?

"And you don’t know if it’s even good until probably weeks later, as long as the photo lab doesn’t f*ck up processing."

"Or your film or pictures don't get lost in the mail going to or from the developer or they don't send you someone else's photos by mistake."

~ beebsaleebs

"You had to plan ahead to take a photo."

"'Did you remember the camera? Did you remember to buy film or flashbulbs?”

~ brazilliandanny

So Few Options

"It's an exceptional AMOUNT of media to consume now. In the 90s, you had 3-4 super popular channels, and 4-5 low rated channels. They all showed one show at a time."

"Now we have a dozen streaming services with infinite media options."

"It's becoming increasingly difficult to engage in office conversation because so much content is available, people do not have to stray as far from their interest to consume content they want to consume."

~ MemeTeamMarine

Smoking Or Non?

"They understand restaurants had 'smoking sections' and that bars & clubs were filled with cigarette smoke. But I don't think many understood how pervasive smoking was."

"Non-smoking areas or sections didn’t exist before the 1980s. There were ashtrays and people smoking literally EVERYWHERE."

"Jury boxes had ashtrays in front of every juror. Judge smoked, lawyers smoked, the gallery smoked."

"You smoked on planes, trains, busses, taxicabs, and in all transportation centers."

"You smoked at the library, the PTO meetings at schools, the town hall and all city offices. Hell, you could smoke at the courtyard at my High School as a student."

"You smoked in the elevator and on the escalator. The mall. The grocery store. Sports venues. Doctor's offices. Hospitals. Sitting at your desk at work even if you were in a cubicle or open area."

"The movies. The plays, opera, concerts and every other public performance, people smoked."

"A non-smoker would come home often smelling like smoke. One was constantly surrounded by smoke. It was insane."

~ parkerjh

"You literally made ash trays as a grade school art project, that’s how common it was."

~ _Poffertje_

What Choices?

"Probably under estimating how few choices there were."

"Today, it seems like everything imaginable is available in a variety of sizes, delivered to your door over night."

"Catalogs and mail order had 4-6 week delivery."

"Malls were the best thing ever—all the stores in one place, a wide variety of products and sizes and not downtown."

~ 2Loves2loves

"And also just how little people knew they were missing out. If it wasn't on network evening television (Channels 2, 4, 7, 9, and 11), or on a store shelf in your town, or in the Sunday newspaper... it simply didn't exist for you."

"If you had an inkling something existed—say, tin foil that comes in sheets instead of one giant roll—you could go around asking people, if you wanted. But you were more than likely to just get a shrug and, 'Why would you want such a thing?'."

"Let's say you were particularly enterprising, so you dial '0' and ask the operator for the number for corporate headquarters of Reynolds Aluminum Foil, if you knew the city it was in. Because there was no internet, and the only way to find a number was by dialing '0' and speaking to a telephone operator."

"But even if you spoke to someone at Reynolds, they had no way to exchange money for goods at that level, and they probably would just tell you they sell it in the Ohio area, and that would be that."

"You went to the market. They have one brand of pancake mix, and no one had ever heard of anything different, and why would you want a different brand, anyway?"

"Then you go to the hardware store, and they carry one brand of paint, and no one had ever heard of any other brand of paint."

"And it was that way for a long, long time."

~ nOwsL-ACEna-pe2323

One For the Road

"How common drinking & driving was."

"Until MADD came along, people did this routinely."

"It's where 'one for the road' originated."

~ HailRoma

"Yes! When my friends and I had our 18th birthdays in late 1979, the thing to do was to celebrate by driving through Beer Barn, where you could literally drive-through to get beer, wine, wine coolers, whatever."

"Then open them up and drive while drinking. At 18. This was in Texas."

"It also was not uncommon for my dad to drive while drinking when he was taking us wherever at night."

"Zero education on why you should not do that."

~ emeraldcity4341

Good & Bad

"I am definitely older (born in 1949 so Baby Boomer)."

"What today's young people don't appreciate is how, growing up, we had to invent our own sources of fun."

"There were no video games (which I enjoy playing), just 3 channels on a black-and-white tv (we didn't get color until 1967), and no real entertainment aimed at kids."

"All we could do is interact with each other and play established games like marbles or maybe an organized sport like Little League baseball."

"There was a baseball diamond, overgrown with weeds, across the street from us, but mostly we played in the woods that surrounded us, climbing trees pretending to be pirates or some such.

"I loved the bookmobiles that would visit my street, and I must have read every biography (all bound in blue covers) in my elementary school library."

"It was a different era with many fewer distractions and much more time for sustained imagination."

"Being a different place and time, we developed different skills for interacting with the world and each other than young people do today."

"Was it better? That's hard to say. We tended to have an insular view of our own little world, while today it is hard to escape what it happening everywhere on Earth."

"We had to wait days for a letter to arrive, and we shared a party phone line with our neighbor's phone. That is a far slower pace than today's instantaneous texting culture. (Yes, I do text.)"

"Some things have been lost while others have been gained. That's the way it always will be. Just wait."

~ BOBauthor

In Chilton's article—referenced at the beginning—he stated:

"We [Gen X] will be the last generation to know the world without...

• Cable TV
• Cell Phones
• The internet
• Seat belt laws
• Remote controls for the TV"

What would you add to the list?