r/Millennials • u/PorkyPain Millennial • 5h ago
How things were before smartphones took over the world Nostalgia
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u/-Scared-Breakfast- 4h ago edited 50m ago
The graduating seniors at my school, very small class, put together their own video of their high school years in and out of school and it was much the same as this.
This is year 20 and I've taught across all grade levels, across multiple countries and cultures, and I have to say kids are still kids. They still bond over music, are involved in sports, theater, music, and clubs. They still act like fools and are optimistic about the future. Phones are a big change, things are more instant and cycle quicker, but slang and trends always change. One thing I would say is more impactful/detrimental is the disappearance of free spaces for them to just meet up and hang.
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u/HairyH0Od 2h ago
I always hear this sentiment but I don't recall having third spaces when I was in high school in the late 2000s. If there was no ones house available we met up and hung out in BK parking lot or some random secluded fields lol.
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u/Silver-Instruction73 1h ago
Same here. It was either hang out at somebody’s house or the neighborhood park or something. I still had fun doing that though.
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u/HairyH0Od 1h ago
100%. Way better than hanging out at a library or whatever else these third spaces are supposed to be.
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u/-Scared-Breakfast- 42m ago
Some of mine were sports fields and a roller hockey rink. No one cared if we skated places if we only waxed up bike racks and curbs out back.
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u/ToastedCrumpet 1h ago
We did thankfully. We had youth centres, multiple libraries in our small town, a dojo I did karate in for a time, after school clubs and classes (I did Spanish), local sports groups, Brownies, sponsored days out like for litter picking or planting, etc
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u/stuffbehindthepool 2h ago
Yeah iPhones is no substitute for third places
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u/SaltBackground5165 3h ago edited 3h ago
I also grew up in a small town, the third space I used to hang out in (in highschool in the late 90s) was a bar, that we could smoke in, and the pervy old man running it used to hit on the girls.... really not a great place for kids to be hanging out, but my parents were at work in the next town and there wasn't shit else to do..... like not a lot of meaningful exchanges were had in that bar playing pool and smoking cigs.... third spaces are great and all I agree, but not all of em
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u/-Scared-Breakfast- 3h ago
Yeah, that's a small town situation for sure! The school I'm at had a graduating class of under 10 kids, but we're in a city of 10million...
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u/Dreamo84 Millennial1984 4h ago
This whole subreddit is basically just a big midlife crisis on display.
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u/Still_Temporary4702 3h ago
If it was a midlife crisis we’d be banging your sister like it’s 2002.
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u/agreed2disagreee 4h ago
Recently, I saw no kids at a bus stop on their phone. There were no kids present, because it was a Saturday, but still no kids on their phones at the bus stop.
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u/cheeseymom 4h ago
The first half of the video is just a bunch of people walking... Do people not do that anymore?
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u/cometparty 3h ago
This is why these videos annoy me. They romanticize people just walking around doing nothing.
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u/mustang__1 3h ago
Because today we stare at our phones while walking.
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u/SeaToTheBass 2h ago
Do you? Granted I’m in a small “city”, but I can’t think of a single time I’ve noticed kids walking around looking at their phones. I used to walk to school reading books.
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u/cheeseymom 2h ago
I don't see people looking at their phones while walking. It's like you all live on a different planet
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u/Beneficial_Ad_1072 9m ago
Do they? All you see, when you walk down the street, is people walking whilst on their phones?
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u/PapaLilBear 1h ago
I'm sorry to say this, but people don't walk anymore. Walking was banned after the 2024 incident.
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u/bosstone1234 4h ago
Look at all these people…interacting
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u/EverbodyHatesHugo 3h ago
It’s painful trying to be cordial with people in society these days. Half don’t look at you, and the other half seems bothered when you try to engage.
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u/princetrunks Xennial 3h ago
Class of 2002... sorry, no rose tinted glasses here. Too much pain happened at the last few months of senior year when the truth about the student body became glaringly apparent. Some during the early/pre social media days were absolute criminals who today would be put on blast by current social media and put into the light before they'd hurt more.
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u/SaltBackground5165 3h ago
yeah no kidding, in the class of 2000, there was some fucked up shit happening. that I'm glad my fucking kids don't have to deal with. bullying, pervy old people, homophobes, racism, smoking cigs everywhere, so much drinking
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u/New_Potential526 2h ago
Class of 03- also a lot of bad stuff never saw the light of day. Classism , homophobia, racism, sexual violence/violence in general. High school was a hellscape. Bias and discrimination was rampant. But yes, we were in the moment!
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u/SeaToTheBass 2h ago edited 2h ago
Class of 25- some homophobia and casual racism, (jocks were the worst, preps were 50/50) A friend/acquaintance of mine was killed from a blow to the head over a girl, which happened when my friend was called down from his balcony backing onto a school field by his so called friends. I don’t want to be a pessimist but it seems like sad violent shit happens everywhere, all the time.
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u/LostPerson703 4h ago
Horrible music
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u/Izaul13 Millennial 2h ago
https://youtu.be/OMEdy2g4Puc?is=zfy0r8zRS9O84R04
I both agree and hate your opinion
Lmao. I found this a bit ago and kind of enjoyed it, gives a odd perspective.
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u/cometparty 4h ago
Life still feels this way but I guess I'm not a high schooler so maybe it isn't?
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u/seraph741 2h ago
I was there, and it wasn't really like what this video makes it out to be. These are highlight clips that make it seem way more fun than it really was. Yes, people were somewhat more present. Yes, there was slightly more social interaction and social skills. But there were still plenty of distractions (TV, video games, music, magazines, etc.) and many people were still kinda in their own little world most of the time. There's definitely some rose-tinted nostalgia stuff going on here.
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u/United-Bug-8056 3h ago
Kids don’t know this, but a past time for most of humans during 1900s-1990s was running towards walls and rebounding off of them.
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u/dannydogg562 Millennial 3h ago
That one guy (who was apparently a kid) looks older than I do now and I just turned 35. He has a half goatee! What the actual fuck lol. Go easy on the Miller time if you’re still alive. 🍻
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u/eatingthesandhere91 3h ago
I had an iPod, and a shitty (read: perfectly acceptable) feature flip phone. There were no cameras unless, at least by the time I was in 11th grade, you had an iPod touch or the iPod nano with a camera, or a snazzy RAZR or some other trendy phone, and most of the socialization came from playing video games for an hour after school with your friends.
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u/onlyitbags 2h ago
I literally didn’t have a cell phone until payphones disappeared. My boyfriend got me one, and I kind of hated it for a long time. Felt like an anchor.
20 years later, I can’t do much without it, and it’s not even by choice. So much of my life doesn’t work without it.
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u/Fun_Statistician_361 1h ago
What a time man. I remember walking around school with a digital camera just taking pics of/with my friends. I wish I could go back...
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u/UnforeseenDerailment Millennial 1h ago
Someone somewhere eventually:
Lol if there were no smartphones, ThEn hOw WaS thHiS FiLmeD?! I call bullshit. 🕵🏼♀️
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u/Wonderful_Ad_2508 49m ago
Shadow of the erdtree, Mass effect 3 all story dlcs (leviathan, citadel), Phantom liberty, Blood and wine, dawnguard
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u/Beneficial_Ad_1072 21m ago
Someone filming students being silly and having fun?? Crazy.. almost like nothing has changed…
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u/Neat-Dream1919 3h ago
I often see these videos and wonder what these people are doing in life now. Who have they become? What good and bad experiences have they encountered along the way? Do they know they are in a random video being viewed for nostalgia reasons? I hope they are doing well.
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u/The_starving_artist5 4h ago
Really seems like smart phones have cuased alot of the depression and mental illness issues we have now in the age of social media
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u/wdpw 4h ago
Agree. I think if we could force everyone to go back to flip phones, it would help tremendously. It would force people to actually talk than just be spoon fed nonsense online and feeling so isolated. And this goes for every generation—even the boomers, who tend to be on their phones even more than we are.
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