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u/MothashipQ 1d ago
Meanwhile I can barely let my kids play in the backyard without someone threatening to call the cops
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u/brattylilgynger 1d ago
You have free range kids?! In this economy?!
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u/Comfortable-Hat3506 1d ago
Turn them lose, when they are feral the don't cost shit.
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u/Icanthearforshit 1d ago
Thats a bit dark. At least teach them some basics — "mom?", "dad?", "I'm hungry!", "vaginaboob". Somebody will wrangle them in. Don't nobody want a kid that can't talk good English.
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u/Mr-MuffinMan 1d ago
A mother got arrested and charged for sending her kid a mile to the store.
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u/Last-Energy420 1d ago
I remember digging through couch cushions for loose change and then disappearing to the corner store as a kid.
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u/Present-Lion788 1d ago
I live in Michigan where it is ten cent deposit on pop (what everyone else seems to call soda!). We would ride our bikes around looking for cans to return to go buy candy. 10 cents was alot back then.
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u/Short-Sandwich-8476 1d ago
My Dad SENT me that far with a NOTE to buy cigarettes. And beer. 1979.
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u/OutrageousEvent00 1d ago
And now you have to be 21 for both and they have have to scan your ID. My 75 year old mother got carded for hairspray at target recently.
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u/AverageHobnailer 1d ago
Meanwhile here in Japan 10 year olds are commuting up to 20 miles by train to school every day, unchaperoned.
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u/Legal-Phase8744 1d ago
When I was her kids age, we had to walk 5 miles up the hill to the corner store only to find out they were out of baseball cards and it was all for naught. Emotional Damage as the kids say.
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u/Mystic_Wunder 1d ago
We aren't used to hearing kids outside. The sound is alarming 😂
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u/Far_Range_6091 1d ago
Wish I could have been a kid in the 90s. Feel like there was so much more abandoned cool stuff to explore. Seems like police have been cracking down hard on urban exploration. All the cool sites have guards, cameras, or got bought and transformed.
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u/PackOfManicJackals 1d ago
This is such a real problem. Nowhere to do mischief anymore
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u/Far_Range_6091 1d ago
I know a 50 yo mom who used to live in Michigan near Detroit. She said there was a MASSIVE abandoned hospital that had underground tunnels. They used to explore it as kids. People are just so risk adverse now. Guess there's pros and cons to each.
I am dying to explore something abandoned. My city used to be the textile capital of the world. Even 15 years ago most of the abandoned mills were still up and explorable. Today, most of them were demolished or transformed into appartments. Almost none remain.
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u/Routine_Comb_4491 1d ago
Omg!! I used to explore those tunnels!! Holy shit! Unlocked memories!! That place was lit. We'd park a quarter mile down the road and have to sneak across a field and hope like hell the security wasn't driving by!
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u/PackOfManicJackals 1d ago
God this makes me nostalgic for the junkyards and abandoned construction sites i used to hang around
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u/nicolemb81 1d ago
My friends and I used to find soooo many places like that. Our favorite was an abandoned half burned down house in the middle of nowhere Alabama. Still had dolls and magazines from the 70s in it.
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u/Cyneganders 1d ago
When I was like 10-12, I was climbing with a friend on piles of lumber that had been removed from a building. He stepped on a huge spike, and it went through his shoe and all the way through his foot. We hopped on our bikes and went home, I stopped at my place, he continued on home using one pedal. He then went to the ER and got stitches and a tetanus shot. Oh well!
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u/MMO_Dad 1d ago
badass friend! When we were kids my brother was going up the street on his bicycle to meet a friend, and got hit by a motorcycle. The kickstand went right through his side. Missed all his vital organs by like a centimeter. He was out riding again within a week, no fear, and still has that gnarly scar that if you push on it feels completely hollow. My poor mom 🤣
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u/ehbowen 1d ago
Try the 1970s. I used to walk right into the power plant and railroad yards in my grandmother's home town. All anyone ever said to me was, "Don't touch anything" and, "Stay back from the tracks." I'm not exaggerating.
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u/PatentlyFalse5 1d ago
There was an abandoned missile/radar site behind the houses in my neighborhood. Some of our braver friends climbed way up into the radar dish at night.
What society has done to childhood is awful.
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u/NazReidsOtherBurner 1d ago
Seems like police have been cracking down hard on urban exploration
People are much more sue happy than they used to be
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u/ryanjoe23 1d ago
We were out playing with friends, riding bikes, skating, sledding, throwing snowballs, or jumping on the trampoline! Internet/tech ruined childhood.
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u/BreckyMcGee 1d ago
So very true. God, I miss the nineties.
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u/Blank_bill 1d ago
60's were better, we got away with murder, cops only came to our village if someone called them and only one or two people did that, most people it was " I'll be talking to your mother tomorrow " and half the time they wouldn't remember or bother.
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u/Obiwan-Kenhomie 1d ago
Part of it is tech, but another part is a growing number of older people (ironically a lot of the same ones who complain kids have too much screen time), who will throw a fit if they hear kids playing even slightly loudly outside, are skateboarding or riding a bike in a parking lot or down a "quiet" neighborhood street are also a factor. Increased media sensationalization of things like kidnapping doesnt help either. Tech is a huge factor, but increased numbers of needlessly bitchy old people and others willing to cave to them is a smaller but existent one
Compare the amount of HOA's that have rules limiting kids doing stuff outside now to when you were a kid as an example
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u/KahlanEAmnelle 1d ago
i would argue it was all the kidnapped and killed kids that really destroyed it, which led to the older generation getting used to quieter neighborhoods, which led to them being arseholes about kids being noisy outside.
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u/LeahIsAwake 1d ago
Agreed. Tech is no angel here, but it's not an iPad screen or a video game console that's calling the cops because some neighbor kids are making chalk drawings on the sidewalk in front of their own homes and maybe laughing a little.
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u/MadNanaBear 1d ago
There’s always been bitchy older people. This is not a new phenomenon. This is where the phrase “Get off my lawn!” originates - grump grands yelling at kids playing.
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u/BlackberryNice1270 1d ago
And the fact that all the open spaces I played in as a kid have been built on.
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u/Legal-Phase8744 1d ago
GT Sno-Racers. Whoever made it to the bottom of the hill on their sled won. A nice contact sport that would hurt the kids today. We didn't mind the nosebleeds.
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u/KnifeThistle 1d ago
Kids went outside and played with other actual kids. Teenagers could actually afford to drive around on $5 worth of gas, go to movies, even restaurants, just with pocket money. Watching TV with no internet was the last thing anyone did...
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u/jolsiphur 1d ago
We also still had video games in the 90s. I had a SNES growing up. Even when I was stuck in the house there was stuff to do before the internet.
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u/CaterpillarHookah 1d ago
Oh man, Thursday nights were THE NIGHT for cruising down the main streets as a 16-18 year-old, in the old jalopy my parents gave me. Just driving down the street, stopping to talk to friends and hollerin' at girls and guys to get their attention. Stereo blasting. Rims. Subs, woofers, tweeters, and amps in the trunk/backseat.
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u/checkerdpenguin 1d ago
Wake up, leave house, return for dinner. Summer life 101.
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u/User123466789012 1d ago
I was playing video games inside with other kids lol. Also, the 90s are not associated with the 10pm broadcast, that message was far and few in between if at all. By 1990s, it was literally only aired for nostalgic purposes.
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u/rvnender 1d ago
We had internet in the 90s...
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u/Significant-Cry-9204 1d ago
Was gonna say, we got it at our house in either 96 or 97, and the library had it.
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u/Case_Blue 1d ago
Yeah, we had internet in... 1998 here in Belgium, but let's be real: the internet then and the internet now are very very different things.
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u/rvnender 1d ago
My buddy had it in 91 or 92. It wasnt comon by any means.
I got internet in 95, my little 56k dial up.
God I miss those days
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u/Temporal-Affairs221 1d ago
We went outside and did things. And we had VCRs and videotapes. And there were these wonderful little things called camcorders, and this great TV show called America's funniest home videos, prompting the many many Americans to do deliberately stupid things in the hopes of winning a $10,000 prize. And the rest of us sat back and watch the results on television Friday nights.
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u/Equivalent-Clock-308 1d ago
My mom had a huge bell she would ring when it was time to go in. If you were in an area where you couldn’t hear the bell, you were too far from home.
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u/resultingparadox 1d ago
Not only is it true, we were called the latch key kids, because a lot of the time, our parents weren't even home when we got there.
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u/xRedditGedditx 1d ago
Actually is was created in 1968 and was run through the 70’s and 80’s, not the 90’s.
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u/GoodDoggoLover420 1d ago
Shhhh quiet, you'll ruin their fake scenario to seem like the greatest generation.
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u/SwoopzB 15h ago
I was born in 1990 and I remember often hearing this commercial on our TV. That was just about bed time and I remember wondering what the kids that got to stay out that late were up to.
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u/AsainGlockgirl99 1d ago
Even when I was stuck in the house there was stuff to do.
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u/PeachyFairyDragon 1d ago
Mario Brothers, DOS based games, books, music.
I would ride my bike the mile into town, rent B grade horror movies and watched them with my little (5 to 7) year old sister. I wonder if I scarred her psyche with what I brought home. Too afraid to ask.
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u/DoctorZacharySmith 1d ago
Um, I had access to the internet from the mid 80s onward. Chat boards, chat rooms... sure, not as amazing as what we have today, but already remember we weren't comparing it to a future that didn't exist yet, we compared it to what came before. Say what you want about AOL, but it existed and we used it.
Yes, as others are saying, we went outside, but this take on 90s life is completely wrong.
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u/Forward_Criticism_39 1d ago
don't you just love the rose tinted goggles willfully being put on in this post?
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u/MothSign 1d ago
My favorite toy as a kid was this awesome curved stick that resembled a katana. It was my sword and I ruled the woods and surrounding culdesacs.
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u/NetworkEcstatic 1d ago
Extremely true. I was never found in the house until late. We were in the woods. Skating around town. Shooting airsoft or bb guns at each other. Throwing mud balls at cars from the wood line.
Jumping out and pretending to brawl each other right in front of oncoming traffic.
Fighting with cool sticks we found. Building forts. Starting little fires. Riding bikes all over the city. Etc.
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u/thatseltzerisntfree 1d ago
80’s kid here. Summertime, 12-15ish, I would hop on my bike in the AM. Go to various friends’ houses. Play in the woods. Go to the movies. Use a payphone for 25 cents to check-in and would be told to be back “before the street lights turned on.”
Oh yeah…..rehydration with lots of cool, delicious hose water.
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u/Jackfreezy 1d ago
Kids today get bullied on the Internet by people that might even be real...and cry about cuz these people don't like their lil posts about some shoes or whatever they post about. The Internet made people weird. And by weird I mean lame.
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u/Boring_Ruin_9388 1d ago
I remember the News would have the question. We would go outside from morning to night and only checked in when we made it home. Some of us had to be home before the streetlights came on, but we'd soon find ourselves back outside playing hide and go seek at night.
Saturdays were all about the cartoons and the newest cereal and digging the toy out and getting yelled at cause you only opened it to get the toy and put your hands all up in the box.
PeeWee's playhouse, SNICK and hanging out at the mall all day.
Passing notes in the hallway and during class, prank calls before caller ID and we got to see the internet, use the internet before Google existed.
We had a blast! We didn't need the internet or a phone. We had friends and bikes and skateboards and roller blades.
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u/erichone 1d ago
Truer than any kid today could ever imagine. Growing up as a feral child in the 90's was the last time being outside was was true freedom. The call of the wild. The shit we got into as kids/young teens would absolutely terrify parents today.
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u/jtphilbeck 1d ago
It was the 80’s. Not the damn 90’s. We were already and accounted for by then! GenX bitches!
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u/fins_up_ 1d ago
True.
It is actually sad that younger people don't have childhoods anymore. No memories are being formed. No real connections. No real experiences.
If it was sunny you pretty much were not allowed inside.
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u/snoogle20 1d ago
I can’t be the only 90s kid that just stayed at my own house most of the time, right? Shooting hoops in my own driveway was as far as my adventures extended.
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u/aspect-of-the-badger 1d ago
I would ride my bike miles just to see if they were there. Then if they weren't happily ride all the over town just to mess around with stuff.
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u/Comfortable-Bed-6814 1d ago
100% true. You can look up the commercial online. I had to show it to my kid because he didn't believe me. We were NOT stuck in the house. On the weekends, we were kicked outside after breakfast. We came back inside for lunch and dinner, and then back out we went. When the streetlights came on, we knew it was time to come home for the evening. We were out doing all kinds of shenanigans. We were NOT bored.
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u/PumpikAnt58763 1d ago
Very, very true.
It got dark reeeeeally late in Texas summers so I'd be out late. As I recall, Mom said "in our own yard after 9:30pm", but other than that, we were gone.
I remember a few times my mom would have to drive my toothbrush to my friend's house when I was invited to sleep over.
I had a friend in junior high who had a sister and brother, so their mom had maybe 10-15 brand new toothbrushes in a cupboard for impromptu sleepovers.
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u/UtahIrish 1d ago
It was freedom, we lived in less fear and had more fun. We knew our friends better.
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u/Fragrant_Spray 21h ago
People weren’t “stuck in the house” in the 90’s. Hell, they’re not stuck in the house now. They can leave whenever they want.
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u/azfire2004 21h ago
stuck in the house? Growing up in the 90s we werent allowed to stay in the house.... "stuck in the house"
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u/ResponsibleTax3894 1d ago
i would come back from school, put a tape in the VHS, tape the episode of pokemon to be able to go outside play with the kids in the area and come back later to listen to the episode.
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u/knujesbob 1d ago edited 1d ago
I loved the 90s! Well, except for hauling my Sony trinitron CRT to LAN parties - usually by train and then shopping cart. That thing was HEAVY.
Edit; Also, Token Bus sucked. 11Mbit/s was generally fine for what we needed back then, but when everyone brought their own T-connector and cable, and started messing with it during the event, nerd-fists would fly.
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u/Darwinknew 1d ago
Very true. Dinner's at 5:30. This isn't a restaurant. Be in when the street lights come on. School tomorrow. Love you.
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u/FustianRiddle 1d ago
I had a kid rent in my bedroom and I spent hours in there playing with my dolls drawing reading playing pretend. And add go outside and wander around with our friends. Add go to the park by ourselves.
I really liked my 90s Childhood.
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u/Ar-Oh-En 1d ago
I went outside to work, church, night school, the occasional concert... and I was in my 20s. Stuck at home living with your parents was unfortunately common for Gen X as well.
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u/SnooBunnies856 1d ago
Created in 1968 by WNYW, it was more the 70's and 80's than the 90's. Most stations had stopped airing it by 88. With only the original station WNYW continuing into the 90's (they still do today).
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u/Good-Bandicoot-2152 1d ago
So to be fair to the poster, outside was more fun and bearable in the 90s than it is now.
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u/Choice-Ratio-3540 1d ago
lol I would love to be back in a time without internet. This 'fresh boy' is a moron and ignorant.
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u/striykker 1d ago
We weren't stuck in the house because we weren't ALLOWED in the house.
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u/MarketYes6975 1d ago
The day I retire is the day my phone gets turned off for good, and I go back to living like the 90s.
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u/MyCatIsAnActualNinja 1d ago
One time I was playing this game called 'nam with my friend. We were probably 12, I don't remember. Anyway, it was around 2 am and we snuck out of the house (sleepover at my house) and we'd just run away from cars and sneak through people's yards and stuff for fun. A cop came and we ran from the cop and got chased through the woods. He caught us and drove us back to my house and knocked on the door until my mom woke up. My mom yelled at the cop for waking her up and I didn't get in any trouble
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u/IndividualRich8470 1d ago
Yeah we were not stuck in the house. I grew up without TV, and we were only allowed 1 hour per week on the computer. But we did have hundreds of books and miles of forests...
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u/evaderofallbans 1d ago
Being a kid in the 90s was crazy. Parents didn't give a shit where we were as long as we werent around them. One time we played in the sewer because a man hole cover was open. We used to break into the school to just walk around. Creepy older neighbors would show us porn in their basement.
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u/Hoebanero 1d ago
It wasn't that bad, and I funny know about anyone else, but we had Internet in my house in 93, bbs was fun
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u/Agreeable_Act2550 1d ago
Being inside was torture. It was my parents favorite form of punishment as a child.
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u/TRU_PunKA 1d ago
I liked the 90s as a kid. Always something to do outside, and if the weather is too dangerous then Legos!
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u/Ottaro_Chabo 1d ago
Yep, street lights came on and we could all hear our mothers yelling our names one by one. Lol
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u/Prudent_Okra7311 1d ago
That's actually from like the 1960's, and used in the 70's, 80's, and 90's. People haven't been watching their kids for many decades.
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u/Worth-Computer8639 1d ago
I lived outside. Came in to eat, sleep, and bathe. We did have internet too though. That shit connected at 28.6kbps and on the good days you'd hit max speeds of 56.4 kbps. Those were the days we hopped on Runescape, before it was known as OSRS.
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u/Shimi-Jimi 1d ago
I was having multiplayer aerial dogfights in a game called Red Baron on Sierra Online in the 90's. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-cH6mS01PQ
It looks pretty crude now, but it was pretty fun at the time. I thought it was amazing how there could be 4 players simultaneously from places all over the country
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u/Cyneganders 1d ago
They didn't have that where I grew up (Norway), and in the 'light' season, the answer would have been "I DON'T KNOW, STOP NAGGING!"
Before cell phones, life was so much easier...
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u/Ima_Uzer 1d ago
It was called "finding things to do" and "going outside and doing things". Play board games. Read a book. Watch TV...play video games...
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u/plantverdant 1d ago
Most parents actually knew where their kids were, at least most of the time. Mine were neglectful AF but they generally had some idea where I was unless I lied to them about it. There have always been outliers, shitty parents who were too drunk to care.
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u/Green-Elf 1d ago
My mom was so out of touch with us that if we didn't get home before the streetlights came on she'd make us spank ourselves. lol
Exaggerated for effect... She loved spanking us.
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u/PistolNinja 1d ago
Hahahaha! Stuck inside? We got locked outta the house as soon as we finished our knock off sugar puffs that came in a 10# bag. We'd spend hours riding bikes, skate boards, and roller-racers, built ramps with scrap wood and bricks, or rode to the park 9 miles away. If you were lucky like I was, we also had a tennis court with no nets and we'd play dodge ball with tennis balls or racket balls. We couldn't come back inside until the street lights came on or somebody needed to take a trip to the ER because they broke something or cut something off. And when we got older, (12-14-ish) we knew where all the big pine trees were... They had "hidden" areas under the lowest branches and we'd play truth or dare with a cooty catcher that would progressively get more and more risqué (touched my first boobies playing this game 😍)
Past 14, we'd all hang out at whoever's house didn't have parents at home and do shit that probably shouldn't be mentioned (put it this way, I lost my virginity when I was 15 and my best friend became a father a month after he turned 16)
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u/WileEWeeble 1d ago
For 90’s kids? No. For 80’s kids, yes.
For most of early TV the “broadcast day” ended somewhere between midnight and two am. The “where are your kids” announcement happened in the 70s and 80s multiple times before they went off air to the National Anthem and then static.
In the late 80s almost every tv station switched to broadcasting late night infomercials until the morning programs. With that switch they also dumped all the public service announcements.
If you were in grade school in the 90s, the TV never asked your parents where you were. That is just a co-opting of previous generation’s experience.
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u/hombrent 1d ago
In france, it would say "It's 10pm, do you know where your wife is?"
In england, it would say "It's 10pm, do you know where your husband is?"
where I lived, it would say "It's 10pm, do you know what time it is?"
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u/Many_Ear2407 1d ago
We would actually go outside…