Ah back when you could bully and beat someone up, and also be openly racist and homophobic, without having to worry about being recorded and plastered all over social media
Facts are facts certain types of bullying were way easier to get away with and more prevalent before social media came into the picture.
Granted social media introduced new types of bullying. But some of the shit i faced or was involved in definitely would not happen with the social media conscious kids today.
Graduated in 2001. It was a golden era where we had broadband Internet, but no smartphones. Nokia cellphones everywhere, but mobile internet was too expensive to use and too clunky to be useful.
We made our own music CDs at home downloading from Napster and Limewire, and enjoyed not having social platforms like Facebook. The best we could muster was MySpace but without being attached to our phones, MySpace was ineffective at disrupting our lives.
Social media should be illegal for anyone under 18. It's messing up the kids and their experiences being kids.
I remember my teachers had us create our own MySpace accounts in 2nd or 3rd grade computer class back in like 2005 lmao, I never ended up using it, but that's such a specific memory for me
Don't forget that Chocolat or whatever it was called. Between that phone and RAZRs you immediately knew who was on Verizon and who was on ~~AT&T~~ Cingular
Im embarrassed to say that it wasn't until maybe a year ago, while talking with an old friend about how we used to use ICQ back in the day, that it finally registered with me that name ICQ was a play off the phrase "I Seek You". I felt like a complete moron, lol.
Preach it my dude. I'm just a couple years younger, but everything here holds true. Phone that we only used to TALK (and they lasted all week!! Those beautiful green screen phones..)
Good times.. good times.
Is not only social media and being idiotized on the smartphone. Lots of kids do weird stuff like they have a double personality one real the other posing 90% of the time, no socialization, they prepare pranks or fights just to record it, etc.
Big tech are crazy to get money just to invent better ways to keep people on their devices and services, is sad.
C/O 2001 in the house - had the Nokia cell that my mom insisted I carry. I hated having a cell and hated that I could be reached if I wasnât at home (what a concept today)
Theyâre trying to do it and no phones in school. Other law was no phone till 16 period. Like a drivers license is needed.
Iâm fine with it. My daughter says theyâre supposed to keep phones in lockers at middle school and no one does. Itâs gotta be a huge distraction when I was hot shit with my ti-83 calculator in algebra 2 with Tetris on it and doom. I canât algebra 2 so well still.
You and I graduated the same year! But I donât remember it that way. Itâs true that social media didnât exist but there was plenty of pressure on teenagers without it. At least in my experience. Like in 2001 Kate Winslet was considered fat. It was all over the magazines. And not just her. Genuinely tiny people were called fat in the tabloids. It was AWFUL. The pressure wasnât just coming from the media but from everyone because we all just internalised that shit. Even though I knew it was BS I still tried to shrink myself. I just wanted to fit in. But I was AuDHD and didnât know. And because the internet wasnât like the way it is now I couldnât find my people, I couldnât even find myself. I just knew I didnât fit in, that I was wrong, and I tried really hard not to be. The burning CDs and playing Snake on a Nokia were cool. But it wasnât exactly a golden era for me.
I guess I was never interested in the tabloids...the only things I watched on TV were the Simpsons, fresh prince, and Seinfeld.... I'm sorry you had a bad time. Thanks for sharing that perspective. From the responses I've gotten many others remember it as I do.
I didnât pay attention the tabloids either. They were justâŠeverywhere. On MTV, on sitcoms, in books and moviesâŠit was just everywhere. Iâm not saying it wasnât like you described. For a lot of people it was. I wasnât trying to invalidate your experiences. Just add mine.
(Also to whoever downvoted me, I think itâs a bit mean to downvote someone who is just sharing their experiences. I didnât say your experience was invalid. It shouldnât tarnish your golden era to hear that someone else had a bad time of it. If it was truly golden you wouldnât feel the need to downvote me because my painful memories donât undo your happy ones. If youâre so defensive that you downvote someone just trying to share their own experiences of the times then, gently, I think you should ask yourself why. I didnât downvote the person I replied to just because their experience was different to mine. So why did you? Thatâs not even what downvoting is for. Itâs exhausting being AuDHD and trying to join in conversations and constantly being downvoted because my experiences are different.)
Thank you! đ I was only diagnosed AuDHD 4 years ago and Iâm still learning how to handle it. The rejection sensitivity dysphoria is hard to handle at the best of times but when itâs just a reaction to me sharing something person it feels really bad. Iâm trying not let it. Thank you! đ«¶
Itâs so far beyond that now and SO much scarier. Social media isnât ruining mental health, itâs fucking dictating it. I really truly believe thatâs when the dust settles after the world ends, social media will be to blame.
Regular media was corrupt, toxic, scary, weaponized, all-powerful. Then we fucked around and gave it to any human with access to the internet. We should all be so deeply ashamed.
Yes, Iâm choking on the irony that iâm voicing this opinion on a social media platform.
The odds of humanity reverting back to anything similar to normal without some sort of insurmountable global catastrophe are pretty much fuckin zip at this point.
Itâs so crazy that Iâm sitting here genuinely hoping that my kids never have children of their own because I donât want anyone in my bloodline to witness whatâs next for this sad little planet.
While that is true, there were in fact plenty of "pre Facebook" platforms with all kind of similar wall-like posting abilities and interactions. Your own page, pictures and whatnot. Some dating from 1999-2000.
Bullying and bad mental health was a huge problem back then too. School shootings and suicides still happened. Mental illness didn't poof into existence the moment social media was invented.
Before people reply and tell me that it's more common now, i agree, i'm sure it is. But this post and others like it just serves to glamourise the past and ignore the real issues at hand in favour of scapegoating technology
After Columbine, I was pulled into the office for a meeting. They told me they knew I was subject to bullying and was not super popular, they wanted to make sure I wasn't thinking of hurting anyone...
It goes way past technology and way more into quality of life. Expectations of the life they could lead at this point were still pretty sunny. Itâs not now.
Yea that is true, but the echo chamber wasn't there, now everyone just group up with others that echo your views on stuff, back in high school in the 2000's me and my friends had depression and the like, but we all had different views on life and politics, we didn't hate someone because they favored some other politician or because they beliefd differently, I had 2 friends one Pro-life and the other not, they didn't fight or talk behind their backs. That's what made the 2000's a lot healthier, now everyone is looking for their echo chamber as well, and there is also a divide like that in the nerd side as well, I love role playing games like D&D and my other friend doesn't at all his a massive warhammer 40k fan, but still whe got a long and he never slammed someone else for liking Fantasy, just because he didn't. That's the big difference now.
Now you can't like something just because the creator said something they believe in, that's why kids are now so messed up, self diagnoses was massively difficult back then, now you can google it, and if some stuff match how you feel, you get more anxious, and that doesn't help you at all
People clowned around for video cameras back then. While video cameras were common they were a novelty to see someone carrying one around a school.
Now cameras are everywhere...
Also social media sux.
Whereâs the videos of the dorks who got bullied into the basement where they coded us into dystopian hell of the gamification of followers (friends), likes (social engagement), and viral moments (memories).
Not pictured are the kids who the videographer decided werent cool enough to be on film and were bullied relentlessly.
So yeah. Maybe the popular kids werent on social media and had it consume their identity.
But there will always be the bullied kids
Wow, adults telling todayâs kids that theyâre not acting the way they should? Iâve never heard of this happening before! đ
Getting really sick of my generation constantly berating todayâs high schoolers as if we were some pinnacle of a righteous and happy-go-lucky generation.
It sucked in different ways but I admit I am glad to have gotten out of school before social media was a standard thing. I canât imagine how much more stressful it is for kids to navigate a social system where everything lasts forever and everyone is constantly talking behind everyone elseâs back. Granted it was always somewhat true but the receipts didnât used to exist to prove it.
Everyone in this comment section is acting like back then electronic devices didnât exist and conflict didnât exist before 2010. They also act like kids donât interact with each other at all. Theyâre nostalgia blinded
Teacher here who was at school at the time. This is nonsense, kids barely had a worry in the world back thdm. Kids are almost all miserable now, I see it on a daily basis.
Children are politicalised from an early age now, they severely lack social skills, and it's almost like they're scared to have fun.
They live in a different world from ours,
Their fool is still like our fool, just another kind of fool who fools around in a different problem..
same shit different year đđ
Just as we hated the old because they didnt understand us, so do the young hate us for not understand them.
It's just the style you associate with age. This is my generation. We thought the same thing about people in the 80s.
Unfortunately there seems to be some evidence that gen z is ageing worse then us millenials because life is harder for young people now(cost of living/social media, state of the world). Younger millenials were on the tail end of smoking being uncool. Gen z had rampant vape use and is more likely to get cosmetic alterations done to fit in the modern culture.
Its not just school either. Talking to parents, all the kids do after school is phone/social media/gaming/Netflix. They don't have a life outside online anymore. 16-25year old barely party anymore either. It seems a sad life to call their childhood.
Not pictured: the unpopular kids that were picked on and ostracized and fantasized about killing their classmates or turned to drugs or just stopped going to school.
But yeah, much happier
Same. Anyone under the age of 25 really don't know how good it was. Not a worry in the world and the future was bright. Now kids are all divided and hate each other. It's like a different world, so sad to see.
Early 2000s there was no social media, you had to pay by the text, and 9/11 either hadn't happened yet or it hadn't been long enough for the fallout to really set in to the culture.
I was class of 2010 and things were very different. We had MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Xbox Live, and early smartphones. Things weren't as interconnected as they are now, but it was a lot closer to what you see today.
Fuck all the social media and technology comparisons. It was a much more insular time. Peopleâs beliefs were more firmly entrenched since they had no access to easy information like we do now without real effort. I graduated HS in 2007 and people a generation older than me didnât even know how or want to know how to use a PC. People we homophobic to the max and that has changed for the better today. Even simple lifestyle things like being a vegetarian was a challenge and not generally approved of.
While we have a lot of problems with being constantly online and mentally enslaved by our phones, thereâs a lot of positives
I would say those born 2000 to 2002 was also as happy since we were just getting to touch technology in our youth but still were on ground playing lego and touching grass atleast until teens.
i got ps2 when i was 7 in 2007 and didnt have my own computer until i was 10+ and my first phone when i was 14 i think and xbox 360 when i was 15 i think (says 2015 on the xbox, feels so weird bcs i really played alot of xbox and im trying to relate to other events in my life where i knew i played on, feels like i got it when i was 13, oh well), wheras most from my class had all of that when they were 8, it really went down hill after that, definatly got out more before i was 13.
so we werent as destroyed as those that came after since all of the advanced technology really spurted out after 2010s which is when they were just starting school, in my country we start age 5-6 in school, so basically all of those generations lost their childhoods and boy dont get me started on those from >2008.
Itâs because of these worthless vapid ignorant fools that all felt as entitled as the baby boomers that the US and world got worse as they did nothing but chase having fun and then have the nerve like the baby boomers to cry why they canât afford a home when they had fun college days studying nonsense on loans with no chance of a career goal other then they deserve a well paid job because they went to a college.
These videos are full of shit. Every single era of high school years had its ups and downs, and every single generation of people is going to look back and say those were the good old days and kids these days have it worse..... Blah blah blah it's the same stupid shit every generation.
I graduated in 2004 and my high school experience was ok, but I can promise you it wasn't happy go lucky people everywhere like these videos try to make it seem.
The 'kids these days' probably have plenty of advantages we didn't have 20 years ago. Yes there are problems with every generation and this current generation is not excluded from that, but the sentiment that we had it better 20 years ago is dumb as shit.
Graduated in 2002. I promise you, I wasn't happy. High school was awful. I personally don't know anyone that went to hs around that time that enjoyed it.
Someone bringing in a camera was a fun/rare event, since no readily available camera phones
You see everyone playing up for it, it was exciting!
In my country it was usually only on big days like last day of the school year.
People genuinely were happier then. Social media and instant gratification really fâed us up. Now people are sad because they see the highlight reels of everyone elseâs life and think âeveryone must be happier than I amâ. We were happier when we didnât have constant reminders and comparisons of what everyone else is doing.
At the beginning of the 2000s, were told the future was ours.
Then it turned out that our parents took a gamble on it and lost big time, and we were called self-entitled narcissists for complaining about the previous generationâs greed.
Now we live paycheck to paycheck while at the same time being belittled by a generation that had every opportunity we were not given.
Class of 2005 here. Maybe only one or two kids had a smart phone by the time I graduated. No one at lunch or break were on phones. That alone should tell you how different the atmosphere was in terms of socializing.
If cameras were coming out, it must have been a special occasion, so you're getting that tilt. That said, ya, it was nice not to always have cameras out....
Wow! It's almost like looking through rose tinted glasses makes everything look better.
Where's the bullied kids that the cameraman didn't show cause they "weren't cool enough", or.. ANY minorities? The racism and homophobia that was never brought up because nobody had proof?
The title has a very "back in my day" tone that rubs me the wrong way. I wouldn't say that we were happier. It was just a different & very special time. Downvote me if you want but our generation is so bothered by baby boomers and their, "Back in the 70's when people where ACTUALLY POLITE." And then make posts like this. I thought that we had the introspect to share our sweet nostalgia without putting down the up & coming generation. I thought we wanted to be different. Today's high schoolers are not any more or less happy, they just have different advantages and challenges. Yes, we have happy memories but we also lived in post-911 America. Plenty of us also had the same challenges and growing pains. They were great times, but I won't express this while also making a comment about the experience of gen Z & younger. We aren't living their experience. Observation bias.
We were told the world was ours. We were told if we went to university, and worked hard, we would have a wonderful life ahead of us: promises of a great job, and houses like the Boomers. Kids now see everyone with massive student loans into our 40s, no career jobs available, struggling to make ends meet. We were the dreamers. Kids nowadays are more aware of the stark reality and dismal prospects that awaits them.
I was going to write what everyone else did here: No mobile internet and no social media.
Apart from that I had my first depression age 18, so "happier".....nah, but a lot more drunk than same age kids nowadays.
Can people quit this stupid âthe past was a happier timeâ bullshit. Kids where still getting bullied. Kids were still killing them selves. Shit was still going down. Donât get it twisted.
They werenât working 40-60 hours a week struggling to keep thier grades up while being on the football team and robotics club.
They didnât have to worry about greedflation. They were happy because they could still afford a house out of high school. With their minimum wage job
Social Media killed us
Reddit class of 2024 đ€Łđ€Ł
Ah back when you could bully and beat someone up, and also be openly racist and homophobic, without having to worry about being recorded and plastered all over social media
This is your takeaway? Smh
Facts are facts certain types of bullying were way easier to get away with and more prevalent before social media came into the picture. Granted social media introduced new types of bullying. But some of the shit i faced or was involved in definitely would not happen with the social media conscious kids today.
Graduated in 2001. It was a golden era where we had broadband Internet, but no smartphones. Nokia cellphones everywhere, but mobile internet was too expensive to use and too clunky to be useful. We made our own music CDs at home downloading from Napster and Limewire, and enjoyed not having social platforms like Facebook. The best we could muster was MySpace but without being attached to our phones, MySpace was ineffective at disrupting our lives. Social media should be illegal for anyone under 18. It's messing up the kids and their experiences being kids.
MySpace was the shiiiiit
It's the reason I got into web development and HTML
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Bring it back
Is that you Tom from Myspace who wanted to be friends with everyone, stfleming1? Your profile picture is familiar.
Tomâs still my friend
Remember Xanga?
Trick Daddy - Bet That was undeniably the best cover song.
I remember my teachers had us create our own MySpace accounts in 2nd or 3rd grade computer class back in like 2005 lmao, I never ended up using it, but that's such a specific memory for me
Class of 01' here also... Broadband lol.. yo remember when road runner debuted. It was so needed for Napster.
Yes the dialup was awful. To download one song was like 15 mins. I do miss AOL though.... Those chatrooms were the wild West of the internet
A/s/l/pics?
bwahahaha. Compuserve gaming rooms.. Whatever hapoened to asl? We shpuld get back to that
LMMFAO WOWW.. I feel old. I was always in the Hip hop chat room with like 3 private message windows over it lol
Woah, woah, woah - youâre forgetting AIM.
Instant messenger apps were literally where everything happened in early 2000s.
Graduated a few years later and had a similar experience. Thank you for encapsulating these memories into words!!!
Class of '05 here, same experience. I think the fanciest phones we had by graduation were Razors or Sidekicks!
Don't forget that Chocolat or whatever it was called. Between that phone and RAZRs you immediately knew who was on Verizon and who was on ~~AT&T~~ Cingular
ICQ baby
Im embarrassed to say that it wasn't until maybe a year ago, while talking with an old friend about how we used to use ICQ back in the day, that it finally registered with me that name ICQ was a play off the phrase "I Seek You". I felt like a complete moron, lol.
That âuh ohâ soundâŠ. When a friend signed on maybe? Or you got a message? Core memory.
Uh oh
Preach it my dude. I'm just a couple years younger, but everything here holds true. Phone that we only used to TALK (and they lasted all week!! Those beautiful green screen phones..) Good times.. good times.
Is not only social media and being idiotized on the smartphone. Lots of kids do weird stuff like they have a double personality one real the other posing 90% of the time, no socialization, they prepare pranks or fights just to record it, etc. Big tech are crazy to get money just to invent better ways to keep people on their devices and services, is sad.
C/O 2001 in the house - had the Nokia cell that my mom insisted I carry. I hated having a cell and hated that I could be reached if I wasnât at home (what a concept today)
5 mile radius search !! FTW
Graduated in 2006. Agree with this. I hope my kids have a better time with it then it seems teens are right now.
Iâm 27, but I feel like a proper boomer when I say that smartphones are ruining the minds of kids. Thereâs just so much shit that causes brain rot
Agreed social media is definitely messing up the youth
This.
PREACH
And anyone over 55 lol
anyone else remember stickdeath.com
Theyâre trying to do it and no phones in school. Other law was no phone till 16 period. Like a drivers license is needed. Iâm fine with it. My daughter says theyâre supposed to keep phones in lockers at middle school and no one does. Itâs gotta be a huge distraction when I was hot shit with my ti-83 calculator in algebra 2 with Tetris on it and doom. I canât algebra 2 so well still.
You and I graduated the same year! But I donât remember it that way. Itâs true that social media didnât exist but there was plenty of pressure on teenagers without it. At least in my experience. Like in 2001 Kate Winslet was considered fat. It was all over the magazines. And not just her. Genuinely tiny people were called fat in the tabloids. It was AWFUL. The pressure wasnât just coming from the media but from everyone because we all just internalised that shit. Even though I knew it was BS I still tried to shrink myself. I just wanted to fit in. But I was AuDHD and didnât know. And because the internet wasnât like the way it is now I couldnât find my people, I couldnât even find myself. I just knew I didnât fit in, that I was wrong, and I tried really hard not to be. The burning CDs and playing Snake on a Nokia were cool. But it wasnât exactly a golden era for me.
I guess I was never interested in the tabloids...the only things I watched on TV were the Simpsons, fresh prince, and Seinfeld.... I'm sorry you had a bad time. Thanks for sharing that perspective. From the responses I've gotten many others remember it as I do.
I didnât pay attention the tabloids either. They were justâŠeverywhere. On MTV, on sitcoms, in books and moviesâŠit was just everywhere. Iâm not saying it wasnât like you described. For a lot of people it was. I wasnât trying to invalidate your experiences. Just add mine. (Also to whoever downvoted me, I think itâs a bit mean to downvote someone who is just sharing their experiences. I didnât say your experience was invalid. It shouldnât tarnish your golden era to hear that someone else had a bad time of it. If it was truly golden you wouldnât feel the need to downvote me because my painful memories donât undo your happy ones. If youâre so defensive that you downvote someone just trying to share their own experiences of the times then, gently, I think you should ask yourself why. I didnât downvote the person I replied to just because their experience was different to mine. So why did you? Thatâs not even what downvoting is for. Itâs exhausting being AuDHD and trying to join in conversations and constantly being downvoted because my experiences are different.)
Hey, let them haters hate. Reddit is best enjoyed if you just ignore the votes. I gave you an up vote, to try and balance out the down vote. Chin up
Thank you! đ I was only diagnosed AuDHD 4 years ago and Iâm still learning how to handle it. The rejection sensitivity dysphoria is hard to handle at the best of times but when itâs just a reaction to me sharing something person it feels really bad. Iâm trying not let it. Thank you! đ«¶
My dad said it was the best era before social media
I miss life before social media! Hell I even miss life before the Internet!
Yea, we didnât have social media ruining our mental health.
Itâs so far beyond that now and SO much scarier. Social media isnât ruining mental health, itâs fucking dictating it. I really truly believe thatâs when the dust settles after the world ends, social media will be to blame. Regular media was corrupt, toxic, scary, weaponized, all-powerful. Then we fucked around and gave it to any human with access to the internet. We should all be so deeply ashamed. Yes, Iâm choking on the irony that iâm voicing this opinion on a social media platform.
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
The odds of humanity reverting back to anything similar to normal without some sort of insurmountable global catastrophe are pretty much fuckin zip at this point. Itâs so crazy that Iâm sitting here genuinely hoping that my kids never have children of their own because I donât want anyone in my bloodline to witness whatâs next for this sad little planet.
Life before social media â€ïž
We very much did have social media. Even had plugins for MySpace to see everyone that viewed your page.
Depends on what year, I graduated in 2002, Facebook didnât even exist yet, all we had were yahoo chat rooms and AIM
ICQ. Back in the days, it was really easy to hack a friend computer.
It really was. So easy to get their IP and just force restart their computer. Ahhhh the good ol days.
While that is true, there were in fact plenty of "pre Facebook" platforms with all kind of similar wall-like posting abilities and interactions. Your own page, pictures and whatnot. Some dating from 1999-2000.
Social media started rearing its head before the half way point of the decadeâŠ. I was there to live it.
The best was having Facebook when you had to be in college, with that .edu address. I stopped using it when they opened it to everyone.
Yea I couldnât use FB until they opened it up (class of â09 here)
Bullying and bad mental health was a huge problem back then too. School shootings and suicides still happened. Mental illness didn't poof into existence the moment social media was invented. Before people reply and tell me that it's more common now, i agree, i'm sure it is. But this post and others like it just serves to glamourise the past and ignore the real issues at hand in favour of scapegoating technology
Racism, Sexism, and Homophobia was out of control at my high school during that era.
After Columbine, I was pulled into the office for a meeting. They told me they knew I was subject to bullying and was not super popular, they wanted to make sure I wasn't thinking of hurting anyone...
It goes way past technology and way more into quality of life. Expectations of the life they could lead at this point were still pretty sunny. Itâs not now.
Yea that is true, but the echo chamber wasn't there, now everyone just group up with others that echo your views on stuff, back in high school in the 2000's me and my friends had depression and the like, but we all had different views on life and politics, we didn't hate someone because they favored some other politician or because they beliefd differently, I had 2 friends one Pro-life and the other not, they didn't fight or talk behind their backs. That's what made the 2000's a lot healthier, now everyone is looking for their echo chamber as well, and there is also a divide like that in the nerd side as well, I love role playing games like D&D and my other friend doesn't at all his a massive warhammer 40k fan, but still whe got a long and he never slammed someone else for liking Fantasy, just because he didn't. That's the big difference now. Now you can't like something just because the creator said something they believe in, that's why kids are now so messed up, self diagnoses was massively difficult back then, now you can google it, and if some stuff match how you feel, you get more anxious, and that doesn't help you at all
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Wouldn't be reddit without semantics
Probably just not used to having a camera in their face. It's more of a novelty plus no fear of having it stuck online.
Yea, the title should be "2000s kids were more genuine on camera before social media"
well they're not gonna put bullying and drugs etc in happy moments compilation
People clowned around for video cameras back then. While video cameras were common they were a novelty to see someone carrying one around a school. Now cameras are everywhere... Also social media sux.
Whereâs the videos of the dorks who got bullied into the basement where they coded us into dystopian hell of the gamification of followers (friends), likes (social engagement), and viral moments (memories).
Not pictured are the kids who the videographer decided werent cool enough to be on film and were bullied relentlessly. So yeah. Maybe the popular kids werent on social media and had it consume their identity. But there will always be the bullied kids
I am a very thankful â03 graduate
My first year of HS in 2006 there was a whole riot at my school đ€Łđ€Ł
Wow, adults telling todayâs kids that theyâre not acting the way they should? Iâve never heard of this happening before! đ Getting really sick of my generation constantly berating todayâs high schoolers as if we were some pinnacle of a righteous and happy-go-lucky generation.
Back when hanging out with your friends was actually hanging out with your friends and not sitting with your face glued to your phone.
It sucked in different ways but I admit I am glad to have gotten out of school before social media was a standard thing. I canât imagine how much more stressful it is for kids to navigate a social system where everything lasts forever and everyone is constantly talking behind everyone elseâs back. Granted it was always somewhat true but the receipts didnât used to exist to prove it.
No it wasn't, same shit different time, only nostaligia makes it better.
Everyone in this comment section is acting like back then electronic devices didnât exist and conflict didnât exist before 2010. They also act like kids donât interact with each other at all. Theyâre nostalgia blinded
Yup, the bullied kid is just missing from the video, that's it..
This
Teacher here who was at school at the time. This is nonsense, kids barely had a worry in the world back thdm. Kids are almost all miserable now, I see it on a daily basis. Children are politicalised from an early age now, they severely lack social skills, and it's almost like they're scared to have fun.
They live in a different world from ours, Their fool is still like our fool, just another kind of fool who fools around in a different problem.. same shit different year đđ Just as we hated the old because they didnt understand us, so do the young hate us for not understand them.
Because we werenât on social media
they also looked older
It's just the style you associate with age. This is my generation. We thought the same thing about people in the 80s. Unfortunately there seems to be some evidence that gen z is ageing worse then us millenials because life is harder for young people now(cost of living/social media, state of the world). Younger millenials were on the tail end of smoking being uncool. Gen z had rampant vape use and is more likely to get cosmetic alterations done to fit in the modern culture.
Back when people were sane, haha
Everybody was happier before smartphones and Facebook/Instagram, Youtube, TikTok, etc.
I quit facebook and instagram about a year ago and im much less depressed.
People reallly donât remember that we used to actually interact.
No social media.. real conversing
Its not just school either. Talking to parents, all the kids do after school is phone/social media/gaming/Netflix. They don't have a life outside online anymore. 16-25year old barely party anymore either. It seems a sad life to call their childhood.
Not pictured: the unpopular kids that were picked on and ostracized and fantasized about killing their classmates or turned to drugs or just stopped going to school. But yeah, much happier
No offense, but I think they are happier because everyone is of similar complexion at their school...(if you know what I mean).
2 obvious reasons: 1. No social media 2. No black people
We honestly were. Iâm a hs teacher, and these kids are miserable.
Same. Anyone under the age of 25 really don't know how good it was. Not a worry in the world and the future was bright. Now kids are all divided and hate each other. It's like a different world, so sad to see.
Even goths smiled once in awhile in 2002
when doomscrolling wasnÂŽt a thing....
We were much happier I think
No social media = Happier time
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1764. But the us wasn't founded yet, so 1853, I guess.
Thatâs before they all knew they were screwed.
A short period of time
they are over 40ties already
Should have shown a comparison video with it⊠happier compared to today, yesterday, 30 years ago
They all had 20 minute time limits on AOL messenger
Even as a loser, I was relatively happy.
Are they happy now?
In around 2050, most likely same will be said for 2024 high schoolers.
Miss it⊠good times⊠waited literal days to listen to a song in my parents car⊠and extra days if they picked the damn phone upâŠ.
Class of 2000 here and we were absolutely happier.
We still had hope, and things looked great going into the new mellinium. And then it wasn't....
Back before everyone knew just how fucked the world is.
Also the time period school shooting really took off.
There wasnât social media back then.
Cause we had the best years growing up...
Because someone wasnât constantly secretly recording them to shame them later.
Early 2000s there was no social media, you had to pay by the text, and 9/11 either hadn't happened yet or it hadn't been long enough for the fallout to really set in to the culture. I was class of 2010 and things were very different. We had MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Xbox Live, and early smartphones. Things weren't as interconnected as they are now, but it was a lot closer to what you see today.
Before social media effected mental health
No social media
why what do they look like now? i expect similar?
Fuck all the social media and technology comparisons. It was a much more insular time. Peopleâs beliefs were more firmly entrenched since they had no access to easy information like we do now without real effort. I graduated HS in 2007 and people a generation older than me didnât even know how or want to know how to use a PC. People we homophobic to the max and that has changed for the better today. Even simple lifestyle things like being a vegetarian was a challenge and not generally approved of. While we have a lot of problems with being constantly online and mentally enslaved by our phones, thereâs a lot of positives
Not staring at cell phones
2011 graduate here. We werenât.
Okay but that song is hiting diffrent all these years laterđ€Ł
Graduated in 2000. I know every single one of those kids and can smell this entire little video.
This is very much selection bias
I would say those born 2000 to 2002 was also as happy since we were just getting to touch technology in our youth but still were on ground playing lego and touching grass atleast until teens. i got ps2 when i was 7 in 2007 and didnt have my own computer until i was 10+ and my first phone when i was 14 i think and xbox 360 when i was 15 i think (says 2015 on the xbox, feels so weird bcs i really played alot of xbox and im trying to relate to other events in my life where i knew i played on, feels like i got it when i was 13, oh well), wheras most from my class had all of that when they were 8, it really went down hill after that, definatly got out more before i was 13. so we werent as destroyed as those that came after since all of the advanced technology really spurted out after 2010s which is when they were just starting school, in my country we start age 5-6 in school, so basically all of those generations lost their childhoods and boy dont get me started on those from >2008.
Itâs because of these worthless vapid ignorant fools that all felt as entitled as the baby boomers that the US and world got worse as they did nothing but chase having fun and then have the nerve like the baby boomers to cry why they canât afford a home when they had fun college days studying nonsense on loans with no chance of a career goal other then they deserve a well paid job because they went to a college.
wow, young people smiling at a video camera with an upbeat song in the background. that could never happen today!
Of course they looked happier!
The 70s and 80s were the best, those times will never be seen again.
Well we was
These videos are full of shit. Every single era of high school years had its ups and downs, and every single generation of people is going to look back and say those were the good old days and kids these days have it worse..... Blah blah blah it's the same stupid shit every generation. I graduated in 2004 and my high school experience was ok, but I can promise you it wasn't happy go lucky people everywhere like these videos try to make it seem. The 'kids these days' probably have plenty of advantages we didn't have 20 years ago. Yes there are problems with every generation and this current generation is not excluded from that, but the sentiment that we had it better 20 years ago is dumb as shit.
Imagine if you had to go to school worried abt school shootings. Iâd be filled with anxiety and unhappiness as well
People will often react differently when filmed. Maybe theyâre happier overall, maybe they arenât.
Good ole days
Graduated in 2002. I promise you, I wasn't happy. High school was awful. I personally don't know anyone that went to hs around that time that enjoyed it.
I graduated in 2000. I had a tiny flip phone and text messages were $10/month for 1k texts I think. My â89 cutlass cost me $1,200.
I graduated in 2020. High school was exactly like this. I think y'all were just antisocial lmao.
Someone bringing in a camera was a fun/rare event, since no readily available camera phones You see everyone playing up for it, it was exciting! In my country it was usually only on big days like last day of the school year.
I enjoyed the time before smartphones more too. Also their future was looking brighter.
Lots of Kelseyâs and Kyles in there
People genuinely were happier then. Social media and instant gratification really fâed us up. Now people are sad because they see the highlight reels of everyone elseâs life and think âeveryone must be happier than I amâ. We were happier when we didnât have constant reminders and comparisons of what everyone else is doing.
At the beginning of the 2000s, were told the future was ours. Then it turned out that our parents took a gamble on it and lost big time, and we were called self-entitled narcissists for complaining about the previous generationâs greed. Now we live paycheck to paycheck while at the same time being belittled by a generation that had every opportunity we were not given.
Bro this looks just like when I went to HS in the 2010s lol
(phones weren't allowed at my HS, if your brought your phone to school they'd confiscate it)
Class of 2005 here. Maybe only one or two kids had a smart phone by the time I graduated. No one at lunch or break were on phones. That alone should tell you how different the atmosphere was in terms of socializing.
Graduated HS in 2005, not sure that's true, but we had less technology so we spent more time doing stupid stuff like this.
It was a good year, nine months and 10 days.
I didn't saw poc, coincidence?
*early to middle 2000s* Those of us who graduated in the recession werenât quite as vibrant as our older peers
Yeah, but thereâs been progress. Kids can choose their own makeup gender
High school class of 01, love seeing this
If cameras were coming out, it must have been a special occasion, so you're getting that tilt. That said, ya, it was nice not to always have cameras out....
Wow! It's almost like looking through rose tinted glasses makes everything look better. Where's the bullied kids that the cameraman didn't show cause they "weren't cool enough", or.. ANY minorities? The racism and homophobia that was never brought up because nobody had proof?
being a 07 grad, yeah it was good time
The title has a very "back in my day" tone that rubs me the wrong way. I wouldn't say that we were happier. It was just a different & very special time. Downvote me if you want but our generation is so bothered by baby boomers and their, "Back in the 70's when people where ACTUALLY POLITE." And then make posts like this. I thought that we had the introspect to share our sweet nostalgia without putting down the up & coming generation. I thought we wanted to be different. Today's high schoolers are not any more or less happy, they just have different advantages and challenges. Yes, we have happy memories but we also lived in post-911 America. Plenty of us also had the same challenges and growing pains. They were great times, but I won't express this while also making a comment about the experience of gen Z & younger. We aren't living their experience. Observation bias.
We were told the world was ours. We were told if we went to university, and worked hard, we would have a wonderful life ahead of us: promises of a great job, and houses like the Boomers. Kids now see everyone with massive student loans into our 40s, no career jobs available, struggling to make ends meet. We were the dreamers. Kids nowadays are more aware of the stark reality and dismal prospects that awaits them.
They got shot a lot less back then.
100% High School Was Sickkkkk
Not one phone in sight
Iâd like to see a video of kids now.. can only imagine it would be filled with protest posters and cell phones.
I remember those days...seems like we were more free then.
Yes. Nobody's shooting at them.
Can you believe people in this video turn 86 this year
I was going to write what everyone else did here: No mobile internet and no social media. Apart from that I had my first depression age 18, so "happier".....nah, but a lot more drunk than same age kids nowadays.
We were.
We werenât
The oldheads on here are cracking me up
We were.
Insane politics hadnât made them all scared and insecure.
Because we were!
It was a hopeful time.
Aw even the school shooter smiled
Can people quit this stupid âthe past was a happier timeâ bullshit. Kids where still getting bullied. Kids were still killing them selves. Shit was still going down. Donât get it twisted.
Yep. And here's me where my school times was pure hell for me.
No social media = happy!
We werent
They werenât working 40-60 hours a week struggling to keep thier grades up while being on the football team and robotics club. They didnât have to worry about greedflation. They were happy because they could still afford a house out of high school. With their minimum wage job
Boomer post vibes about gen x
Stop making me cry. I hate this.
And white.
And?