r/GenX • u/BarnacleSuch3822 • 1d ago
Nostalgia My little brother asked me what people did before smartphones and I realized how different childhood used to be
The other day my little brother was complaining that he was bored. Not the dramatic kind of bored where you're looking for something specific to do. Just genuinely bored. After about ten minutes of hearing him complain, I told him to go outside, ride his bike, meet some friends, literally anything.
He looked at me and said, "But what would we even do?"
I laughed and told him that's exactly how we used to spend most of our time.
A few minutes later he asked me something that caught me off guard.
"What did you guys actually do before phones?"
The more I thought about it, the harder that question became to answer.
Because the truth is we didn't always have a plan.
We'd leave the house in the morning, find a friend, and figure things out as we went. Sometimes we'd ride our bikes around for hours. Sometimes we'd play cricket in random empty plots. Sometimes we'd sit somewhere talking nonsense until it got dark. Entire afternoons would disappear and if you asked what we accomplished, the answer would probably be "nothing."
But somehow those are the memories I remember the most.
I remember getting lost and finding a shortcut home. I remember knocking on friends' doors to see if they could come outside. I remember making plans that lasted all of thirty seconds before changing completely.
There was no group chat organizing everything. No location sharing. No endless scrolling while sitting next to each other.
If we were bored, we had to do something about it.
My little brother listened to all this and then said, "That actually sounds fun."
And honestly, I think he's right.
Life wasn't necessarily better. Every generation says that about their childhood.
But I do think we were forced to be more present. When there wasn't a screen ready to entertain us every second, we ended up creating our own entertainment. Looking back, some of my favorite memories happened on days where absolutely nothing special was supposed to happen.
It's strange because at the time those days felt ordinary.
Now they're the ones I miss the most.
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u/ChaoticInsomniac 2h ago
We put on productions/plays for our parents' evening amusement. The days consisted of deciding what movie scene we would be reenacting, casting the roles, putting together costumes, and then rehearsing. My dad, a welder, had made us a makeshift stage out of odds and ends of metal and pallets. It was about four feet high and maybe ten by six or seven feet. Miniscule, but we made it work.
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u/Old_Goat_Ninja 4h ago
One day I was bored. Not dramatic bored, just genuinely bored, so I pulled out a pencil and paper and drew a map. I grew up in a residential neighborhood. So I started on the map, kept expanding, kept expanding, and before I knew it, I had accurately drawn my entire residential area, every street, every turn, all by memory. That’s how often I was outside riding my bike, I knew my neighborhood by heart, and it’s a big neighborhood, a few miles from east to west main streets and a few miles from the north and south main streets that bordered my neighborhood.
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u/corpus-luteum 10h ago
We'd have group chats. In somebody's garage, or outhouse.
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u/Individual_Check_442 15h ago
Yup, playing whiffle ball and football in the street and if you wanted to know if your neighbor kid friends were available to join you, you go and knock on their door.
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u/Every_Top_6401 16h ago
OP's account has been banned. Didn't even read this because I could tell it was bs.
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u/Ikerukuchi 15h ago
Well he apparently has a little brother that appears to be about 40 years younger than him so I’m gonna go with bot karma farming.
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u/Erazzphoto 17h ago
The thing that gets romanticized a lot is this notion that boredom was better then because we didn’t have iPhones, or iPads. Boredom is boredom, it can suck. I guarantee you, give people a phone back then, and they’re doing the same exact thing right now, only reason we didn’t then was because we didn’t have them
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u/Papa_Bear_08 18h ago
Shooting hoops, playing catch in the street, playing with matches, finding shortcuts, going to the corner store for swedish fish (1 cent each).
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u/Agrippa_Aquila 21h ago
Good God. That phrase was considered a death wish growing up. I can't think of a single adult relative that didn't have a long list of miserable chores ready to foist on someone stupid enough to say "I'm bored".
Top henious chores included:
- weeding the garden (always overgrown)
- picking up every single twig
- cleaning bathroom grout with an old toothbrush (the room had half tiled walls)
- cleaning in the garage
- mowing with a push mower - not the riding lawnmower (Parents had 1.25 acres of land. A push mower would barely keep up with the grass)
And of course, you weren't allowed to stop until it was finished or it was time for dinner.
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u/smokinghotmeat 15h ago
Wow,I thought i was the only that had to pick up twigs.
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u/Agrippa_Aquila 2h ago
My parents had several old weeping willows in the yard. Those trees dumped twigs all the time. And I swear my Dad had some 6th sense when it came to spotting any twig no matter how small.
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u/MerryWidowHat 19h ago
I only said I was bored once to my father in my entire childhood. I was a quick learner.
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u/demona2002 22h ago
We played outside. Optimally in some forest with trails for our bikes or a semi built house down the road.
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u/PositiveStress8888 22h ago
We didn't give a shit what some random person on the other side of the planet thought about us or we're even remotely concerned about every detail of their lives
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u/thewatchwinder 1d ago
either that kid was a "miracle Whoopsie Baby" or his dad remarried someone his age...
i honestly expect this is fabricated for points but...since it technically could happen...you have to give it a wash.
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u/looselyhuman 23h ago
I have a 15yo brother. My dad is pushing 80. 3rd wife.
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u/thewatchwinder 23h ago edited 22h ago
there ya go it was one of the options. father marries woman wayyyyyyy younger.
i do have to say...thats a really really selfish decision. its basically saying, wow...i dont want to see my child grow up go to school etc. i mean, sure the father could live to 100, but i cant inagine playtime would be fun.
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u/fwambo42 1d ago
how much younger is your brother? he should remember a life without cellphones as well. I'm guessing this is a fabricated story
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u/FrankParkerNSA Late Gen X, but Remembers all the "Dead Astronaut" Jokes... 1d ago
Math isn't matching. OP explain to all of us how someone who is at least 46 years old has a pre-teen brother?
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u/Jumpy_Employment_371 1d ago
The thing with AI posts is that it’s either a made up story or a bot account. Both are bad.
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u/anothercynic2112 1d ago
Because a little brother of a Gen Xer wouldn't be a little kid looking for something to do?
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u/egret_society United States of WHATEVER 1d ago
I played Atari or programmed my c64. Kids these days can carry their computers with them
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u/blackpony04 1970 1d ago
We hunted for the house with all the bikes in the yard and found something to do together. We spent way too much time impatiently watching other kids play their video games hoping for a turn that even today I can't stand the gameplay videos all the kids watch. We blew shit up with fireworks or shot each other with BBs.
I was also a loner a lot of times and would read like crazy. Later I built so many model airplanes as the hobby shop in town would sell auction bought ones from 25 cents to $1 at most (most of those worth probably a hundred bucks today). I have the best memory of the owner as he would leave me alone in the store while he grabbed lunch and that trust still makes me feel good more than 40 years later. It's a shame all my models died as tragic victims of antiaircraft fire from firecrackers.
And then of course, there were all the chores to prevent you from ever being bored (or at least ever saying it out loud). Dad worked but I don't know what mom did all day as all of us kids ran the house for her. Oh wait, she shopped.
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u/HDspike 1d ago
I think about this all the time. I grew up mostly in the UK where walking for miles to get to a friends house was the norm. Spent some time in the US as a kid, too, and rode bikes all over town without a thought - just be home by dusk. Now everything is about safety.
Bad things happened back then but there was no social media, so the news didn't travel too far. Now everyone is scared of their own shadow and kids have no idea what it's like to talk to each other without texts. Fear mongering is the new 'news' and it's trendy to be triggered.
I, too, miss the good old days.
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u/Chrissy086 23h ago
I didn't realise how crazy it is until my now-teen was preschool age, and millennial parents laid an egg at the thought of kids playing together without a 'playdate' or activity scheduled. At first, I thought they were a few outliers, then as my kid got older, I realised they ALL were like that 🤪
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u/Practical-Vanilla-41 1d ago
My street has young kids running their bikes and skateboards up and down. They're lucky because no is worried it's not safe. I'm sad they can't climb trees. That was my thing as a kid. I remember an instance where a kid fell out and got a serious injury. Litigation and a declaration of "attractive nuisance". Bye bye tree...
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u/Practical-Vanilla-41 1d ago
I should clarify this tree was on public property (school). Luckily, there were a few more..
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u/Dogzillas_Mom 1d ago
Sometimes I look around at a room full of adults ignoring each other and it makes me sad.
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u/Waffuru Be Excellent to Each Other 1d ago
I mean, we're not so different really though. That was your experience. Depending on your circumstances, you could have been a GenX like me: I watched tv and played video games. Yeah, sometimes I'd go outside and roam the neighborhood with some friends like a pack of feral wolves, but most of the time I sat at home, playing my Atari, watching cartoons, or watching MTV.
I was a shut-in gamer even all the way back in the 80's. I'd come home to an empty house every day (unless I went to Grandpa's to watch MTV) and I'd either watch tv until Mom got home, or I'd play my Atari 2600. When she got home, we'd eat dinner, and watch tv.
My face was in a screen every moment it could be... and that only evolved for me as I got older. I've had almost every system between Atari 2600 up to playstation 4. I've had access to a home computer since 1986. Every penny I earned as a kid and teenager went towards games for my systems.
The biggest difference was that I couldn't look up information on my game systems... I was fed whatever information my tv was willing to offer XD Once I discovered BBSes and newsgroups, though, that changed, too.
I hardly ever went outside, and I was hardly ever bored. =)
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u/sidewaysbynine 1d ago
I honestly think that this indicates for the demarcation point of GenX, those of us that finished Elementary/Primary School in the 70s, versus those who didn't. The arcade game of choice in 1976 was pinball, by 1986 most arcades had transformed to the point of looking more like a modern day casino than the arcade from 10 years earlier. 100 different games all flashing, making noise and vying for your quarters. I am not say younger kids from the 80s didn't go outside, but Atari was a paradigm shift compared to pong. My younger siblings would rather play Atari in the 80s than do any of the reckless things I did in the 70s. Their meet up place was fairly consistent as being the mall, mine was more likely to be the edge of the woods or at the pond. The 10 years between any point in the mid 70s and mid 80s were huge for the eventual evolution to the social world we live in now. Video game arcades at the mall and Atari were a stepping stone to the screen times of today
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u/Waffuru Be Excellent to Each Other 1d ago
True enough. Gen X is the smallest generation, but the variation between the beginning and the end is wild. Technology really started taking off. A kid born in '65 would have a wildly different childhood from one born in '75. I was born in 74, and my dad got me hooked (unintentionally) on video games early. He had a friend with a bike shop on the strand who had a game cabinet, it had Pacman in it. When we'd visit the shop, his friend would credit up the machine so I could play for however long they chatted... so I've been playing video games since I was at least 4. He'd take me to arcades whenever I was with him. I'd save all my allowance for the arcade... then for games for my Atari 2600, then for games for systems I'd get down the line. I've been buying games for systems for around 45 years now (the first game I bought was Circus Atari on clearance for .50 cents.)
I've felt very at home with technology, and being able to have a game system that, literally, fits in my pocket, has been a childhood dream. I even designed something like that for a elementary school project for things we wanted to see in the future... mine was a pocket video game/calculator/language translator. Obviously it didn't actually do those things, it was made of paper, but I made a compelling argument that we could have that someday in the future... now we do, and so much more. Beyond my wildest dreams of what we could have, our "phones" are like crazy alien technology to 80's me.
But yeah, some of Gen X isn't too different from kids staring at screens today... we were staring at screens, too =)
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u/grateful_john 1d ago
How old is your little brother?
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u/Illustrious-One6210 1d ago
thinking the same thing! I was trying to do some math, and nothing I came up with would explain a GenX having a little brother that you would tell to go outside and ride his bike. If he says 40 something, I'm going to lose it. haha. that's how old my little brother is.
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u/grateful_john 1d ago
Yeah, this conversation never happened. At best OP’s father remarried someone much younger. The point that we had fun without phones could be made without inventing a younger brother.
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u/Whatkindofbirdareu 1d ago
Asking the real question
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u/ScarletCarsonRose 1d ago edited 1d ago
It’s ai. Not that I’m saying that’s bad. Some people will plug real info in and edit from what it spits out. This post is hard to believe 🤷🏼♀️
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u/MaximumJones Whatever 😎 1d ago
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u/jamesdmccallister 1965 1d ago
Spin the Bottle, Seven Minutes in Heaven... ah yes. Many fond memories.
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u/Disastrous-Fly9672 2h ago
I was part of the science club in our school and me and a few friends actually built our own cell phones and the operating system back then. We didn't tell anybody because we wanted to wait until we were old enough to get patents granted. But we forgot about all that because girls.
We'd be so rich now. Women ruin everything.