The 19th century brought people the industrial revolution and a new way of life. The railways, for example, completely transformed travel and those born towards the end of the Napoleonic wars (in another kind of baby boom) grew up to be much more reform-minded.
But these changes were much harder for the older generation. However, they just kept coming.
There's an obvious parallel with today: technology is reshaping the world, forcing us to constantly keep up, adapt, and leave the past for the history books.
Interested in the gaps formed by the latest developments, Redditor u/Bagolyvagymi asked this question: "What's something that newer generations will never understand?" And users flooded the post with answers. As of this article, it has 4.9K comments. Here are some of the most upvoted ones.
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Being able to be an idiot in your formative years and not worry about it being filmed and/or put on the internet forever
That's the biggest advantage of the 20th century. People nowadays are not dumber than 50 years ago but today everyone can see it.
There was a time when we felt the world was getting better, not worse.
u/Bagolyvagymi makes all sorts of posts on Reddit, but this was the one that has gained the most attraction yet. "The day I posted the question, I came across some old books and stuff from 30-40 years ago, like VHS tapes and old computer guides, and the question just popped into my head," they told Bored Panda.
"The funny thing is that I'm actually a part of the described 'newer generations', being 17. It always fascinated me to think about technology back in the day when it was a pretty big deal and most people had to accommodate these new innovations into their lives. For me, it came so easily because I grew up with phones and computers, although I only started using them later on in my life at like 10 years of age."
Slamming down the receiver on a landline telephone. Pushing the red button is not nearly as satisfying.
Oh yes, that one I miss dearly. The difference is like slamming the door in someone's face vs. pushing the elevator button really hard
The beauty of being unreachable.
I turn my phone off every night at ten, and it stays off until I get up in the morning. I don't care if aliens just nuked Parliament House; it can wait until tomorrow. After ten is Me Time.
Saturday morning cartoons. I miss sitting in front of the TV and eating a bowl of cereal while Tale Spin, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or whatever Saturday morning cartoon series played. Then getting on my bike once they ended around 10 a.m. and riding over to my friend's house to play till sunset.
As Mary Meehan beautifully put it, teenagers are an invention of recent history, morphing over the years from chaperoned innocents to malt shop boppers, from hippy protesters to latchkey kids, all the way down to today's digital natives.
"Maybe it's because of their fresh perspective on the world and their sense of immortality, but teenagers serve as cultural mirrors," Meehan wrote in Forbes. "They reflect our shifting society in ways other life stages don't."
She also acknowledges the effect of technological innovations on social change, and agrees that the internet is what the television was for the boomer era, exposing a young generation to new ideas and the real world.
Taking pictures and then waiting for them to be developed to see if they turned out okay.
And because of that, you paid a lot more attention to what you were photographing. And you made actual albums of the best photos. I miss those days, so many photos are never even looked at more than once these days.
MTV played music videos, had music discussion shows, and had news about music 24 hours a day at one point.
And cartoons. In my time at least. Anime included. But that came later. It was still really good stuff, like Trigun, Cowboy Bebop, Evangelion, Slam Dunk, Blue Submarine n.6, Escaflowne, Master Mosquiton, Excel Saga, and many other wonderful titles. With a bit of censorship, though, but still worth it. And MTV had competitors as well, which made it even better for us audiences.
Having to buy the entire album to get one song you liked, or else wait for it to come on the radio and record it. Missing any part of the song was unacceptable, and you had to wait until it was played again.
u/Bagolyvagymi said it was pretty hard to keep up with all the answers their post has received, but there are some things that were pretty common. "Obviously, everyone was watching TV back in the day, and it had the usual limitations like ad breaks or if you didn't catch your show, you never got the chance to see that episode again. I also noticed that using the internet was a whole other story," they explained what they learned.
At the end of the day, the Redditor believes that different generations can in fact speak the same language "because after all, there is a period when we live together in the same world." We just have to adapt to one another a bit better!
Parents not knowing where their kids are and trusting them not to get into trouble.
Not being able to watch whatever you wanted whenever you wanted. We actually had to look up the shows schedule in a TV guide and be available when it came on.
In the UK in the 70s and 80s decent films were only shown at Xmas and the rest of the year was pretty much a film drought unless you count the 1940s b/w musicals shown on Saturday afternoons aimed at pensioners.
Hows about not knowing who was calling... was it your crush? your grandma? a telemarketer??? It's like a game show every time the phone rings
Having to rewind the tape before returning it to the video store or else incurring a fee.
How to use the card catalog in the library — the ones with the cards in the drawers.
I want one of these for my hardware in the garage. They are beautiful pieces of furniture.
Circling pictures of toys in the Sears catalog as a Christmas list. My brother and my cousin would do this every year at my grandma's house. We also put our initials so our parents knew who wanted what toy.
Was just thinking how much easier Christmas shopping would be if my niece could circle things in the wishbook.
Meeting up with a friend at the movies and having no way to communicate once you’ve left the house. Your friend doesn’t show. Is he coming? Should I continue to wait and stand at the precise spot we agreed on? Has he died? Did he forget? I’ll call home using a pay phone and hope my mom is there to tell me whether he left a message on the answering machine.
I am Gen X, had my first mobile phone at 26. Before that, met friends, travelled the world, drove to places I didnt know. I miss every single thing of not being online/virtually reachable. But hey every generation has its own thing, so I guess it's ok ;)
A thing called encyclopedias
Ugh trying to write school papers and the only encyclopedias available are ancient and the information is no longer correct. Having to keep a list of topics for the one day every two weeks you can go to the library where their encyclopedias are marginally less out of date. I looooove that now I want to know something I can just look it up.
How we got around without GPS navigation.
Having to properly time getting a drink and snack before the ad break on TV finished. I still sweat thinking about it.
Now you can safely go and get coffe while the ad lasts... From a gas station... In another state
Maybe not universal. But how to entertain yourself with your mind and nothing else.
I've noticed something about my friends/people i know in parenting culture where it's now a crime for a child to be bored. When I was a kid my parents laughed and told me to go away when I said I was bored.
Cranking the rear window in a car by hand
missing an episode of a show meant MISSING IT FOREVER. There's still an episode of "Battlestar Galactica" I never saw. I could go back and watch it now, but 10 year old me hurt like a gunshot wound for a long time after missing that thing.
I just recently found a series (The Vision of Escaflowne) online that I used to watch almost every friday night somewhen in the early 2000s. I never saw the last 2-3 episodes back then, and now that I did, I wish I didn't. I remembered the series so fondly, but the end was just... shallow. I didn't like it, and now I wished I could unsee it and just remember the series from back then.
The difficulty of not being able to instantly find the answer to questions.
But how much fun was it to go to the library to find out? With the added bonus of not actually going to the library, but meeting up with your boyfriend on a school night.😉
As a kid I read my favorite books more than a hundred times.
'Let’s all meet back here at 6:00.' *Looks at watch.* 'I’ve got 4:35. What time do you have?'
I am old and was a nurse - nurses in those days were never without a watch. they were also given as graduation presents. But I've come a long way baby my watch now has a battery no winding oh yes it also has the date - proud to be so modern! (sarcasm intended)
Having to say BRB to all your friends on MSN because your mom wanted to make a call, and then having to disconnect from the internet and dial back up when she was done.
The glory of playing and enjoying snake on a brick phone.
Having to wait until Monday at school to tell your friends about the crazy s**t that went down at the party over the weekend. I used to love that. There was nothing like saying “bro, guess what happened”!? Now everyone just instantly sees in it happening in real time on social media.
Turning the dial on the TV to change the channel.
TV repair in my house consisted of smacking the tv until it worked.
Not being able to binge a show unless you literally recorded a bunch of episodes from TV onto a bunch of VHS tapes.
Texting without looking at your phone because -> abc def ghi jkl mno pqrs tuv wxyz
Making plans to meet friends and having to commit because you didn't have mobile phones to ask where they were, how far, and if they were still coming.
Privacy.
person gets social media apps. person posts on social media apps about every detail of their life. person complains "why don't I have privacy!?!?" There use to be a time we thought the government would spy on us, now we pay private companies to spy on us.
The perfect balance between playing outside and watching TV.
Going to the arcade and playing games like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. This is my childhood.
In my case it was going to the arcade to play this new hi-tech game called “Space Invaders”
How great Myspace was. It was a million times better than Facebook. You could choose top friends, music, cursors, backgrounds, and images. It was awesome until everyone transitioned over to FB.
What about driving around in the hot summer with NO air conditioning in the car.
You'd wind down the windows and get jelled at because of the dust and flies and the noise of wind in the car.
Load More Replies...So, unpopular opinion. A lot of these still apply if you grow up poor. I'm 18 and can relate to a lot of these; waiting for commercials to grab snacks, being bored, not having a phone, staying off social media, only being reachable IRL, etc. Not everyone even today can afford these things.
I grew up pretty poor and I get the point you make about being bored. However I found that with less choices you had to be more imaginative to entertain yourself. When I was a kid in the 80's/90's I read and drew and painted a lot more than I do now, sadly.
Load More Replies...How about Christmas toys that you need to spend an hour removing ties and fixtures. Just so you can get it out of the box to put the batteries in.
Load More Replies...I'm Gen X (if that is relevant or not) so a lot of these strike a chord with me but some were good and some not so good. Playing outside and not being glued to a phone was great (and the less said about social media the better). However not all advances are bad. Being able to pull up a song or movie or answer to a question or directions somewhere are all great things in my eyes (that would have been like wizardry when I was a kid). Technology in itself isn't a bad thing, I'm a big believer that tech will ultimately benefit us as a people. It's just about how it's used, and these days sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad.
Exactly. Things like not having GPS in the car or your phone are really bad. I have 0 sense of orientation and got data a few yeats ago only becauae i got lost a couple of times cycling or walking and its scary.
Load More Replies...Anyone agreeing with or writing ‘being unavailable’ or ‘not being on a phone constantly’ has let their phone or peer pressure control their life. It’s your choice if you turn it off, leave it at home or don’t look at it. You can let people know that it’s a tool that you control and you wish to exercise that control. Same goes for social media, don’t like it? Turn it off. You are the one with the power, stop allowing weakness to be the deciding factor, make it work for you.
The things I miss most are all the sounds that have died. The sound a typewriter makes . . . clacking keys, the bell when it's time to return, and the return itself. The sound of a phone being dialed, and the old party line system, when there weren't enough phone lines, and we had to share, so it was one ring for the neighbors, two rings for you... I miss that all the kids in the neighborhood would gather outside after school, and play games, and at five o'clock most days, doors would swing open and parents up and down the street would holler "Tommy! Bobby! Janice! Dinner's ready" The sound of transistor radios and rock radio stations. Some of it was rougher then, we were all poorer, I think, and there were social problems, but a lot of it was better... it was quieter, it was less frantic, and I think we were a lot more considerate of others... we didn't blare radios or squeal tires at least where I grew up.
Oh I miss the sound of a real telephone ring. That option is on cellphones but I have yet to find one that sounds real. And yes. Transistor radios that were powered by a battery. You had to carefully rotate the dial in the side to get the station just right. There were 2 channels. CFRB for "old people" and 1050 CHUM for young people. I used to get in trouble because I would listen before I went to sleep. But then I'd fall asleep with it on and bye bye battery. "Those things are expensive you know! That's it. No more radio before bed. You give us the radio". Also, if you were driving a long way your radio station would fade out because you're too far away. You only got white noise until you were close to another one. In the mean time you turned it off. Then when you thought you were near somewhere you turned it on and fiddled with the dial until hopefully you found a station.
Load More Replies...I travelled from Europe to Mexico when I was 22. My best friend was in New York at the time, and came to Mexico to meet me. We agreed that we would sit on the stairs in front of the main cathedral in Oaxaca, that particular week. Every day at noon. I waited for a week. She didn't show. Up untill today we don't know what happened. Did she or I made a mistake in which month we agreed on? Did we wait at different churches? Different cities? Thing is: she waited and I waited. But we met the same people. Later when I continued my travels I continiously kept meeting people that had met my friend, and knew that we were looking for each other. 35 years ago.
I think the world has advanced so much the last years and technology has progressed so fast, that we feel older even in our 30's than our parents did at the same age!
It is called future shock and it happens to every generation.
Load More Replies...The thing I miss most about when I was a kid was how life felt less rushed than it does now. There's a gadget for everything which is meant to save time, so that the time saved can be spent doing other things for which gadgets were made to save time. In the end, you end up having to do a load of things in a day, with little to no breathing space in between.
When you were a kid, you had far fewer responsibilities. You didn't have to shop, plan meals, do housework, organise family life, work etc. That's why childhood seems so free and less rushed.
Load More Replies...i rememeber limited characters on textmessage.. damn does writing shortcuts
even worse... how many characters could you send to a pager?
Load More Replies...Leaving your house in the morning and not coming home until dark. Parents thought it was strange if you were home, unless it was to get a quick snack or something. I thought spending a day inside was torture only for when you were sick.
Then restarting the whole machine so you could access DOS instead of Windows and type in the filename of the game you're about to run. Bonus points if your sound was a beeper. ♡
Load More Replies...I miss Sunday papers. I'd sit around reading and sipping a coffee. Reading news on the internet is not quite the same.
I agree, that was a nice way to spend the morning. I would drink coffee, do the crosswords and all the other puzzles. You can still get print editions, and I am sure the papers would love a new print subscriber.
Load More Replies...While cleaning up I found a small shoe box filled with silly notes my friends and I wrote to each other in class in the 80's. It was wonderful reading them again. I really hope kids still pass notes to each other in class. Reliving those memories is precious.
I was wondering when the "this comment hidden" contingent would show up... Oh look. Right down there. Beyond obnoxious little brats,
Load More Replies...Riding in the car across the rear window or in that reverse seat station wagon like you hadn't a care in the world. Seatbelts weren't really a thing then.
nor were padded dashboards, or steering wheels; we only had lap belts, there were no car seats or airbags... it was a lot more dangerous then.
Load More Replies...I'll add this one here - speaking English. It used to be cool in the 1990s. Now, everybody speaks English.
Do you mean proper English, or this American Slang-uage that it's evolved (or devolved) into?
Load More Replies...Dads telling you that if you have to call someone out of town, it had to be at night when rate was cheaper than during the day
My childhood was playing outside all day, riding bikes and climbing trees and exploring the woods and not being allowed in until dinner. My entire family sat at the table together and devoured the dinner because you were hungry and your mothers cooking filled your belly and you never complained or asked for anything else. Next mom would fill the bath and you would soak and she would pick you up after you were clean, dry you off, carry you to bed, put on your pj's, tuck you in bed and kiss you goodnight. Gen X here.
Older people? You don't have to be 70 to remember this. So 30 is old now?
I love these. The world is too complex and moving at way too fast a pace for me these days. And we celebrate and actively encourage narcissism. I'm not yet 40 but boy, I miss the simplicity of my childhood. And would relish the pace of 60 years earlier!
I'm old enough to remember most of these things and I can honestly say almost all of the tech based changes have been for the better. Access to music, back in the 90's so much music that was pushed on to us was manufacture crap, you really had to work to find alternative music, now you just google it. You're now able to watch what you want when you want and not be dictated by the television schedule. Kids are lucky now a days.
Thank you BP for letting me know I now fall within the catogory of "older people". If my day wasn't sh*t already, it sure is now :-(
When did living long become a bad thing? People seem to dread it, and it does have some drawbacks, it's true. It has so many more benefits though. Life goes by very quickly, relish every bit of it. Now that I am older, I am happier, wealthier, wiser (I hope), more experienced, more capable, fearless. I have the time now to do all the things I worked so hard for. I value every year. I wouldn't go back for anything. Getting older is a very liberating experience, and a blessing, not a curse. Instead of dreading the aging process, which won't change a thing, what if you tried to make the best of all it offers?
Load More Replies...Many of those things did not change, or are just tiny irrelevant details.
What about driving around in the hot summer with NO air conditioning in the car.
You'd wind down the windows and get jelled at because of the dust and flies and the noise of wind in the car.
Load More Replies...So, unpopular opinion. A lot of these still apply if you grow up poor. I'm 18 and can relate to a lot of these; waiting for commercials to grab snacks, being bored, not having a phone, staying off social media, only being reachable IRL, etc. Not everyone even today can afford these things.
I grew up pretty poor and I get the point you make about being bored. However I found that with less choices you had to be more imaginative to entertain yourself. When I was a kid in the 80's/90's I read and drew and painted a lot more than I do now, sadly.
Load More Replies...How about Christmas toys that you need to spend an hour removing ties and fixtures. Just so you can get it out of the box to put the batteries in.
Load More Replies...I'm Gen X (if that is relevant or not) so a lot of these strike a chord with me but some were good and some not so good. Playing outside and not being glued to a phone was great (and the less said about social media the better). However not all advances are bad. Being able to pull up a song or movie or answer to a question or directions somewhere are all great things in my eyes (that would have been like wizardry when I was a kid). Technology in itself isn't a bad thing, I'm a big believer that tech will ultimately benefit us as a people. It's just about how it's used, and these days sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad.
Exactly. Things like not having GPS in the car or your phone are really bad. I have 0 sense of orientation and got data a few yeats ago only becauae i got lost a couple of times cycling or walking and its scary.
Load More Replies...Anyone agreeing with or writing ‘being unavailable’ or ‘not being on a phone constantly’ has let their phone or peer pressure control their life. It’s your choice if you turn it off, leave it at home or don’t look at it. You can let people know that it’s a tool that you control and you wish to exercise that control. Same goes for social media, don’t like it? Turn it off. You are the one with the power, stop allowing weakness to be the deciding factor, make it work for you.
The things I miss most are all the sounds that have died. The sound a typewriter makes . . . clacking keys, the bell when it's time to return, and the return itself. The sound of a phone being dialed, and the old party line system, when there weren't enough phone lines, and we had to share, so it was one ring for the neighbors, two rings for you... I miss that all the kids in the neighborhood would gather outside after school, and play games, and at five o'clock most days, doors would swing open and parents up and down the street would holler "Tommy! Bobby! Janice! Dinner's ready" The sound of transistor radios and rock radio stations. Some of it was rougher then, we were all poorer, I think, and there were social problems, but a lot of it was better... it was quieter, it was less frantic, and I think we were a lot more considerate of others... we didn't blare radios or squeal tires at least where I grew up.
Oh I miss the sound of a real telephone ring. That option is on cellphones but I have yet to find one that sounds real. And yes. Transistor radios that were powered by a battery. You had to carefully rotate the dial in the side to get the station just right. There were 2 channels. CFRB for "old people" and 1050 CHUM for young people. I used to get in trouble because I would listen before I went to sleep. But then I'd fall asleep with it on and bye bye battery. "Those things are expensive you know! That's it. No more radio before bed. You give us the radio". Also, if you were driving a long way your radio station would fade out because you're too far away. You only got white noise until you were close to another one. In the mean time you turned it off. Then when you thought you were near somewhere you turned it on and fiddled with the dial until hopefully you found a station.
Load More Replies...I travelled from Europe to Mexico when I was 22. My best friend was in New York at the time, and came to Mexico to meet me. We agreed that we would sit on the stairs in front of the main cathedral in Oaxaca, that particular week. Every day at noon. I waited for a week. She didn't show. Up untill today we don't know what happened. Did she or I made a mistake in which month we agreed on? Did we wait at different churches? Different cities? Thing is: she waited and I waited. But we met the same people. Later when I continued my travels I continiously kept meeting people that had met my friend, and knew that we were looking for each other. 35 years ago.
I think the world has advanced so much the last years and technology has progressed so fast, that we feel older even in our 30's than our parents did at the same age!
It is called future shock and it happens to every generation.
Load More Replies...The thing I miss most about when I was a kid was how life felt less rushed than it does now. There's a gadget for everything which is meant to save time, so that the time saved can be spent doing other things for which gadgets were made to save time. In the end, you end up having to do a load of things in a day, with little to no breathing space in between.
When you were a kid, you had far fewer responsibilities. You didn't have to shop, plan meals, do housework, organise family life, work etc. That's why childhood seems so free and less rushed.
Load More Replies...i rememeber limited characters on textmessage.. damn does writing shortcuts
even worse... how many characters could you send to a pager?
Load More Replies...Leaving your house in the morning and not coming home until dark. Parents thought it was strange if you were home, unless it was to get a quick snack or something. I thought spending a day inside was torture only for when you were sick.
Then restarting the whole machine so you could access DOS instead of Windows and type in the filename of the game you're about to run. Bonus points if your sound was a beeper. ♡
Load More Replies...I miss Sunday papers. I'd sit around reading and sipping a coffee. Reading news on the internet is not quite the same.
I agree, that was a nice way to spend the morning. I would drink coffee, do the crosswords and all the other puzzles. You can still get print editions, and I am sure the papers would love a new print subscriber.
Load More Replies...While cleaning up I found a small shoe box filled with silly notes my friends and I wrote to each other in class in the 80's. It was wonderful reading them again. I really hope kids still pass notes to each other in class. Reliving those memories is precious.
I was wondering when the "this comment hidden" contingent would show up... Oh look. Right down there. Beyond obnoxious little brats,
Load More Replies...Riding in the car across the rear window or in that reverse seat station wagon like you hadn't a care in the world. Seatbelts weren't really a thing then.
nor were padded dashboards, or steering wheels; we only had lap belts, there were no car seats or airbags... it was a lot more dangerous then.
Load More Replies...I'll add this one here - speaking English. It used to be cool in the 1990s. Now, everybody speaks English.
Do you mean proper English, or this American Slang-uage that it's evolved (or devolved) into?
Load More Replies...Dads telling you that if you have to call someone out of town, it had to be at night when rate was cheaper than during the day
My childhood was playing outside all day, riding bikes and climbing trees and exploring the woods and not being allowed in until dinner. My entire family sat at the table together and devoured the dinner because you were hungry and your mothers cooking filled your belly and you never complained or asked for anything else. Next mom would fill the bath and you would soak and she would pick you up after you were clean, dry you off, carry you to bed, put on your pj's, tuck you in bed and kiss you goodnight. Gen X here.
Older people? You don't have to be 70 to remember this. So 30 is old now?
I love these. The world is too complex and moving at way too fast a pace for me these days. And we celebrate and actively encourage narcissism. I'm not yet 40 but boy, I miss the simplicity of my childhood. And would relish the pace of 60 years earlier!
I'm old enough to remember most of these things and I can honestly say almost all of the tech based changes have been for the better. Access to music, back in the 90's so much music that was pushed on to us was manufacture crap, you really had to work to find alternative music, now you just google it. You're now able to watch what you want when you want and not be dictated by the television schedule. Kids are lucky now a days.
Thank you BP for letting me know I now fall within the catogory of "older people". If my day wasn't sh*t already, it sure is now :-(
When did living long become a bad thing? People seem to dread it, and it does have some drawbacks, it's true. It has so many more benefits though. Life goes by very quickly, relish every bit of it. Now that I am older, I am happier, wealthier, wiser (I hope), more experienced, more capable, fearless. I have the time now to do all the things I worked so hard for. I value every year. I wouldn't go back for anything. Getting older is a very liberating experience, and a blessing, not a curse. Instead of dreading the aging process, which won't change a thing, what if you tried to make the best of all it offers?
Load More Replies...Many of those things did not change, or are just tiny irrelevant details.