That's the biggest advantage of the 20th century. People nowadays are not dumber than 50 years ago but today everyone can see it.

This should be way higher up. Remember when the future held promise? I feel sorry and guilty when I think about my kids.

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

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.

You can still do that! My friends/family know that I ignore my phone and email. If it's an emergency they have my significant others number.

This was nice, but at the same time a huge problem for me as a younger teenager. I was stranded many times without a phone to call for a ride and had to walk through some sketchy areas to find a public phone. I would say this one isn't so bad.

Being unreachable is a decision. Put your phone down in another room, and you're still unreachable. You just have to want it.

I do this as often as possible. It pisses me off that people have lost their boundaries because of 24/7 connectivity. My boss thinks it's perfectly ok to text or call me about crap at all hours of the night and on the weekend.

That can still be done, I usually don't answer calls and texts that are not urgent right away or turn my phone off. Pure bliss

Switch off your phone!!!!

I leave my phone in the house when I am gardening.

Awww it was delightful!!!!!!!!

This is perhaps the biggest 50-50 thing on the list- the freedom of being unreachable vs the sheer convenience of accessibility

This is not a technical problem.

One of the nice things about working in wireless, at least till the smartphone era, was that people in the business tended to NOT CALL when you were off the clock, because they didn't want to be called.

You are still unreachable if you want to be. Don't answer the phone, temporarily block numbers.

We didn't even have a house phone until I was in my late teens (mid 90's) My parents just didn't like talking to people I suppose.

you can divert it to some random dude and then blame the company!!

An interesting twist, though; my parents have cel phones but treat them the way they used to treat the landline. The idea of just not answering is totally alien to them, no matter how many spam calls they get.

Ignorance for this is bliss!!!!!!!

Busy signals.....ahhhhhh.

"riding over to my friend's house..." to ring the bell, ask if he's there and if he's allowed to come out and play. "I'm sorry, but Steven still has homework to do" - "okay, I'll go home again then". Oh boy, that's long gone.

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.

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.

Trying to beat the DJ when recording off the radio, one of lifes worst challenges as a kid.

Summers in my grandma's neighborhood - mobile phones were still many years into the future, so if I spent the whole day outside, no one knew where I was or what I was up to... good times :)

Always. And I still use it with my kids.

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.

I don't miss that in the slightest!

Blockbuster never fined us. But you rewind it anyway because it's the decent thing to do.

I want one of these for my hardware in the garage. They are beautiful pieces of furniture.

That still happens here. We have kids in and out and knocking on the door daily.

Uh, try a shoebox full of CASSETTE tapes for a road trip. Didn't get a built in CD player in the family car until I was in my late teens

There still is damn it!! #PlutoForever

Was just thinking how much easier Christmas shopping would be if my niece could circle things in the wishbook.

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 ;)

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.

Check anything that had a coin return!

Folding a map.

It was illegal to own a cassette without also owning a pencil.

Now you can safely go and get coffe while the ad lasts... From a gas station... In another state

It's important for young minds to learn about boredom.

And why the icon looks like that.

And the front.

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.

That must have been one giant car!

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.😉

Followed by: Read/write error on disk 3

R.L. Stine (Goosebumps)

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)

Downloading a single MP3 for a whole hour!

I love playing snake, so addictive.

Yep that was great - the judges daughter was arrested we got away!

TV repair in my house consisted of smacking the tv until it worked.

And accidentally taping over it again