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The life of a child who grew up in the 1990s looks undeniably different from that of a kid in the 2020s. Back then, the only way you could reach your friends was by calling a landline phone and asking their parents if you could speak to them. And let’s not forget having to wake up early on a Saturday so you don’t miss a new episode of your favorite cartoon.

It’s quite wild to think that kids today won’t get to know such things. Having a similar thought, redditor Subject_Thorn turned to the AskReddit community with a question, “What is something that 2020s kids will never get to experience?” Striking a nostalgic chord with many older adults, such an inquiry received over 3K comments in just a few weeks.

Scroll down to find the most popular answers that will shortly take you back to the good old days and a conversation with Subject_Thorn, who started this discussion in the first place.

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#1

"Life Without Smartphones": 30 Things Today's Kids Will Never Get To Experience Privacy. Doing stupid things without the whole world knowing about it on TikTok.

Fenrisulfr1984 , Phil Nguyen/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

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PeePeePooPoo
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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I'm so glad my stupid years happened when there were basically no camera phones and internet...

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#2

"Life Without Smartphones": 30 Things Today's Kids Will Never Get To Experience Waking up early on Saturday morning so you can watch the next episode of your favorite cartoon.

Dr_Galio , Kai Schreiber/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

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Libstak
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7 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Or MTV..music videos and artist interviews, not the c**p they have today. In Australia we also had Video Hits which counted down the top 10 hits plus Sundays was Countdown with live acts, interviews, videos a countdown of the top 10, usually they played the top 3 or more.

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#3

"Life Without Smartphones": 30 Things Today's Kids Will Never Get To Experience Buying a video game and it has everything it should on it without having to provide an update or paying for extra content.

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CKB
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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Or have a subscription and you don't actually own the game *looking at you Xbox game pass

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Bored Panda reached out to redditor Subject_Thorn, who started this discussion online, and kindly agreed to answer a few of our questions. Naturally, we were curious to know what inspired him to take this question to Reddit.

He told us, “I was actually in a nostalgic mood that night, so my mind was wandering. I work in an office in an adjacent IT role, so we use the Windows file system in various ways daily for our tasks, and last week I was reading about how kids today don't even know what File Explorer is because of the oversimplification of technology, primarily on smartphones and tablets.

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Kids today could never know that you can actually manually change video game files to adjust the game experience, nor how to actually do it. It's made me sure that to teach my future children technology properly, they will need to be exposed to a computer before, or at least around the same time, they are able to use a phone.”
#4

"Life Without Smartphones": 30 Things Today's Kids Will Never Get To Experience Developing a roll of film and all the pictures are bad.

shebacat , Razor512/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

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#5

"Life Without Smartphones": 30 Things Today's Kids Will Never Get To Experience Waiting for a new episode to come on at 7:30, yelling into the kitchen that it’s starting.

Calling your crushes house and having to politely ask a very scary dad if you can speak with Tanya. And then they say, that depends, who’s calling?

Icommentwhenhigh , nappy/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

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General Anaesthesia
General Anaesthesia
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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

"Please Mrs. Avery, I just gotta talk to her, I'll only keep her a while... And the operator says 40 cents more, for the next three minutes..." - Silvia’s Mother song by Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show

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#6

"Life Without Smartphones": 30 Things Today's Kids Will Never Get To Experience Violence fixing technologies. Remember when we used to slap the television 📺 for it to work properly or operate CPR on our consoles and game cartridges?

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If he were to answer the question himself, he would say that something the 2020s kids will never experience is not being able to connect with other people instantly and lacking a stable or accessible internet connection.

Our interviewee shares, “I remember when I was little and I had just picked up Counter-Strike to play with friends from school, and we needed to install Steam to do it. In the process of that, we found that you can actually talk to other people on Steam! It was crazy that I could type on a chatbox, press enter, and they would see it a few moments later! It was like magic.”

He adds, “When I was young and we visited with my cousins, we would find YouTube videos we thought were cool to watch and some flash games like Stick Fight, and we would open several Internet Explorer windows and let them load so we could check them out later. We did this the moment we woke up, around 8 or 9, and the videos and games had only loaded by the evening!! And we would NOT turn the computer off or the windows with the media on them, so we could access them through our vacation without having to re-download them again. This is not a problem anymore in the developed world.”

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#7

"Life Without Smartphones": 30 Things Today's Kids Will Never Get To Experience Hearing your favorite song on the radio and waiting for it to come on again so you can record it on a blank cassette tape to listen to later.

Having a CD binder the size of Merriam Webster’s dictionary for road trips.

Taking a CD Walkman on a walk and making sure you didnt walk too fast or the CD skipped.

Lopsided_Platypus_51 , James Case/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

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#8

"Life Without Smartphones": 30 Things Today's Kids Will Never Get To Experience The joy of going to school without social media.


I remember getting bullied in middle school and having a terrible time. But all that could have been so much worse if smartphones and apps were a thing back then.

Kids these days must be so stressed out just trying to tune it out.

moenblast , Caleb Oquendo/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

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CKB
CKB
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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

When we were kids, we had a bad day at school, get home, close the door and it was done for the day. Tomorrow would be a new day. Thanks to social media though there is no escape. It is constant and continues. I feel sorry for the kids today.

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#9

"Life Without Smartphones": 30 Things Today's Kids Will Never Get To Experience Driving to someplace new with an actual physical map.

DIABLO258 , Dominika Roseclay/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

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Adrian
Adrian
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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

You should still keep paper maps in the car for when you don't have a signal (yes, I know you can download maps, if you remember).

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Having said all this, the redditor doesn’t think that childhood was better back then compared to now. “I don't believe in the "good old days" sentiment. Kids now will experience different things than my generation did, and they will be similarly nostalgic about their unique experiences the same way I am. And their kids similarly after them, and so on.”
#10

"Life Without Smartphones": 30 Things Today's Kids Will Never Get To Experience I was at work the other day when our department's landline phone started ringing. One of my coworkers (my age-ish, 30s) called out "I'll get it!" I felt a weird sort of sad nostalgic pang. You don't hear that much anymore.

AussieDog87 , Karolina Kabat/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

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Sam Juan
Sam Juan
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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

At work the other day, I transferred a (much younger) co-worker a line to make a phone call to a client. I told her to listen for the dial tone before dialling the number, and she responded "What's a dial tone?" I died substantially that day 😑

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#11

"Life Without Smartphones": 30 Things Today's Kids Will Never Get To Experience Going to the movie store.

kphill325 , Grant Baldwin/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

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The Doom Song
The Doom Song
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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I miss this one. We could either choose a movie or a video game for the week

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#12

"Life Without Smartphones": 30 Things Today's Kids Will Never Get To Experience Exploration.


As kids we played video games but we also got outdoors. Sometimes finding areas of forest to go and investigate. We enjoyed checking out odd areas people generally would never go into such as those little wooded areas in between roads. Our parents didn't care as long we gave them an idea of what we were doing ahead of time in case we got lost or hurt.


We would have a small fire just enough to roast some marshmallows and then put it out and usually make it back in time for supper.

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Corvus
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7 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I loved exploring creepy abandoned buildings (both houses and industrial)... nowadays I realize how dangerous it could have been. Still, good memories.

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#13

"Life Without Smartphones": 30 Things Today's Kids Will Never Get To Experience Meeting family/friends at the **gate** at the airport instead of baggage claim or the curb.

Infuryous , Philip Tellis/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

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#14

"Life Without Smartphones": 30 Things Today's Kids Will Never Get To Experience Dial up internet and AOL chat rooms.

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#15

"Life Without Smartphones": 30 Things Today's Kids Will Never Get To Experience Tangled up telephone cords.

VT_Squire , Rowan Peter/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

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#16

"Life Without Smartphones": 30 Things Today's Kids Will Never Get To Experience Being disconnected.

There were periods of my life growing up, hours or even days at a time, where there was genuinely no way to reach me or my parents. In the 90’s, growing up, most people didn’t have cellphones. They existed but they were *really* expensive. I remember when my mom got her first cellphone. She always turned it off when she got home and stuck it in a drawer. Why would she need a cellphone at home?

We had the internet but it was slow and we had limited access to it, often on a family computer visible to everyone and maybe for an hour or two.

And if you go back a little further than that, answering machines were expensive and uncommon so you either reached someone or you didn’t. There was no constant demand from everyone for everyone.

I definitely remember calling a friend to hang out, their parent answering, and telling me they were already hanging out with someone else. “Okay, cool, I’ll try again later.”

I had no way to reach them. Which meant they got to be fully present with whoever they were with and weren’t talking to me or anyone else while they were with that friend.

That level of disconnect is something that, in hindsight, I really miss. You were wherever you were with whomever you were with and that was it. People took hours to reach and that was normal and, I think, a really good thing.

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Me. Just Me.
Me. Just Me.
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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

And you could have a full conversation over email with someone because they were far away and you didn't want to pay the ridiculous rates for long distance. The conversation still took days because you only checked your email once per day, but it was still faster than mailing letters back and forth.

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#17

"Life Without Smartphones": 30 Things Today's Kids Will Never Get To Experience Being responsible for zero parental contact and simply just needing to come home when the streetlights come on.

inspiredguy40 , Dennis Yang/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

People say uts because it was safer for children back then, failing to realise that there were still creeps out there doing grim things but no social media so if it wasn't in the evening news you'd not hear about it

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#18

"Life Without Smartphones": 30 Things Today's Kids Will Never Get To Experience Getting kicked off the internet because mom needs to make a call.

gnomeybeard , cottonbro studio/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

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Adrian
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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Or having your connection drop when your download is at 90% because someone picked up the phone in the kitchen...

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#19

"Life Without Smartphones": 30 Things Today's Kids Will Never Get To Experience Having to check the newspapers to see when new movies were released, as well as what theater they’re playing at.

Kids today won’t ever experience that.

kimchiman85 , Jordi De Smedt/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

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Carl Roberts
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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Welcome to Moviephone.Please say the name of the movie you'd like to see....NOW

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#20

"Life Without Smartphones": 30 Things Today's Kids Will Never Get To Experience Snow on Christmas, at least most of the time.

I’m almost as far north in the USA that you can get and snow just doesn’t stick around anymore. It snows like once or twice in December and it melts in a day. 25 years ago you were lucky if it wasn’t a blizzard on *Halloween.*

But don’t worry, climate change isn’t real! /s.

Faust_8 , Chris Short/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

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BoredPossum
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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I'm in Sweden and we do get White Christmases, but not every year

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#21

"Life Without Smartphones": 30 Things Today's Kids Will Never Get To Experience Having to listen/watch the nightly news with your parents because you only have one tv.

Paparazzit23 , *SHERWOOD*/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

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James016
James016
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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

We still have only 1 TV in the house so we have to watch my son's weird YouTube videos and he in turn has to watch the news or whatever we are watching in the evening.

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#22

"Life Without Smartphones": 30 Things Today's Kids Will Never Get To Experience Fixing the antenna to get a better picture on the TV. Or making one with a coat hanger.

GuppyGirl1234 , ErnestDuffoo/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

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#23

"Life Without Smartphones": 30 Things Today's Kids Will Never Get To Experience Downloading a song for 2 hours and finding out it's a virus.

GabbyCivility , Cheryl Cox/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

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#24

"Life Without Smartphones": 30 Things Today's Kids Will Never Get To Experience A life without immediate gratification. I feel like 90s/00s kids might be the last to have experienced what its like to have to wait for that good thing you want.

Mrbrowneyes97 , Kindel Media/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

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keyboardtek
keyboardtek
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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

And we used to actually build stuff like model cars and planes, things out of wood. We learned that a project that takes time and attention and thought resulted in something very gratifying to do.

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#25

"Life Without Smartphones": 30 Things Today's Kids Will Never Get To Experience Watching that ticker at the bottom of the tv to see if school is closed only for them to cut to commercial when it’s time for yours to show up. I watched that thing like an nba draft.

loves_spain , Dennis Sylvester Hurd/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

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Doyle Alan
Doyle Alan
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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I live in Canada and in my area, three flakes of snow and the kids are off school. When I was little we would have two or three feet of snow before they'd call a snow day.

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#26

"Life Without Smartphones": 30 Things Today's Kids Will Never Get To Experience Mystery.

“Just Google it” has ruined any sense of wonder in the world.

Lookslikeseen , Kindel Media/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

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keyboardtek
keyboardtek
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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Remember when we all thought that free access to information on the internet would topple totalitarian countries and make everyone educated? Then all the criminals, Fascists, conspiracy nuts, and idiots took it over.

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#27

"Life Without Smartphones": 30 Things Today's Kids Will Never Get To Experience Oh, uh, losing hours of work because you forgot to hit save.

Wheredoesthetoastgo2 , Ba Tik/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

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Stygtand
Stygtand
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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

That can still happen. Spending 3 hours on photo documentation, only to find out the server f****d up. F**k you microbizz you know what you did!!!!

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#28

"Life Without Smartphones": 30 Things Today's Kids Will Never Get To Experience Choking to death on smoke wafting over from the smoking section of every restaurant while you try to eat.

Santos_L_Halper_II , Centophobia/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

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#29

"Life Without Smartphones": 30 Things Today's Kids Will Never Get To Experience Waiting for a video tape to rewind before returning it to the rental shop.

Key-Situation-4718 , Miguel Á. Padriñán/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

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#30

"Life Without Smartphones": 30 Things Today's Kids Will Never Get To Experience That windows opening sound in pc.

slimismad , Naotake Murayama/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

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Adrian
Adrian
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7 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Way to go BP, again, I think you need a new image finder guy...

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Note: this post originally had 36 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.

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