Things Kids Today Won’t Understand About How We Grew Up

Whenever I find myself feeling nostalgic about “how things used to be,” I remind myself that every generation has looked back at their childhood with rose-tinted glasses. It’s a natural part of life for a child of any age to feel that the years when they were growing up were a special or unique moment in time. In large part, that’s because they were, at least for you and your friends and families, those times will never come again.

I write all this because I know that even though I’m about to share some things that I think my own kids will never understand about how we grew up, it’s very likely they’ll feel many of the same ways about their own childhoods when compared to their own kids someday.

In sharing this list, I want to encourage everyone to savor the season you’re in right now. Someday down the road, you’ll look back and long for just one more day in “the good ol’ days” when things were just like they are now. Let that thought make you more thankful, grateful, and present right where you are.

Below are some of the specific memories from growing up that I think about most often, and that my own kids will likely never know.

Cars without bluetooth, GPS, and touchscreens

I remember when cars were just for driving from one place to another. But these days, they’re practically like having a smartphone in your vehicle. It makes things much more convenient, but back then you had to know where you were going, have your directions printed out from Mapquest (or even just a map), and maybe have a book of your CDs in the car for music.

Video games played on a tv, not a phone

My generation was one of the first to grow up with video games at home. We didn’t get systems until we were a little older, but afterwards had some fond memories of playing Nintendo and Sega systems. I like the social aspect of gathering around the TV for multiplayer games or taking turns, which isn’t quite the same with the games that kids now play on their mobile devices.

Having to call your friend’s house to reach them

One of the biggest changes since my childhood is the rise of cell phones and instant messaging apps. Back then, if you wanted to reach a friend you almost always had to call their house phone, which meant that another person in their family might pick up. You had to be comfortable talking to adults and politely asking if your friend could come to the phone. Another lost etiquette of the past.

Mailing in rebate checks to save money

For those of you who weren’t around to see it, mail in rebates were a big thing back in the day. You’d buy an item at the store for a certain price, and then send in a rebate form along with your receipt and wait weeks or months for a check to come in the mail. We’re spoiled these days with instant rebates being applied online; with mail in rebates you actually had to remember to do it.

Charging things to credit, but unlike credit cards

Nowadays you can pay with cash, check, or credit card nearly everywhere. But when I was young, many stores offered an in-house credit plan where you could charge your purchases and pay later. I remember my parents letting me buy clothes “on charge” during back-to-school shopping trips in town. It’s a far cry from the various ways we can buy things today.

Having to remember and know things

In the past, you actually had to know a lot of stuff. Things like phone numbers, how to spell words, what time various shows were on TV, how to get to places, and basic facts about how the world worked. With the internet on our phones and search engines like Google to query, we don’t have to retain nearly as much information in our heads as we did in the past.

Not being able to fix your plans in real-time

If you said you’d be somewhere in the past with your friends, or had a certain plan in mind, you had to follow through. For much of my childhood, we didn’t have cell phones, and so you couldn’t just text someone that things had changed or call them on the fly to change where you were meeting. I wonder if this made people more serious about their plans than they are today when it’s so easy to change.

Searching the Yellow Pages for information

Before everyone had the internet, if you wanted to find a business open in town you had to look up their digits in the yellow pages of a phone book. Of course, looking someone up you knew required a different section of the phone book. I don’t really miss using these books, but it does make me nostalgic that anyone born much after me will ever use one.

Only four channels on TV

Today’s kids are surrounded by content from all over the world, and they can access it with a few taps on their phone wherever they are. When I was a kid, the TV was the main source of video entertainment, and it only had a handful of channels. Not only that, the shows you were interested in were only on at certain times, and if it was even possible to record content, it wasn’t always easy.

Relying on a town historian to know something

There is something special about the way people used to be repositories of information about their communities before the internet made it possible to just type your question into a search bar. Back then, if you wanted to know something about just about anything, you needed to know someone who knew the answer. I remember in my town growing up, that meant we had “town historians” who seemed to know everything about the buildings, families, and even people.

Summers spent on one big road trip

These days, it’s common for families to take a vacation somewhere nice, or to even fly to another part of the country or another country altogether to visit family or friends. But when I was a kid, most people didn’t vacation like that, they just took really long road trips and packed up the whole family for an adventure across the country. Maybe this still happens today, but it certainly feels like I see it less often, and it’s one of my favorite things to reminisce about.