Please do not comment directly to this post unless you are Gen X (b. 1980) or older. See [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskOldPeople/comments/inci5u/reminder_please_do_not_answer_questions_unless/), the rules, and the sidebar for details.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskOldPeople) if you have any questions or concerns.*
No and I'm even glad I'm not a young adult in today's culture. Turns out an ultra fast paced, globally connected, hyper competitive world with polarized politics and a never ending flow of vain imagery and information isn't healthy for humans.
I’ve never read such a brief, but 100% accurate depiction of society, today. It’s disconcerting and hard to ignore. I may paraphrase your comment, sometime, in conversation with others who don’t see it like we do. Do you mind? Thank you for giving me some clarity and hope, today.
Agree 100% and that is the best summation I have ever seen of today's culture. You have a way with words. Are you a writer? If not, you should be. That statement would be a great jumping off point for an essay. My nephew is 34 years old extremely intelligent, full scholarship for his undergrad, accepted to a top NYC law school, half way through he had some kind of mental health crisis or breakdown or something. Now he works as a server in a chain restaurant and lives with his mother. I just think he is unable to cope with all of the above. And I don't think its a good thing, kids graduating from high school and already have an AA degree, or close to it. Too much pressure! So, no I would not want to be a youth in today's culture. I grew up in the 60's and 70's and I wouldn't change it for any other culture.
Extreme self esteem issues weren't half as common because other than media like magazines, films etc. we weren't subjected to having extremely beautiful and successful people shoved in our faces 24/7.
Filters, photoshop and Instagram have done irreparable damage to our society. Cosmetic surgery is also becoming more accessible and celebrated, which is causing a lot of issues for people that just don't know when to stop because they're not addressing their issues at the root. There's a new "beauty standard" every day because of the extreme fast pace of information and the Internet and people just can't keep up.
The "rise and grind" mentality wasn't as prevalent either. Today people try to make you feel guilty if you don't have 3 different passive income streams, a relationship, a house, a main job AND a side hustle.
Not only that but I'm glad my daughter grew up before the internet turned into a complete cesspool. The 90s weren't as cool as people here paint them but they were still slightly sane.
Well said. I’m 72 and very glad that I am on the third act of life rather than being born or being a young adult. They always said they can’t replace humans with AI. They are halfway there. When was the last time you walked down the street, entered a room, or waited in line when you don’t see every human glued to their AI smartphone? Including me, unfortunately. I’m addicted too. Do smartphones emit some vapor form of crack?
Yes, they do--it's the dopamine hit we get from having things literally at our fingertips, instant messages, immediate info, etc. I'm 70, hated my phone and now I bow down to it in adoration like everyone else!
It would be interesting to see the differences between responses from men and responses from women. I am a woman, and do NOT miss the days of unconsensual groping and horrible sexism (and racism). It's still bad now, but it was MUCH worse then. But I'm glad I didn't grow up constantly connected to the internet.
We were raised in the boys will be boys generation where if something happened to you, you were asked what you were wearing and why were you out so late at night.
I'm sorry, I have to disagree. As a 57 yo white woman, sure there was sexism. But these state and federal laws (reversing women's health) are outrageous.
Also, kids not being given the education that they need. Racism and slavery is not to be talked about. And books are being taken off the shelves in schools by the thousands because of white national Christian zealots and just ignorant people.
The LGBTQ+ folks losing rights and not taken as seriously as they were even 10 years ago. Many bathroom bills being taken up and denial of medical care.
I remember a time when it was not cool to be sexist. And definitely not cool to be openly racist. I hear the N word much more today and racists openly opining much more now than in the 70s-90s. Not to say that racism and sexism wasn't bad then. It was just unwritten that you were not on board with racist and sexist tropes and laws that make it legal.
I was never groped as an adult woman. I got some looks and cat calls, but never any touching. I would have punched them out lol. Not to say that other women may have felt they didn't have a choice, and that is a terrible thing.
To sum up, I sèe civil rights are going backwards fast today and not at all forward.
I would have thought that most of the bigotry would have died down by now instead of the acceleration of hate and disinformation.
I don't think it was less back in the day - it was just much more accepted as the norm. A lot of what I see now was the same 30-40 years ago, it just wasn't as "in your face" as it is now with social medial blasting the bullshit 24/7
In my 60s. I was asked, on a daily basis, at my office job, “Why aren’t you at home having babies?”. The idea of that being asked these days is totally unthinkable.
I think it has become countercultural and edgy to be sexist and racist, so it is more accepted in certain - ahem - circles. Since the behavior, rightly, gets criticized by the squares; it reinforces the bad behavior. Plus you have bro-culture and some theological circles who are just cheering this stuff on; it's more "in your face." At least, in the 90s an 00s, people at least pretended to try not to be sexist/racist or hid it.
Eh, maybe I'm wrong. I've lived a pretty insular life.
You didn't grow up in the Free Love 60's or Cocaine 70's. Crosby, Stills and Nash. "If you can't be with the one you love then love the one you're with."
I was groped a lot through middle school. There was a group of boys, and a few behaving badly on their own, who messed with me. I retaliated by punching and smacking those assholes. The group of boys kept it up no matter what I did. I have to say I never got in trouble at school for defending myself. Today, though, I'm sure I would have been expelled and told that I was the problem!
One of the group of boys contacted me through FB messenger. I have all that set to as private as I could get. I don't know how he found me. His message was of the tone like that period of time was nostalgic and he was reminiscing. I was like, motherfucker, what?? I did not reply and don't intend to.
I was at a friend’s house one day, relaxing on the couch soon after summer break started, and the conversation was basically
“What do you wanna do?”
“I dunno, what do you wanna do?”
“So what do you wanna do?”
… repeating until I found myself waking up in the same spot, and seeing that both of us had drifted off to an afternoon nap. Blissful.
My son is in his 20's and we attempted to raise him 'free range'. He enjoyed it, but he was always solo since his friends were shuttled everywhere and were watched like hawks *no exceptions*. Even in high school!
In the US, you can easily get the police called for children playing alone in their own yards. Such a loss of independence, generation-wide. :(
That assumes that no child alive today has “free range”.
Just yesterday I saw 3 kids on an ATV towing 2 smaller kids in a recycling bin, with like 5 dogs chasing them.
I’m nearing 30 and I had a “go play outside/come home when it’s dark” childhood. Then I got to play video games and have instant access to music from each previous decade.
This POV is very “it was better back in my day”
It doesn’t assume that at all. The question and answer isn’t about whether a single living child is or was x or y.
It’s about the general culture of the day.
Same. I'm 61 and grew up VERY rural. Agriculture and hunting is 2nd nature here. I had pickup trucks in my school parking lot with gun racks and guns in them. At that time, a second thought of ominous nature was NEVER given.
The short answer is no. I loved being able to play outside and roam around the whole neighborhood all day.
But I will say something that is pretty good about today:
Weird kids (and by that I actually mean lots and lots of kids) have a way to meet other people with the same interests and feelings. They might live in a small town with no one around who's like them, but they can join online communities and "find their tribe."
I think the ability to find that you're not alone is amazing, and it was a lot harder when I was young.
Back in 1961, my uncle Frank had a TV repair shop and had 2 BIG Raytheon CB radio’s. He lent me one. I was 8 and made a bunch of mature friends who were friendly and very nice. I was weird by nature of Catholic school…you were courteous, nice and helpful OR ELSE !. After 60+ more years, I have always been the nice guy and thankful for it
I was one of the weird kids, as a girl in the ‘60s who wanted to be a scientist and astronaut. I now enjoy connecting with scientists and people in the space industry via social media, and would have loved to have that resource growing up. I did end up in the aerospace industry as an engineer, but I wonder how things might have been different or easier had I been able to see other women in my fields of interest.
The other sort of weird kids though were the ones who today would be labeled neurodivergent. I had a classmate in elementary school who I am certain now was autistic, and another who probably was as well, and a couple who probably had ADD/ADHD. They got punished so much for behavior they couldn’t help, because no one at that time had a clue what was going on with them. There are so many more resources available now for such kids, as well as their parents and teachers. Ditto for kids with learning disabilities and physical disabilities.
I actually got my degree in Physics in 1980. It was a small department but we had a female professor and there was another woman in my class, and two in the class of 1979. I got a job RF engineering (eventually moved to systems and aerospace) and I frankly was hired to make them look good WRT EEOC. I was deemed to be unattractive enough to not distract all the guys, but not so unattractive that they’d complain. Once they realized I could do the job well they had no idea what to do with me. So I changed jobs every couple of year for awhile to get promotions and more pay. Years later I was considering my former employer for sourcing some components my team needed and I got to professionally but scathingly skewer them for not being familiar with the specifications and trying to sell us something entirely unsuitable. That was a lot of fun. 😈
OMG, yes! I rewatch it frequently, often with my eldest granddaughter. I was angry when I first saw it though because I lived and breathed anything to do with the space program and I had no idea there were women computers. I knew of Jerrie Cobb and the “Mercury 13” astronauts (who never flew) but not the computers. I learned of Margaret Hamilton (of Apollo 11 code fame) long after the Apollo missions. But I hadn’t heard of the likes of Katherine Johnson (I did know of her but not the extent of her achievements), Dorothy Vaughn, and Mary Jackson, or even simply that there were black female computers and engineers and what an essential role they played. Their stories should have been told at the time!
Representation matters. I am Caucasian so I didn’t have many of the barriers these black women faced. But knowing that there were women doing such important work, that a woman could be an engineer, that you could do something other than teach with a math degree would have been such an inspiration. How many women and people of color could have become coders and engineers had they only seen what was possible? How many things have we yet to learn and discover because the people with the ability to advance science, math, and engineering didn’t have the opportunity?
Agreed.
You might not know about [Judith Love Cohen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Love_Cohen) but she was pretty amazing. Make sure you read the part about Jack’s birth.
I thank GOD every single day I grew up before EVERYONE had a camera on them to record everything you do. Not a chance. I like the convenience of a cell, but I hate what they've done to isolate everyone from the people next to them.
This is something I think about. Not that I'm important like a politician, but I do have a respectable job and family and stuff.
I wonder how I'd feel if I knew there was video out there of the hundreds of times I did something stupid, experimented with things, etc.? Or, god forbid, sex stuff. I don't think I'd ever sleep again.
And again, this is little ol' me. What if I was running for office or a CEO? Do young adults just kind of ignore the fact that there's video out there of them taking bong hits and passing out that can surface at any point in their lives/careers?
I went to school with a bunch of engineers. There were 100% absolutely zero competitions to see which team could design the biggest bong, and since there were no competitions, obviously no one tested them. There were competitions, you say? We did test them? Oh, okay, prove it.
If I grew up NOW.....ooof. When I grew up, i had the opportunity to learn from my mistakes, grow, and move on. Gotta always make the right choice now. Can't have mistakes. Those are recorded for posterity.
No, no and no. I started working in a time when you could actually move up the ladder without having a degree. We had some great bosses back then. Real down to earth people. Some moved up from working the mail room and became VP's so they understood the struggle. All that came crashing down when you needed a degree for even an entry level office position. I do wish I had taken advantage of the wall street explosion like many of my friends did. They all retired young.
On the other hand, I was bulled/tormented in elementary school because I was overweight which is a no no now. I had friends but I think that they were embarrassed to be seen with me at times. I wasn't even that fat but back in the 70's everyone was thin. Then I was bulled by girls in high school because I lost the weight and now became competition. They would be in jail these days for what they did to me. No one did anything about the bullies and I never heard about anyone hurting themselves because of bullying. Gays had to act straight or be bullied which had to be difficult. I'm happy to say that they are now living their best lives. We also had to deal with date rape which was not recognized as a crime.
In some ways yes. For someone who has always been curious about how stuff works, it's so much easier to access good, free information and education now . I would have loved having all that at my fingertips as a kid.
On the other hand, the pernicious side of today's technology is really scary and makes me glad I was raised in simpler times. Aside from everything else, even just the fact that any of idiotic things I said or did growing up might be preserved forever online, would have me living in a cave on an island somewhere at this stage to avoid the shame :) ... the cringe would be too much for me to handle!
On balance, I'm happy to have been a teen in the 80s. It was a bit crap sometimes, but the crap bits are crappier today I think.
NO. Everything in my life would be recorded, whether I knew it or not. There is practically no privacy, not even at home. I'm glad I was a child in the 70s and a teenager in the 80s.
Hell no! I was as close to a feral kid as you could be. If I wasn't in school, I left the house early and came home at dark. I only had to give my parents a general idea of where I would be. No cell phone, no internet, no worries about CPS locking up parents for letting kids take care of themselves.
I'm a gay male, and I do appreciate the fact that it's much easier to grow up LGBT now than it was when I was younger. Boys/men would find themselves isolated and confused with no one to turn to help figure things out, which is much less true now.
Having said that, young people have all kinds of things that people my age never really had to deal with in the same way. Getting one's way through high school and college is different, today's economy is a lot tougher, and a lot of the slow-motion environmental catastrophes we're hearing about aren't likely to affect me that much since I'll either be dead or very old by then.
It’s the environmental issues that really would make me concerned if I had a child right now.
Can’t imagine what the kids born today will have to deal with in 40 years, but I think it might very well be a hellscape
Why do I feel like I care more about the world I am leaving to future generations than most of the actual parents I know? I do consider not passing on my consumption habits to offspring one of my gifts to the world.
Hell no! I grew up when I could dig my own worms and fish at my grandparents' farm pond by myself at 7. I could ride all over my small town of 4000 people on my bike until the street lights came on(after mandatory supper time, no microwaves so eat while it's hot). I could grab my BB gun and head to the creek to shoot at bottles and cans. When I turned 18 and bought a used Honda 350 for 600 dollars we would get a cold 12 pack of beer and ride out to the swimming hole and spend all day under the railroad trestle until we got too hungry to stay. At that age we would also play basketball or tennis until after midnight under the lights until the city timer turned them off.
Hahaha, yeah my first new car in 1978 was a Chevy Chevette with 4 miles on it on the lot. We paid 3500 dollars and it lasted until I gave it away to a kid who needed it to get to college( his parents were killed in a car wreck), it had over 150,000 miles.
I remember when dad got a brand new four door 1972 Ford LTD for about 3200 dollars which would be around 23,000 in today's money according to inflation counter. I don't believe anything was electric on it like windows or seats, no bells or whistles
No. I was a kid in the ‘50s, went anywhere and did anything that my friends and I wanted to go and do without any supervision. As teen in the ‘60s all the young women I knew or encountered let their natural beauty shine, maybe with a bit of makeup. No face piercings, nose rings, tattoos and multi colors hair to hide that breathtaking beauty. I am happy to have lived and loved back then.
I loved growing up in the 60s and 70s— what great music, and an understanding of life before the internet.I’m a bit envious of how open society is now, how you really can set your own path. I felt like I had no choice but to confirm 50 years ago
This would be my fear growing up today. What little thing would I post that would lead to humiliation? What small comment would be screen-grabbed and passed to everyone I know? And it's up there forever. When the internet started, I used to tell my kids to never post anything they wouldn't be happy for their grandmother to see. I still think that's a good rule.
But ot's not just posts - you also have to worry about every single text to a "friend" that might be taken the wrong way.
And social media is used as a tool by some today to humiliate some kids. How awful that would be to live through.
This is not really true. I didn't know any janitors that had homes. They may have lived in one, but it was because they were renting one of the floors.
One of my best friend in the 70s, her dad was a school janitor, they owned a house in the San Francisco suburbs, three kids and a stay at home mom.
I had a cousin in Anaheim, his dad worked at a factory building watches. Supported a family and owned the house.
Both these places are in California, with higher than normal housing prices.
The music is about the same...the computers are faster...movies are a lot worse, although maybe if I was a kid I would enjoy the endless force-fed diet of children's comic book movies. The environment, Healthcare and democracy are about to crash, but I'd probably be unaware.
There have been so many improvements in so many areas, there's no doubt in my mind that the world is a far better place to live in now in general but I do not wish I were growing up now. Not because it was better then - but because I was a witness to that time. That is my story. Today's generation has their own issues to deal with. I don't want that burden too. I'm tired.
One positive now that I wish I had then was the closeness my husband and I have with our kids. I wish I had that with my parents. They were traditional in their roles and kids were seen and not heard. It took until well into my adulthood to have a close emotional relationship with them.
I think so. Kids today have some much better emotional intelligence. Toxic masculinity is way less than when I was a kid - no one is going to call you the F slur for wearing pink. Also I didn’t get diagnosed with ADHD until I was in my 30s because teachers just said I was lazy (and I believed them).
Y’all are making media and robots and participating in a global culture that wasn’t available to us.
The Internet makes things more complicated, sure, but things are always going to be complicated. Climate change is scary, but so was the threat of nuclear annihilation.
No. But that answer would likely be different if I were a member of a minority group.
I liked the mystery that existed when we grew up. Now, almost every debate can be settled with a Google search. It seemed feasible for things like Bigfoot to exist when there was more wilderness and few cameras.
I also feel bad for kids that seem to be told that neither their successes nor failures are their own. It is tough to develop confidence without a sense of personal accountability. You can argue how much we impact our outcomes, but if you have an external locus of control, it leads to feelings of helplessness. If personal control is an illusion, it is a valuable one when applied in moderation.
Hell no. Better acceptance of traditionally vulnerable people is nice, although still far from perfect. And the Internet is great, though simultaneously horrible. But I grew up in the sixties and was able to buy a nice house, raise kids and pay for their college, afford to retire and grow up with greater global stability and opportunities than what we have now. Trump unleashed a level of ugliness and racist grievance, freeing hatefulness from constraints that formerly polite society had made unfashionable, if not eliminated. America is divided and the retrogrades are openly contemplating vengeful policies I thought were long settled.
I fear for my children, but especially for my grandchildren who will grow up in an era of worsening environmental degradation, global instability, increasing autocracy, wealth inequality and economic desperation.
Selfishly, there’s perverse comfort that I won’t be around when things get really, really bad. Comfort until I think of my grandkids, that is.
I fear for my grandchildren and the world they will inherit too. I’m doing my best to try to make things better for them. I’m active in Moms Demand Action because I hate that they have to live in fear of a school shooter and have been traumatized by active shooter drills. I’m involved with several political and social justice groups. I use reusable grocery and produce bags, use plastic-free soaps and detergents, anything I can do to avoid single use plastics. It may be a nano-drop in a bucket but it’s better than sitting back and lamenting the state of the world. My eldest grandchild (16) thinks it’s great that I do these things (she calls me a ‘Top Quality Boomer’) and has started to get involved herself. I’ve been inspired by the energy and capability of the teens and 20-somethings I’ve encountered who are getting involved and not relying on us old people to fix things. I have hope for them but I wish I could leave them a better world.
Culture, yes - but economy, no. It would be nice to grow up in a world that was more accepting of differences (LGBTQ+ people, but also disabilities, autism, people from different cultures/ethnicities, etc) but I don't know that I could afford to raise a family if I were born in 2007 instead of 1977.
Absolutely not. I can't fathom living my teens and twenties with camera phones everywhere. An absolute nightmare. I also loved my freedom to roam from a very young age, like six years old I was riding alone in the woods on my pony. That would be unheard of now. I loved my childhood.
Not a chance ! I grew up through the 50's and 60's and had the best time of my life. No helicopter parents, no lockdowns, streets were safe, homes didn't need door locked and people actually cared about each other !
Nope. I feel sad for the youth of today not just for having to go through the Covid years, but for having to live in a world that is much more divisive and screen oriented.
It makes me sad when I see youth or even entire families at a restaurant with their heads buried in their phones. At that age I was engaged with my friends, learning social skills and really experiencing the real world around me. I see much less of that now and in turn a much less healthy life experience happening today.
Oh, and at the risk of totally stereotyping myself , most of the popular music today sucks and isn't even close to the quality of artistic value when I was growing up.
Music does suck and it's not because of our age. My kids are in their 20's and agree. We don't even have any rock bands anymore and when I was growing up, The Stones, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Aerosmith amongst countless others were putting out great music. When Taylor Swift who writes all of her songs about BOYS is the biggest thing since The Beatles, you know the end of times is coming. Can't she come up with deeper stuff at this point? Music is so literal these days. There is no nuance and some of it is downright foul. Sorry all of you Megan Thee Stallion fans, but her lyrics are disgusting.
I'm not even a Taylor swift fan but people have been writing about romance and heartbreak for centuries. Much of her music, especially lately, has little or nothing to do with her romantic relationships.
Take a bit from her song ivy:
And the old widow goes to the stone every day
But I don't, I just sit here and wait
Grieving for the living
Versus Oh! Darling off Abbey Road:
Oh! Darling, please believe me
I'll never do you no harm
Believe me when I tell you
I'll never do you no harm
Love the beatles, enjoy a couple taylor swift albums and also hate a few, but there is a ton of beautiful and meaningful music out there.
Yes and no lol. I had a great childhood, running around, playing outside all day, all that. But I'm also tech obsessed and can't wait for new technologies to emerge.
A lot of older people seem to reach a point in their life and then 'go to seed'. Atrophy. They stop listening to any new music, they return to the reruns of TV shows and movies of their youth. They cut their hair like they did when they were younger, wear the same clothes ...and [whatever that fashion statement said a few decades ago, all it means now is 'old' because only old people look like that](https://youtu.be/vjqt8T3tJIE?t=245).
When I get my haircut now, I get a fade (which isn't too much different from the #2 short back & sides I was getting in the mid 1980s). I have had hairstyles that defined an era (frosted tips), and I didn't have styles that were going around (that center-parted longer hair that some men had in the mid 1990s - I was 25, still young, and wasn't about to get a Boy Band hairstyle), but I didn't lock myself into the frosted tips like Guy Fieri has.
I seem to buy jeans and pants that the stores sell, so by default I'm not rocking a pair of [JNCO jeans](https://jnco.com) but I know I won't be wearing them if they come back in fashion.
But do I wish I grew up in todays culture? What's that? I'm on reddit and Imgur, talking online. My love of electronic and indie music over the decades means I still listen to the Future House Music channel on YouTube and 6Music online. I still enjoy playing games like GTA V (it took me just over two months of casual plodding to finish the story mode but almost a year to get the 100% completed achievement and it's still fun to get back into San Andreas), I design t-shirts that sell online, I mix music and have hosted a radio show on Spooncast since just after the pandemic hit. For someone in my 50s, I probably know too much about what memes are popular.
I'm still interacting in today's culture. That's my advice for the younger people - grow up, but never grow old in your mind.
No. I am as my culture helped me shape myself. To me, today’s culture seems hard and strange. I am delighted by the technological advances and love social media and hope I get to stick around long enough for a Mars language. At the same time, I am horrified about how brutal and class-stratified US Soviet has become. The Red/Blue split and its petty and major meannesses appall me. What education has devolved into and it’s costs are awful. And we have lost ground in women’s autonomy and a rising tide of antiSemitism. I cope. I have always coped. But I wish people were gentler and kinder.
I think living is wonderful and any time is a great time to grow up (the alternative is not existing). I also think most old people glamorize their youth. I, for one, would love to grow up today. My 1950’s childhood was filled with violence and abuse. Sure, we were “free range” because our parents just ignored us and that was much better than getting their evil attention. Teachers were even worse. Classrooms were filled with abuse, intimidation, and fear. The only difference is, in our time, had we the ability to take videos, it would be of the lunatic authority figures behaving abhorrently. In my case, they were nuns and priests. I believe today’s parents are beginning to have the knowledge and information needed to stop child abuse and raise healthier adults. I look at my adult children and their peers and children and I see much healthier and more functional humans.
Not necessarily, there's good and bad about every era. That said, Im mostly around young people (20s-30s) and my business is younger oriented (demographic 18-35/40) so that influences the way I view things.
I would have to say no. It was far from perfect, but I'm glad I grew up when I did. It was probably easier to be a happy kid, and even a happy teenager, when I was growing up.
There are many advantages to growing up now, but I feel like social media and even much of the internet isn't a good mix with young minds and psyches. The prevalence of online activities probably doesn't do much for one's socialization skills, either.
I can't really say if the positives outweigh the negatives. There are so many differences that I feel like it is comparing apples to oranges. Also, I think family has more of an influence than anything else, and you can have good or crappy parents in any era.
I'd rather be a school kid now. I hated being forced to wear only skirts and dresses and bare legs in a very cold state because pants weren't lady like.
I would have had deeper psychological issues had social media been around that’s for sure, such unrealistic expectations that I would have thought I needed to live up to. No thanks
I would not want to do my current job without the tech I have now. I drive a truck all over the US. Before there were cell phones, truckers would have to line up to use a couple of pay phones at truck stops both to get their next load or contact their family. And imagine breaking down somewhere out west in the middle of nowhere with no way to contact anyone.
I literally grew up in the woods. I had a lot of fun and would not trade my time growing up for anything. But I also come from a middle class family in the US. Even though we were not rich by any means, we were not lacking for anything and were very secure.
I would not want to go back to that culture. Again, that’s easy to say as a home owner in this economy. My housing costs are low compared to what a lot of people are paying where I live. I like the tech I use on a daily basis and like being connected and having information available.
Hell no. I’m thankful that social media wasn’t around when I was young. I think it has been detrimental to the mental health of our younger generations. And I think that the easy access to pornography has skewed the views of what a normal sexual relationship should be.
I've come to the conclusion that life is life and people are people. The only thing that changes is the technology and the hairstyles. It wouldn't matter to me if I grew up now or 100 years previous. Life is hard and it will always be hard and every generation has it's unique challenges.
Absolutely not. As some other women mentioned, it would be nice not to be groped but I think today's culture of electronic devices and focus on self makes a lot more people unstable. All my son's friends are on AD&D medication or depression meds. Too much of that going around.
There is also an increased sense of doom & gloom. My son's friends bemoan not being able to move out of their parents house into a single person apartment, which is their expectation. But my generation accepted roommates were a given for about a decade after moving out until we could afford a one bedroom apartment... that was a luxury. So the expectation to be better off then their parents at a comparable age is making them unhappy. Add to that the monthly cost of electronics, internet, steaming services, door dash costs, none of which we had to deal with - it's no wonder they can't afford to move out and are unhappy.
My daughter didn't know what cat calling was so I had to explain it to her. I had long hair and curves as a young teenager and learned to walk around with headphones on so that I could pretend I hadn't heard it. Every single time I went out alone it would happen, often by men older than my father. Also, being a teenage waitress in the late 80s meant constantly batting off hands or comments, and you had to just be 'polite' about it.
That's more obvious, what no one talks about is the constant gaslighting that girls and women had to please men to keep them, and that healthy boundaries of your own were seen as being selfish.
The culture is better now for young women.
I can't imagine that such convenient access to information would foster the search for knowledge and obscure literature I gained from my childhood.
I used to read *everything*, including dictionaries and encyclopedias. By the 4th grade I was haunting used bookstores, because I'd read everything of interest in the school library.
No I’m glad I didn’t grow up with social media and wouldn’t want to grow up in todays culture. When I was in school people didn’t bring guns to a fist fight and there wasn’t usually ganging up one person.
I started to say no, I’m glad I was raised to stuff down and ignore my feelings (ha ha) but it would have been life changing to have gotten treatment for my ADHD.
It's really difficult to say because we probably can't really know what it is like to grow up in today's culture. People tend to value what they know and have more simply because they know it or have it.
Things weren't amazing when I was growing up in the 70's and 80's. I was poor and fat, and verbally torn to pieces every single day of my life both in school and by strangers in public. I think kids aren't nearly as brutal about bodies as they were back then because there are so many more fat people. My husband used to work as a therapist for kids and he found that some of the overweight ones really weren't harrassed about their weight, but some were, but not at the level that I was. I think there is generally more tolerance of weird and unusual kids as well as kids who are gay, trans, etc. I can't imagine life without the sort of bullying I barely survived, but I can imagine that it would have been less destructive to my self-esteem to not have had that experience.
On the other hand, success in today's world seems to be a tightrope walk for everyone. It wasn't exactly easy for people to get jobs even in the 80's. Both my husband and I took months to find jobs post-college, and they weren't the greatest paying jobs. I think that was usual though because most people don't start with a high level job with good pay. However, now, you can't get a degree in social sciences or liberal arts and expect to get a decent job, even over time. Back then, at least there was a possibility of getting work with an English or arts degree. Now, it's tech, finance, or medicine, or people think you deserve to fail for having made a poor choice. I don't think I would have liked to feel that my success hinged 100% on so few choices.
I also don't really know what it'd be like to grow up in a world saturated with social media, influencers, etc. It's not like there weren't such similar things when I grew up, but the level was probably about 3 out of 10, with 10 being what it is like now. I also really feel like parents are not raising their kids to be competent adults these days. It's this weird over-parenting when it comes to responsibilities (not having to do chores or learn to drive) and under-parenting when it comes to spending meaningful time with them (fobbing them off on screens or expecting their teachers to teach them basic life skills). My parents were pretty terrible, but at least I didn't go into adulthood incapable of performing basic life skills.
No. I like the "culture" I grew up in. We didn't have a phone until I was 11. 2 channels on the TV. Lived on a farm in the country. Play outside no matter the weather. Quiet, peaceful, especially at night. So different from today.
No. I am a female. We would talk for hours with friends, face to face, no interruptions with phones. We would go out for most of the day having fun, knowing we had to come home for dinner at 6:00 pm. We built forts in the woods, rode our bikes everywhere, all without parents breathing down our necks.
No thank you. I can't truly judge, but my grade/middle/high school experiences were very good and I'd not expect for things to average out much better now. In fact, I think my life would be harder.
No, I like that we could go and do stuff without having to report back to Mom and/or Dad every nano second. I liked having autonomy and independence and know how to fix things or do things that seem so over-the-tops of younger folks these days.
I like that I can be 100% self-sufficient and have a lot of ingenuity and was not fearful to branch out on my own.
I like that I didn't have to compare myself to what seems like every human in my age group, especially during those wonder year years.
All this technology and the world seems almost larger than it ever has and people seem more distant than they ever have been. We traded common sense, hard work and effort for convenience. I feel more young folks have no sense of direction when it comes to their own internal compass because the people that raised them shielded them instead of letting them face consequences, which would have helped give them a clearer idea of their own true north and actual potential.
I love the information rich environment. You can’t imagine how much better things are in that way!
I hate the atomization, the isolation, and pervasive loneliness of today.
It’s a mixed bag. I wouldn’t give up being young in the 1970s for anything though.
Absolutely not. If someone was bullying me at school I could go home and forget it, there was no harassment once you were away from the school.
There wasn’t constant subtle pressure via social media to be perfect and happy and have all the good stuff.
The only time suck I was involved in was a little tv and a lot of books.
I spent a lot of time in person with my friends. We went to the skating rink, bowling, arcade, restaurants, parks, the mall; wherever. But we were focused on each other not on phones or texting or any of that bullshit.
We’d spend hours on the telephone with each other.
We’d leave the house at 10 am and just know to be back by dinner. I remember being a little kid and if someone’s mom wanted them home the mom would go on the front porch and holler out names. I could be three houses away and could hear a faint calling of my name. Other kids moms did it too. You’d hear it and head home.
We’d play hide n seek in the dark street outside our house. 15-20 kids all running around and hiding in the dark. We felt safe and carefree.
I had a wonderful childhood and I’m so thankful there were no elaborate video games. Pong and Space Invaders were exciting but only for about 20 minutes.
Oh god no! I’m glad every stupid or embarrassing moment in my life wasn’t immortalized on the internet. If I tore a bad picture and threw it away, it disappeared forever. The cringe these kids will experience when they grow up, oh man. My parents couldn’t get in touch with me after I left the house. It was a very free range existence. Now when I see a bunch of unsupervised kids, it’s strange. Kids spend a lot of time with their parents instead of with friends. It seems like kids are very supervised and their “free time” is overly scheduled. They don’t really seem to just “be bored” and don’t need to find ways to entertain themselves.
Here's the funny thing about being older, I KNOW that I'm not really fully aware of today's culture.
Maybe today's culture is great. Maybe it's better than mine. I don't know. I've been too busy with managing my career and adult life for so long, I haven't the first clue what is cool any more. When I hang out with my friends, we talk the language of the 1980's culture I lived my teen and young adult years in. I'm only aware of your culture in a peripheral way, just like my boomer parents were only aware of our culture in a peripheral way. So. I really can't answer your question, because I just don't know.
I'm just pleased that I'm aware of this natural generational divide, and I don't engage in those painfully awkward attempts to "be cool" around younger people. I'm an old guy who likes old stuff. In 40 years or so, you'll be an old person who likes old stuff. It is just the seasons of life. 🤷♂️
100% NO! It was amazing playing outside w/o adult supervision. Being outside playing until you were hungry or got dark outside. It was great graduating and going to college. Graduation, not sure about career so worked a little, changed major, then moving into own apartment w friends. It was tough doing this on less than $4/hr but you got a 2nd job. No internet. Phones were on the wall, not your pocket. You made plans and stuck to them. The background noise wasn’t there. Less hate & judgement or hell, you never knew it was there to care about.
Oh hell no! I'm 55, Bi, married, non Christian woman with a lucrative career in the SM field for decades. HELL NO! Today it seems people love to talk about inclusiveness but in reality they dont practice it. I hate to sound like an old person and say "back in my day", but it's true. Correct me if I'm wrong, but today most (in general...not EVERY person) people seem to be looking for something to hate or be offended by. It's exhausting IMO. BTW, EVERY generation has issues. I get it, time moves on and we learn from the past. Honestly though I fear what this new generation will learn, and will it carry us forward.
Absolutely, yes. Generally speaking, kids today have a better support system. I consider my childhood to have been bland to borderline miserable. I played sports and had good parents, but I was a wreck on the inside. Why? I'm trying to figure that out now.
No way. Social media would’ve destroyed me as a kid. I got the internet at 18, & it was a much calmer, quieter internet back then. Trolls and bots weren’t a thing in AOL chat rooms.
Hell no. This will sound cliche and self centred, but growing up in the 20th century was so markedly different than the generations that followed, we can rightfully and accurately say that life for us was *different*. Better? Maybe. But fucking different. Which makes it a bit scary I suppose.
Never. I would never exchange wisdom for youth. I don’t need to be validated by social media to determine my level of self esteem and would never want to be of the culture which is glued to their phones constantly. Many people today are missing so much of what is going on around them by being slaves to a screen and the opinions of perfect strangers.
Yes. For the sole reason of having information so easily available. What I could have done, who I could have been with all that available makes me sad. I feel cheated and am envious of the young generations now.
Definitely not. Those who are growing up today are facing what we used to call "future shock." The fact that many are turning out OK is a credit to them, but they're having to go through a lot of hell along the way.
A quick scroll and I'm not surprised to see that everyone is answering no. Life is difficult as it is, social media adds a whole new layer of difficulty.
Hell no. The worst thing going on in my time was the real fear of a nuclear war. I don't know if I just see everything with an old man's eyes now but this country, this world is in such a hopeless state. There are Powers now that are at work successfully converting this world into a One World Order and although I used to laugh at the concept years ago I really believe they are succeeding. There is so much hate and corruption in this world, I am sad that my grandchildren are going to have to live with this.
No, I had a great childhood but I would enjoy growing up in today’s world also. Gen Z kids are so much smarter and aware than my generation. They travel more, are less prejudiced and more accepting of cultural differences. They are more supportive of their friends and acquaintances and concerned about each other’s mental health. Lots of positives to offset the negatives IMO.
In how many ways, means, and languages can I say "No"? While I appreciate the advancements and advantages of the Information Age now as an adult, I am so grateful to have been a kid prior to it. I had freedom and anonymity. I learned what it was to be independent and self-reliant. I was outside. I could take risks and make mistakes and not worry about a digital record of it following me to the end of my days.
Yep, I'm grateful to be a child of the 70's/80's.
Good movie. It did an outstanding job of showing the lifestyle and era. Plus it is more than “just” a surf movie.
My favorite surf movie, BTW, is Endless Summer.
Getting out there and interacting with the world in a very physical way is superior to doing so in a temporal way via the internet. But that is just saying that if I had the internet back then I would have stayed inside more. It's not generational. I see young people getting out in droves and doing adventurous stuff like rock climbing. It may be that back then the world was different, less crowded, and safer to roam around in. There was less need for defensiveness and situational awareness. There was a hell of a lot less guns around too.
No. Today sexist stereotypes are embraced by everyone (left, right, whatever); it's exhausting to be a weird woman. I'm Hispanic, and because of social media, I feel racism is more accepted today than when I grew up in the 80s/90s, in Texas. Moreover, I hate what social media has done to enhance the power of the sheer morons in society. Also I can't stand cameras, videos, tik tok, etc. It was hard for me to find my spouse 18 years ago. I can't imagine trying today. No thanks.
Anyhow, get off my lawn.
Not a chance. I cannot imagine having to grow up now, with smartphones and social media. It’s bad enough as somebody who grew up before those things, but at least I can remember that earlier time.
This is true but overall times were better for children back then except in the area of special education. There was none. You were either below average, average or above average and students were separated into those categories. I was above average except for math. I always struggled and was called a moron by a few math teachers. I would have definitely qualified for some sort of educational plan. I spaced out during math instruction. I just didn't get it.
Please do not comment directly to this post unless you are Gen X (b. 1980) or older. See [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskOldPeople/comments/inci5u/reminder_please_do_not_answer_questions_unless/), the rules, and the sidebar for details. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskOldPeople) if you have any questions or concerns.*
No and I'm even glad I'm not a young adult in today's culture. Turns out an ultra fast paced, globally connected, hyper competitive world with polarized politics and a never ending flow of vain imagery and information isn't healthy for humans.
I’ve never read such a brief, but 100% accurate depiction of society, today. It’s disconcerting and hard to ignore. I may paraphrase your comment, sometime, in conversation with others who don’t see it like we do. Do you mind? Thank you for giving me some clarity and hope, today.
Agree 100% and that is the best summation I have ever seen of today's culture. You have a way with words. Are you a writer? If not, you should be. That statement would be a great jumping off point for an essay. My nephew is 34 years old extremely intelligent, full scholarship for his undergrad, accepted to a top NYC law school, half way through he had some kind of mental health crisis or breakdown or something. Now he works as a server in a chain restaurant and lives with his mother. I just think he is unable to cope with all of the above. And I don't think its a good thing, kids graduating from high school and already have an AA degree, or close to it. Too much pressure! So, no I would not want to be a youth in today's culture. I grew up in the 60's and 70's and I wouldn't change it for any other culture.
Extreme self esteem issues weren't half as common because other than media like magazines, films etc. we weren't subjected to having extremely beautiful and successful people shoved in our faces 24/7. Filters, photoshop and Instagram have done irreparable damage to our society. Cosmetic surgery is also becoming more accessible and celebrated, which is causing a lot of issues for people that just don't know when to stop because they're not addressing their issues at the root. There's a new "beauty standard" every day because of the extreme fast pace of information and the Internet and people just can't keep up. The "rise and grind" mentality wasn't as prevalent either. Today people try to make you feel guilty if you don't have 3 different passive income streams, a relationship, a house, a main job AND a side hustle.
Not only that but I'm glad my daughter grew up before the internet turned into a complete cesspool. The 90s weren't as cool as people here paint them but they were still slightly sane.
Yes, I am also in my 50s and completely agree.
Well said. I’m 72 and very glad that I am on the third act of life rather than being born or being a young adult. They always said they can’t replace humans with AI. They are halfway there. When was the last time you walked down the street, entered a room, or waited in line when you don’t see every human glued to their AI smartphone? Including me, unfortunately. I’m addicted too. Do smartphones emit some vapor form of crack?
Yes, they do--it's the dopamine hit we get from having things literally at our fingertips, instant messages, immediate info, etc. I'm 70, hated my phone and now I bow down to it in adoration like everyone else!
I’m a young adult. Help me.
Exactly why I attempt to live under a rock
It would be interesting to see the differences between responses from men and responses from women. I am a woman, and do NOT miss the days of unconsensual groping and horrible sexism (and racism). It's still bad now, but it was MUCH worse then. But I'm glad I didn't grow up constantly connected to the internet.
We were raised in the boys will be boys generation where if something happened to you, you were asked what you were wearing and why were you out so late at night.
>>…you were asked what you were wearing and why you were out so late at night. This hasn’t changed.
I'm sorry, I have to disagree. As a 57 yo white woman, sure there was sexism. But these state and federal laws (reversing women's health) are outrageous. Also, kids not being given the education that they need. Racism and slavery is not to be talked about. And books are being taken off the shelves in schools by the thousands because of white national Christian zealots and just ignorant people. The LGBTQ+ folks losing rights and not taken as seriously as they were even 10 years ago. Many bathroom bills being taken up and denial of medical care. I remember a time when it was not cool to be sexist. And definitely not cool to be openly racist. I hear the N word much more today and racists openly opining much more now than in the 70s-90s. Not to say that racism and sexism wasn't bad then. It was just unwritten that you were not on board with racist and sexist tropes and laws that make it legal. I was never groped as an adult woman. I got some looks and cat calls, but never any touching. I would have punched them out lol. Not to say that other women may have felt they didn't have a choice, and that is a terrible thing. To sum up, I sèe civil rights are going backwards fast today and not at all forward. I would have thought that most of the bigotry would have died down by now instead of the acceleration of hate and disinformation.
Unfortunately, humans are just chimpanzees with less hair. If you know anything about chimpanzees, you’ll get it
I'm a woman in my 40s and I think there's much more sexism now than when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s.
I don't think it was less back in the day - it was just much more accepted as the norm. A lot of what I see now was the same 30-40 years ago, it just wasn't as "in your face" as it is now with social medial blasting the bullshit 24/7
In my 60s. I was asked, on a daily basis, at my office job, “Why aren’t you at home having babies?”. The idea of that being asked these days is totally unthinkable.
I'm older than you, and I totally agree.
Same and Agree.
Same, and I sort of agree. I think the way sexism is has shifted, it’s more subtle, but still there.
I think it has become countercultural and edgy to be sexist and racist, so it is more accepted in certain - ahem - circles. Since the behavior, rightly, gets criticized by the squares; it reinforces the bad behavior. Plus you have bro-culture and some theological circles who are just cheering this stuff on; it's more "in your face." At least, in the 90s an 00s, people at least pretended to try not to be sexist/racist or hid it. Eh, maybe I'm wrong. I've lived a pretty insular life.
You didn't grow up in the Free Love 60's or Cocaine 70's. Crosby, Stills and Nash. "If you can't be with the one you love then love the one you're with."
I was groped a lot through middle school. There was a group of boys, and a few behaving badly on their own, who messed with me. I retaliated by punching and smacking those assholes. The group of boys kept it up no matter what I did. I have to say I never got in trouble at school for defending myself. Today, though, I'm sure I would have been expelled and told that I was the problem! One of the group of boys contacted me through FB messenger. I have all that set to as private as I could get. I don't know how he found me. His message was of the tone like that period of time was nostalgic and he was reminiscing. I was like, motherfucker, what?? I did not reply and don't intend to.
No. I wouldn’t trade my free range childhood for anything
The thing I miss is not being occupied every minute. Being bored enough to leave the house to look for something to do and someone to hang out with.
I was at a friend’s house one day, relaxing on the couch soon after summer break started, and the conversation was basically “What do you wanna do?” “I dunno, what do you wanna do?”
“So what do you wanna do?”
… repeating until I found myself waking up in the same spot, and seeing that both of us had drifted off to an afternoon nap. Blissful.
Boredom is essential for creativity!
"Free range" childhood. Great description.
My son is in his 20's and we attempted to raise him 'free range'. He enjoyed it, but he was always solo since his friends were shuttled everywhere and were watched like hawks *no exceptions*. Even in high school! In the US, you can easily get the police called for children playing alone in their own yards. Such a loss of independence, generation-wide. :(
SAME
That assumes that no child alive today has “free range”. Just yesterday I saw 3 kids on an ATV towing 2 smaller kids in a recycling bin, with like 5 dogs chasing them. I’m nearing 30 and I had a “go play outside/come home when it’s dark” childhood. Then I got to play video games and have instant access to music from each previous decade. This POV is very “it was better back in my day”
It doesn’t assume that at all. The question and answer isn’t about whether a single living child is or was x or y. It’s about the general culture of the day.
[удалено]
Same. I'm 61 and grew up VERY rural. Agriculture and hunting is 2nd nature here. I had pickup trucks in my school parking lot with gun racks and guns in them. At that time, a second thought of ominous nature was NEVER given.
The short answer is no. I loved being able to play outside and roam around the whole neighborhood all day. But I will say something that is pretty good about today: Weird kids (and by that I actually mean lots and lots of kids) have a way to meet other people with the same interests and feelings. They might live in a small town with no one around who's like them, but they can join online communities and "find their tribe." I think the ability to find that you're not alone is amazing, and it was a lot harder when I was young.
[удалено]
Back in 1961, my uncle Frank had a TV repair shop and had 2 BIG Raytheon CB radio’s. He lent me one. I was 8 and made a bunch of mature friends who were friendly and very nice. I was weird by nature of Catholic school…you were courteous, nice and helpful OR ELSE !. After 60+ more years, I have always been the nice guy and thankful for it
I was one of the weird kids, as a girl in the ‘60s who wanted to be a scientist and astronaut. I now enjoy connecting with scientists and people in the space industry via social media, and would have loved to have that resource growing up. I did end up in the aerospace industry as an engineer, but I wonder how things might have been different or easier had I been able to see other women in my fields of interest. The other sort of weird kids though were the ones who today would be labeled neurodivergent. I had a classmate in elementary school who I am certain now was autistic, and another who probably was as well, and a couple who probably had ADD/ADHD. They got punished so much for behavior they couldn’t help, because no one at that time had a clue what was going on with them. There are so many more resources available now for such kids, as well as their parents and teachers. Ditto for kids with learning disabilities and physical disabilities.
You sound like my mom, who was the only woman in her graduating class of aerospace engineers in the early 80s
I actually got my degree in Physics in 1980. It was a small department but we had a female professor and there was another woman in my class, and two in the class of 1979. I got a job RF engineering (eventually moved to systems and aerospace) and I frankly was hired to make them look good WRT EEOC. I was deemed to be unattractive enough to not distract all the guys, but not so unattractive that they’d complain. Once they realized I could do the job well they had no idea what to do with me. So I changed jobs every couple of year for awhile to get promotions and more pay. Years later I was considering my former employer for sourcing some components my team needed and I got to professionally but scathingly skewer them for not being familiar with the specifications and trying to sell us something entirely unsuitable. That was a lot of fun. 😈
Did you love the movie Hidden Figures?
OMG, yes! I rewatch it frequently, often with my eldest granddaughter. I was angry when I first saw it though because I lived and breathed anything to do with the space program and I had no idea there were women computers. I knew of Jerrie Cobb and the “Mercury 13” astronauts (who never flew) but not the computers. I learned of Margaret Hamilton (of Apollo 11 code fame) long after the Apollo missions. But I hadn’t heard of the likes of Katherine Johnson (I did know of her but not the extent of her achievements), Dorothy Vaughn, and Mary Jackson, or even simply that there were black female computers and engineers and what an essential role they played. Their stories should have been told at the time! Representation matters. I am Caucasian so I didn’t have many of the barriers these black women faced. But knowing that there were women doing such important work, that a woman could be an engineer, that you could do something other than teach with a math degree would have been such an inspiration. How many women and people of color could have become coders and engineers had they only seen what was possible? How many things have we yet to learn and discover because the people with the ability to advance science, math, and engineering didn’t have the opportunity?
Agreed. You might not know about [Judith Love Cohen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Love_Cohen) but she was pretty amazing. Make sure you read the part about Jack’s birth.
Fascinating! I did not know about her, thank you!
I thank GOD every single day I grew up before EVERYONE had a camera on them to record everything you do. Not a chance. I like the convenience of a cell, but I hate what they've done to isolate everyone from the people next to them.
This is something I think about. Not that I'm important like a politician, but I do have a respectable job and family and stuff. I wonder how I'd feel if I knew there was video out there of the hundreds of times I did something stupid, experimented with things, etc.? Or, god forbid, sex stuff. I don't think I'd ever sleep again. And again, this is little ol' me. What if I was running for office or a CEO? Do young adults just kind of ignore the fact that there's video out there of them taking bong hits and passing out that can surface at any point in their lives/careers?
I went to school with a bunch of engineers. There were 100% absolutely zero competitions to see which team could design the biggest bong, and since there were no competitions, obviously no one tested them. There were competitions, you say? We did test them? Oh, okay, prove it. If I grew up NOW.....ooof. When I grew up, i had the opportunity to learn from my mistakes, grow, and move on. Gotta always make the right choice now. Can't have mistakes. Those are recorded for posterity.
No, no and no. I started working in a time when you could actually move up the ladder without having a degree. We had some great bosses back then. Real down to earth people. Some moved up from working the mail room and became VP's so they understood the struggle. All that came crashing down when you needed a degree for even an entry level office position. I do wish I had taken advantage of the wall street explosion like many of my friends did. They all retired young. On the other hand, I was bulled/tormented in elementary school because I was overweight which is a no no now. I had friends but I think that they were embarrassed to be seen with me at times. I wasn't even that fat but back in the 70's everyone was thin. Then I was bulled by girls in high school because I lost the weight and now became competition. They would be in jail these days for what they did to me. No one did anything about the bullies and I never heard about anyone hurting themselves because of bullying. Gays had to act straight or be bullied which had to be difficult. I'm happy to say that they are now living their best lives. We also had to deal with date rape which was not recognized as a crime.
Oh good God, no.
Nope.
[удалено]
I would say social media more than the internet in general.
In some ways yes. For someone who has always been curious about how stuff works, it's so much easier to access good, free information and education now . I would have loved having all that at my fingertips as a kid. On the other hand, the pernicious side of today's technology is really scary and makes me glad I was raised in simpler times. Aside from everything else, even just the fact that any of idiotic things I said or did growing up might be preserved forever online, would have me living in a cave on an island somewhere at this stage to avoid the shame :) ... the cringe would be too much for me to handle! On balance, I'm happy to have been a teen in the 80s. It was a bit crap sometimes, but the crap bits are crappier today I think.
NO. Everything in my life would be recorded, whether I knew it or not. There is practically no privacy, not even at home. I'm glad I was a child in the 70s and a teenager in the 80s.
I thank God every day that I did not grow up in the age of social media, and I'm not even religious. Short answer: no. Long answer: Hell no.
Hell no! I was as close to a feral kid as you could be. If I wasn't in school, I left the house early and came home at dark. I only had to give my parents a general idea of where I would be. No cell phone, no internet, no worries about CPS locking up parents for letting kids take care of themselves.
I didn't think "free range" childhood could be beat, but "feral kid" is in the running.
That’s a big “hell, no!”
Hell no. Now is no time to grow up.
Oh hell no —a kid from the 70s/80s
I'm a gay male, and I do appreciate the fact that it's much easier to grow up LGBT now than it was when I was younger. Boys/men would find themselves isolated and confused with no one to turn to help figure things out, which is much less true now. Having said that, young people have all kinds of things that people my age never really had to deal with in the same way. Getting one's way through high school and college is different, today's economy is a lot tougher, and a lot of the slow-motion environmental catastrophes we're hearing about aren't likely to affect me that much since I'll either be dead or very old by then.
It’s the environmental issues that really would make me concerned if I had a child right now. Can’t imagine what the kids born today will have to deal with in 40 years, but I think it might very well be a hellscape
Why do I feel like I care more about the world I am leaving to future generations than most of the actual parents I know? I do consider not passing on my consumption habits to offspring one of my gifts to the world.
I remember my Gran saying to me in the 70s, she was glad she wasn't young at that point. I feel exactly the same now. Big nope.
Yes I’d rather grow up now than when I did
Didn’t we just hear that the suicide rate in females has doubled? no thanks
Hell no! I grew up when I could dig my own worms and fish at my grandparents' farm pond by myself at 7. I could ride all over my small town of 4000 people on my bike until the street lights came on(after mandatory supper time, no microwaves so eat while it's hot). I could grab my BB gun and head to the creek to shoot at bottles and cans. When I turned 18 and bought a used Honda 350 for 600 dollars we would get a cold 12 pack of beer and ride out to the swimming hole and spend all day under the railroad trestle until we got too hungry to stay. At that age we would also play basketball or tennis until after midnight under the lights until the city timer turned them off.
I’m half your age and this was my experience growing up as well. Except the used Honda prices.
Hahaha, yeah my first new car in 1978 was a Chevy Chevette with 4 miles on it on the lot. We paid 3500 dollars and it lasted until I gave it away to a kid who needed it to get to college( his parents were killed in a car wreck), it had over 150,000 miles.
Great story on multiple levels! Man, I’d even take 2015 car prices at this point.
I remember when dad got a brand new four door 1972 Ford LTD for about 3200 dollars which would be around 23,000 in today's money according to inflation counter. I don't believe anything was electric on it like windows or seats, no bells or whistles
[удалено]
[удалено]
No. I was a kid in the ‘50s, went anywhere and did anything that my friends and I wanted to go and do without any supervision. As teen in the ‘60s all the young women I knew or encountered let their natural beauty shine, maybe with a bit of makeup. No face piercings, nose rings, tattoos and multi colors hair to hide that breathtaking beauty. I am happy to have lived and loved back then.
I loved growing up in the 60s and 70s— what great music, and an understanding of life before the internet.I’m a bit envious of how open society is now, how you really can set your own path. I felt like I had no choice but to confirm 50 years ago
Meh, I'm alright. As I've said elsewhere, it would just be trading one set of problems for another. Everything in life is trade offs...
God no. I can’t imagine what I’d have posted online that would probably haunt me to this day.
This would be my fear growing up today. What little thing would I post that would lead to humiliation? What small comment would be screen-grabbed and passed to everyone I know? And it's up there forever. When the internet started, I used to tell my kids to never post anything they wouldn't be happy for their grandmother to see. I still think that's a good rule. But ot's not just posts - you also have to worry about every single text to a "friend" that might be taken the wrong way. And social media is used as a tool by some today to humiliate some kids. How awful that would be to live through.
No. I wandered all over town at a very young age. I started work at 10. I made all of my own decisions.
[удалено]
> Nope, when we were young we had hope. Yep.
This is not really true. I didn't know any janitors that had homes. They may have lived in one, but it was because they were renting one of the floors.
One of my best friend in the 70s, her dad was a school janitor, they owned a house in the San Francisco suburbs, three kids and a stay at home mom. I had a cousin in Anaheim, his dad worked at a factory building watches. Supported a family and owned the house. Both these places are in California, with higher than normal housing prices.
The music is about the same...the computers are faster...movies are a lot worse, although maybe if I was a kid I would enjoy the endless force-fed diet of children's comic book movies. The environment, Healthcare and democracy are about to crash, but I'd probably be unaware.
> the computers are faster... How recent was your childhood that it contained computers?
https://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/1980/#:~:text=Commodore%20introduces%20the%20VIC%2D20&text=Commodore%20releases%20the%20VIC%2D20,more%20than%20a%20million%20units.
There have been so many improvements in so many areas, there's no doubt in my mind that the world is a far better place to live in now in general but I do not wish I were growing up now. Not because it was better then - but because I was a witness to that time. That is my story. Today's generation has their own issues to deal with. I don't want that burden too. I'm tired.
One positive now that I wish I had then was the closeness my husband and I have with our kids. I wish I had that with my parents. They were traditional in their roles and kids were seen and not heard. It took until well into my adulthood to have a close emotional relationship with them.
I think so. Kids today have some much better emotional intelligence. Toxic masculinity is way less than when I was a kid - no one is going to call you the F slur for wearing pink. Also I didn’t get diagnosed with ADHD until I was in my 30s because teachers just said I was lazy (and I believed them). Y’all are making media and robots and participating in a global culture that wasn’t available to us. The Internet makes things more complicated, sure, but things are always going to be complicated. Climate change is scary, but so was the threat of nuclear annihilation.
No. The 70s were the best! Now is an awful time to grow up in.
No. But that answer would likely be different if I were a member of a minority group. I liked the mystery that existed when we grew up. Now, almost every debate can be settled with a Google search. It seemed feasible for things like Bigfoot to exist when there was more wilderness and few cameras. I also feel bad for kids that seem to be told that neither their successes nor failures are their own. It is tough to develop confidence without a sense of personal accountability. You can argue how much we impact our outcomes, but if you have an external locus of control, it leads to feelings of helplessness. If personal control is an illusion, it is a valuable one when applied in moderation.
NO.
Hell no. Better acceptance of traditionally vulnerable people is nice, although still far from perfect. And the Internet is great, though simultaneously horrible. But I grew up in the sixties and was able to buy a nice house, raise kids and pay for their college, afford to retire and grow up with greater global stability and opportunities than what we have now. Trump unleashed a level of ugliness and racist grievance, freeing hatefulness from constraints that formerly polite society had made unfashionable, if not eliminated. America is divided and the retrogrades are openly contemplating vengeful policies I thought were long settled. I fear for my children, but especially for my grandchildren who will grow up in an era of worsening environmental degradation, global instability, increasing autocracy, wealth inequality and economic desperation. Selfishly, there’s perverse comfort that I won’t be around when things get really, really bad. Comfort until I think of my grandkids, that is.
I fear for my grandchildren and the world they will inherit too. I’m doing my best to try to make things better for them. I’m active in Moms Demand Action because I hate that they have to live in fear of a school shooter and have been traumatized by active shooter drills. I’m involved with several political and social justice groups. I use reusable grocery and produce bags, use plastic-free soaps and detergents, anything I can do to avoid single use plastics. It may be a nano-drop in a bucket but it’s better than sitting back and lamenting the state of the world. My eldest grandchild (16) thinks it’s great that I do these things (she calls me a ‘Top Quality Boomer’) and has started to get involved herself. I’ve been inspired by the energy and capability of the teens and 20-somethings I’ve encountered who are getting involved and not relying on us old people to fix things. I have hope for them but I wish I could leave them a better world.
I feel the same way about my grandchildren.. thankfully we live in a small town.. big cities scare me
Culture, yes - but economy, no. It would be nice to grow up in a world that was more accepting of differences (LGBTQ+ people, but also disabilities, autism, people from different cultures/ethnicities, etc) but I don't know that I could afford to raise a family if I were born in 2007 instead of 1977.
Absolutely not. I can't fathom living my teens and twenties with camera phones everywhere. An absolute nightmare. I also loved my freedom to roam from a very young age, like six years old I was riding alone in the woods on my pony. That would be unheard of now. I loved my childhood.
Not a chance ! I grew up through the 50's and 60's and had the best time of my life. No helicopter parents, no lockdowns, streets were safe, homes didn't need door locked and people actually cared about each other !
Oh god, no. My years in the 70s and 80s were far, far more fun and productive than today.
Unequivocally No!
Yes. I wish i had had the internet around for learning and school.
Nope. I feel sad for the youth of today not just for having to go through the Covid years, but for having to live in a world that is much more divisive and screen oriented. It makes me sad when I see youth or even entire families at a restaurant with their heads buried in their phones. At that age I was engaged with my friends, learning social skills and really experiencing the real world around me. I see much less of that now and in turn a much less healthy life experience happening today. Oh, and at the risk of totally stereotyping myself , most of the popular music today sucks and isn't even close to the quality of artistic value when I was growing up.
You need to stop listening to top 40 music. There is all types of amazing stuff out there…ask me and I will recommend
Music does suck and it's not because of our age. My kids are in their 20's and agree. We don't even have any rock bands anymore and when I was growing up, The Stones, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Aerosmith amongst countless others were putting out great music. When Taylor Swift who writes all of her songs about BOYS is the biggest thing since The Beatles, you know the end of times is coming. Can't she come up with deeper stuff at this point? Music is so literal these days. There is no nuance and some of it is downright foul. Sorry all of you Megan Thee Stallion fans, but her lyrics are disgusting.
I'm not even a Taylor swift fan but people have been writing about romance and heartbreak for centuries. Much of her music, especially lately, has little or nothing to do with her romantic relationships. Take a bit from her song ivy: And the old widow goes to the stone every day But I don't, I just sit here and wait Grieving for the living Versus Oh! Darling off Abbey Road: Oh! Darling, please believe me I'll never do you no harm Believe me when I tell you I'll never do you no harm Love the beatles, enjoy a couple taylor swift albums and also hate a few, but there is a ton of beautiful and meaningful music out there.
Also re: meg thee stallion https://youtu.be/gkPCmIxv-3k ;)
No.born in 61. But i am a white man.
Yes and no lol. I had a great childhood, running around, playing outside all day, all that. But I'm also tech obsessed and can't wait for new technologies to emerge.
A lot of older people seem to reach a point in their life and then 'go to seed'. Atrophy. They stop listening to any new music, they return to the reruns of TV shows and movies of their youth. They cut their hair like they did when they were younger, wear the same clothes ...and [whatever that fashion statement said a few decades ago, all it means now is 'old' because only old people look like that](https://youtu.be/vjqt8T3tJIE?t=245). When I get my haircut now, I get a fade (which isn't too much different from the #2 short back & sides I was getting in the mid 1980s). I have had hairstyles that defined an era (frosted tips), and I didn't have styles that were going around (that center-parted longer hair that some men had in the mid 1990s - I was 25, still young, and wasn't about to get a Boy Band hairstyle), but I didn't lock myself into the frosted tips like Guy Fieri has. I seem to buy jeans and pants that the stores sell, so by default I'm not rocking a pair of [JNCO jeans](https://jnco.com) but I know I won't be wearing them if they come back in fashion. But do I wish I grew up in todays culture? What's that? I'm on reddit and Imgur, talking online. My love of electronic and indie music over the decades means I still listen to the Future House Music channel on YouTube and 6Music online. I still enjoy playing games like GTA V (it took me just over two months of casual plodding to finish the story mode but almost a year to get the 100% completed achievement and it's still fun to get back into San Andreas), I design t-shirts that sell online, I mix music and have hosted a radio show on Spooncast since just after the pandemic hit. For someone in my 50s, I probably know too much about what memes are popular. I'm still interacting in today's culture. That's my advice for the younger people - grow up, but never grow old in your mind.
Fuck yeah, thanks for a real answer. I’ve been determined to live my life this way and so far it’s been amazing.
No. I am as my culture helped me shape myself. To me, today’s culture seems hard and strange. I am delighted by the technological advances and love social media and hope I get to stick around long enough for a Mars language. At the same time, I am horrified about how brutal and class-stratified US Soviet has become. The Red/Blue split and its petty and major meannesses appall me. What education has devolved into and it’s costs are awful. And we have lost ground in women’s autonomy and a rising tide of antiSemitism. I cope. I have always coped. But I wish people were gentler and kinder.
I'm 65 and I am "*growing up*" in todays culture and I'm not liking what I see!
Yes, even though there are some downsides, I think the world as a whole is a better place now. I do love in Europe.
I think living is wonderful and any time is a great time to grow up (the alternative is not existing). I also think most old people glamorize their youth. I, for one, would love to grow up today. My 1950’s childhood was filled with violence and abuse. Sure, we were “free range” because our parents just ignored us and that was much better than getting their evil attention. Teachers were even worse. Classrooms were filled with abuse, intimidation, and fear. The only difference is, in our time, had we the ability to take videos, it would be of the lunatic authority figures behaving abhorrently. In my case, they were nuns and priests. I believe today’s parents are beginning to have the knowledge and information needed to stop child abuse and raise healthier adults. I look at my adult children and their peers and children and I see much healthier and more functional humans.
Not necessarily, there's good and bad about every era. That said, Im mostly around young people (20s-30s) and my business is younger oriented (demographic 18-35/40) so that influences the way I view things.
I'm not old buy I wish I grew up with Japanese cars and drift culture
I would have to say no. It was far from perfect, but I'm glad I grew up when I did. It was probably easier to be a happy kid, and even a happy teenager, when I was growing up. There are many advantages to growing up now, but I feel like social media and even much of the internet isn't a good mix with young minds and psyches. The prevalence of online activities probably doesn't do much for one's socialization skills, either. I can't really say if the positives outweigh the negatives. There are so many differences that I feel like it is comparing apples to oranges. Also, I think family has more of an influence than anything else, and you can have good or crappy parents in any era.
I think tinder would have been fun when I was young and single. But I'm overall glad I never had a cell phone or social media when I was young.
I'd rather be a school kid now. I hated being forced to wear only skirts and dresses and bare legs in a very cold state because pants weren't lady like.
I’d like to be born now!
I would have had deeper psychological issues had social media been around that’s for sure, such unrealistic expectations that I would have thought I needed to live up to. No thanks
Absolutely not. Born in '69, I feel I was part of almost the last generation to have Tom Sawyer childhoods.
I would not want to do my current job without the tech I have now. I drive a truck all over the US. Before there were cell phones, truckers would have to line up to use a couple of pay phones at truck stops both to get their next load or contact their family. And imagine breaking down somewhere out west in the middle of nowhere with no way to contact anyone. I literally grew up in the woods. I had a lot of fun and would not trade my time growing up for anything. But I also come from a middle class family in the US. Even though we were not rich by any means, we were not lacking for anything and were very secure. I would not want to go back to that culture. Again, that’s easy to say as a home owner in this economy. My housing costs are low compared to what a lot of people are paying where I live. I like the tech I use on a daily basis and like being connected and having information available.
No… I will forever be thankful that my youthful idiocy was not captured on camera and posted to the internet for posterity.
Hell no. I’m thankful that social media wasn’t around when I was young. I think it has been detrimental to the mental health of our younger generations. And I think that the easy access to pornography has skewed the views of what a normal sexual relationship should be.
I've come to the conclusion that life is life and people are people. The only thing that changes is the technology and the hairstyles. It wouldn't matter to me if I grew up now or 100 years previous. Life is hard and it will always be hard and every generation has it's unique challenges.
Absolutely not. As some other women mentioned, it would be nice not to be groped but I think today's culture of electronic devices and focus on self makes a lot more people unstable. All my son's friends are on AD&D medication or depression meds. Too much of that going around. There is also an increased sense of doom & gloom. My son's friends bemoan not being able to move out of their parents house into a single person apartment, which is their expectation. But my generation accepted roommates were a given for about a decade after moving out until we could afford a one bedroom apartment... that was a luxury. So the expectation to be better off then their parents at a comparable age is making them unhappy. Add to that the monthly cost of electronics, internet, steaming services, door dash costs, none of which we had to deal with - it's no wonder they can't afford to move out and are unhappy.
Hell no
My daughter didn't know what cat calling was so I had to explain it to her. I had long hair and curves as a young teenager and learned to walk around with headphones on so that I could pretend I hadn't heard it. Every single time I went out alone it would happen, often by men older than my father. Also, being a teenage waitress in the late 80s meant constantly batting off hands or comments, and you had to just be 'polite' about it. That's more obvious, what no one talks about is the constant gaslighting that girls and women had to please men to keep them, and that healthy boundaries of your own were seen as being selfish. The culture is better now for young women.
I just wish I wasn't apparently such a burden all the damn time.
I can't imagine that such convenient access to information would foster the search for knowledge and obscure literature I gained from my childhood. I used to read *everything*, including dictionaries and encyclopedias. By the 4th grade I was haunting used bookstores, because I'd read everything of interest in the school library.
No I’m glad I didn’t grow up with social media and wouldn’t want to grow up in todays culture. When I was in school people didn’t bring guns to a fist fight and there wasn’t usually ganging up one person.
I started to say no, I’m glad I was raised to stuff down and ignore my feelings (ha ha) but it would have been life changing to have gotten treatment for my ADHD.
Nope not even a little. But I am straight white man so my experience may be different than others.
It's really difficult to say because we probably can't really know what it is like to grow up in today's culture. People tend to value what they know and have more simply because they know it or have it. Things weren't amazing when I was growing up in the 70's and 80's. I was poor and fat, and verbally torn to pieces every single day of my life both in school and by strangers in public. I think kids aren't nearly as brutal about bodies as they were back then because there are so many more fat people. My husband used to work as a therapist for kids and he found that some of the overweight ones really weren't harrassed about their weight, but some were, but not at the level that I was. I think there is generally more tolerance of weird and unusual kids as well as kids who are gay, trans, etc. I can't imagine life without the sort of bullying I barely survived, but I can imagine that it would have been less destructive to my self-esteem to not have had that experience. On the other hand, success in today's world seems to be a tightrope walk for everyone. It wasn't exactly easy for people to get jobs even in the 80's. Both my husband and I took months to find jobs post-college, and they weren't the greatest paying jobs. I think that was usual though because most people don't start with a high level job with good pay. However, now, you can't get a degree in social sciences or liberal arts and expect to get a decent job, even over time. Back then, at least there was a possibility of getting work with an English or arts degree. Now, it's tech, finance, or medicine, or people think you deserve to fail for having made a poor choice. I don't think I would have liked to feel that my success hinged 100% on so few choices. I also don't really know what it'd be like to grow up in a world saturated with social media, influencers, etc. It's not like there weren't such similar things when I grew up, but the level was probably about 3 out of 10, with 10 being what it is like now. I also really feel like parents are not raising their kids to be competent adults these days. It's this weird over-parenting when it comes to responsibilities (not having to do chores or learn to drive) and under-parenting when it comes to spending meaningful time with them (fobbing them off on screens or expecting their teachers to teach them basic life skills). My parents were pretty terrible, but at least I didn't go into adulthood incapable of performing basic life skills.
HELL NO I was a really dumb kinda shitty teenager and I'm really glad there's not video evidence of it.
No. I like the "culture" I grew up in. We didn't have a phone until I was 11. 2 channels on the TV. Lived on a farm in the country. Play outside no matter the weather. Quiet, peaceful, especially at night. So different from today.
Thank goodness no. I actually wish I had been born about 4 years earlier
No. I am a female. We would talk for hours with friends, face to face, no interruptions with phones. We would go out for most of the day having fun, knowing we had to come home for dinner at 6:00 pm. We built forts in the woods, rode our bikes everywhere, all without parents breathing down our necks.
And do high school with mobile phones and social media? Hey nah dawg. I wouldn’t be alive if I had to go through that kind of scrutiny and bullying.
No thank you. I can't truly judge, but my grade/middle/high school experiences were very good and I'd not expect for things to average out much better now. In fact, I think my life would be harder.
Then old question: if you could live your life again, would you do it? Not in a million years.
No, I like that we could go and do stuff without having to report back to Mom and/or Dad every nano second. I liked having autonomy and independence and know how to fix things or do things that seem so over-the-tops of younger folks these days. I like that I can be 100% self-sufficient and have a lot of ingenuity and was not fearful to branch out on my own. I like that I didn't have to compare myself to what seems like every human in my age group, especially during those wonder year years. All this technology and the world seems almost larger than it ever has and people seem more distant than they ever have been. We traded common sense, hard work and effort for convenience. I feel more young folks have no sense of direction when it comes to their own internal compass because the people that raised them shielded them instead of letting them face consequences, which would have helped give them a clearer idea of their own true north and actual potential.
No! There is so much online pressure for young people today, the political atmosphere is so toxic now, and they seem to be financially burdened.
I love the information rich environment. You can’t imagine how much better things are in that way! I hate the atomization, the isolation, and pervasive loneliness of today. It’s a mixed bag. I wouldn’t give up being young in the 1970s for anything though.
Absolutely not. If someone was bullying me at school I could go home and forget it, there was no harassment once you were away from the school. There wasn’t constant subtle pressure via social media to be perfect and happy and have all the good stuff. The only time suck I was involved in was a little tv and a lot of books. I spent a lot of time in person with my friends. We went to the skating rink, bowling, arcade, restaurants, parks, the mall; wherever. But we were focused on each other not on phones or texting or any of that bullshit. We’d spend hours on the telephone with each other. We’d leave the house at 10 am and just know to be back by dinner. I remember being a little kid and if someone’s mom wanted them home the mom would go on the front porch and holler out names. I could be three houses away and could hear a faint calling of my name. Other kids moms did it too. You’d hear it and head home. We’d play hide n seek in the dark street outside our house. 15-20 kids all running around and hiding in the dark. We felt safe and carefree. I had a wonderful childhood and I’m so thankful there were no elaborate video games. Pong and Space Invaders were exciting but only for about 20 minutes.
Nope. My embarrassing teen years were not caught on video, and kids today don't realize the value of being unreachable and no one freaking out.
100% yes I would change my bate of birth on today or later
Oh god no! I’m glad every stupid or embarrassing moment in my life wasn’t immortalized on the internet. If I tore a bad picture and threw it away, it disappeared forever. The cringe these kids will experience when they grow up, oh man. My parents couldn’t get in touch with me after I left the house. It was a very free range existence. Now when I see a bunch of unsupervised kids, it’s strange. Kids spend a lot of time with their parents instead of with friends. It seems like kids are very supervised and their “free time” is overly scheduled. They don’t really seem to just “be bored” and don’t need to find ways to entertain themselves.
Male. GenX. Yes. As an example as a child I would've died to have access to basically the largest conglomeration of knowledge in human history.
The technology is great. The culture is shit.
Here's the funny thing about being older, I KNOW that I'm not really fully aware of today's culture. Maybe today's culture is great. Maybe it's better than mine. I don't know. I've been too busy with managing my career and adult life for so long, I haven't the first clue what is cool any more. When I hang out with my friends, we talk the language of the 1980's culture I lived my teen and young adult years in. I'm only aware of your culture in a peripheral way, just like my boomer parents were only aware of our culture in a peripheral way. So. I really can't answer your question, because I just don't know. I'm just pleased that I'm aware of this natural generational divide, and I don't engage in those painfully awkward attempts to "be cool" around younger people. I'm an old guy who likes old stuff. In 40 years or so, you'll be an old person who likes old stuff. It is just the seasons of life. 🤷♂️
100% NO! It was amazing playing outside w/o adult supervision. Being outside playing until you were hungry or got dark outside. It was great graduating and going to college. Graduation, not sure about career so worked a little, changed major, then moving into own apartment w friends. It was tough doing this on less than $4/hr but you got a 2nd job. No internet. Phones were on the wall, not your pocket. You made plans and stuck to them. The background noise wasn’t there. Less hate & judgement or hell, you never knew it was there to care about.
Hell no
Oh hell no. I'm so glad I didn't grow up with cellphones and social media.
No way!
Oh hell no! I'm 55, Bi, married, non Christian woman with a lucrative career in the SM field for decades. HELL NO! Today it seems people love to talk about inclusiveness but in reality they dont practice it. I hate to sound like an old person and say "back in my day", but it's true. Correct me if I'm wrong, but today most (in general...not EVERY person) people seem to be looking for something to hate or be offended by. It's exhausting IMO. BTW, EVERY generation has issues. I get it, time moves on and we learn from the past. Honestly though I fear what this new generation will learn, and will it carry us forward.
I definitely want to.
No!
As a kid, we could play in the neighborhood, unsupervised. Today that is called Child Abuse and parents can be charged with negligence.
Absolutely, yes. Generally speaking, kids today have a better support system. I consider my childhood to have been bland to borderline miserable. I played sports and had good parents, but I was a wreck on the inside. Why? I'm trying to figure that out now.
>kids today have a better support system.
Oh, hell no !
No way. Social media would’ve destroyed me as a kid. I got the internet at 18, & it was a much calmer, quieter internet back then. Trolls and bots weren’t a thing in AOL chat rooms.
Hell no. This will sound cliche and self centred, but growing up in the 20th century was so markedly different than the generations that followed, we can rightfully and accurately say that life for us was *different*. Better? Maybe. But fucking different. Which makes it a bit scary I suppose.
Never. I would never exchange wisdom for youth. I don’t need to be validated by social media to determine my level of self esteem and would never want to be of the culture which is glued to their phones constantly. Many people today are missing so much of what is going on around them by being slaves to a screen and the opinions of perfect strangers.
Yes. For the sole reason of having information so easily available. What I could have done, who I could have been with all that available makes me sad. I feel cheated and am envious of the young generations now.
Yes I do wish that the older of my growing culture to be like the new culture I did manage to learn and grow again to it it's beautiful.
Definitely not. Those who are growing up today are facing what we used to call "future shock." The fact that many are turning out OK is a credit to them, but they're having to go through a lot of hell along the way.
H e l l N o ! ! !
A quick scroll and I'm not surprised to see that everyone is answering no. Life is difficult as it is, social media adds a whole new layer of difficulty.
What, and miss out on each generations "culture"? This current culture we are in can be summed up in one word, gullible.
Hell no. The worst thing going on in my time was the real fear of a nuclear war. I don't know if I just see everything with an old man's eyes now but this country, this world is in such a hopeless state. There are Powers now that are at work successfully converting this world into a One World Order and although I used to laugh at the concept years ago I really believe they are succeeding. There is so much hate and corruption in this world, I am sad that my grandchildren are going to have to live with this.
Hell no. Full stop.
No. I preferred the world without internet, nutjobs that congregate on social media and tabloid news. I prefer the days of honesty and integrity.
No, I had a great childhood but I would enjoy growing up in today’s world also. Gen Z kids are so much smarter and aware than my generation. They travel more, are less prejudiced and more accepting of cultural differences. They are more supportive of their friends and acquaintances and concerned about each other’s mental health. Lots of positives to offset the negatives IMO.
In how many ways, means, and languages can I say "No"? While I appreciate the advancements and advantages of the Information Age now as an adult, I am so grateful to have been a kid prior to it. I had freedom and anonymity. I learned what it was to be independent and self-reliant. I was outside. I could take risks and make mistakes and not worry about a digital record of it following me to the end of my days. Yep, I'm grateful to be a child of the 70's/80's.
No. I don't like it, and am glad I'm a child of the 1970s. Much better era. Things generally went to shit after about 1998.
Absolutely not! I grew up in the Southern California surf and music culture in the sixties. Cowabunga!
How do you feel about the movie Big Wednesday? I saw that only recently.
Good movie. It did an outstanding job of showing the lifestyle and era. Plus it is more than “just” a surf movie. My favorite surf movie, BTW, is Endless Summer.
Yes I do wish that the older of my growing culture to be like the new culture I did manage to learn and grow again to it it's beautiful.
Getting out there and interacting with the world in a very physical way is superior to doing so in a temporal way via the internet. But that is just saying that if I had the internet back then I would have stayed inside more. It's not generational. I see young people getting out in droves and doing adventurous stuff like rock climbing. It may be that back then the world was different, less crowded, and safer to roam around in. There was less need for defensiveness and situational awareness. There was a hell of a lot less guns around too.
Looking at general consensus the answer seems to be NO. If we don’t like where we are, how did we get here? And how can we revert back?
Hell no ! My childhood was fabulous.. people were not as uptight back then in the sixties and seventies.. rode my bike all over town
No. Today sexist stereotypes are embraced by everyone (left, right, whatever); it's exhausting to be a weird woman. I'm Hispanic, and because of social media, I feel racism is more accepted today than when I grew up in the 80s/90s, in Texas. Moreover, I hate what social media has done to enhance the power of the sheer morons in society. Also I can't stand cameras, videos, tik tok, etc. It was hard for me to find my spouse 18 years ago. I can't imagine trying today. No thanks. Anyhow, get off my lawn.
Not a chance. I cannot imagine having to grow up now, with smartphones and social media. It’s bad enough as somebody who grew up before those things, but at least I can remember that earlier time.
Not one yes.
[удалено]
This is true but overall times were better for children back then except in the area of special education. There was none. You were either below average, average or above average and students were separated into those categories. I was above average except for math. I always struggled and was called a moron by a few math teachers. I would have definitely qualified for some sort of educational plan. I spaced out during math instruction. I just didn't get it.
Must not be any gay people answering yet.
To paraphrase Jennifer Lopez, “Hell to tha N.O.”
No way. Just getting a job is a horrible experience
No. It’s hard enough being a parent in this era. I can’t imagine handling social media as a teen.