• Average here feels like 40+

    Even me being 20+, I feel like a kid interrupting adults talking lolz

    I read a lot of “back in my day, there weren’t smartphones” comments whenever the post talks about technology and smartphones, and I feel so left out. I mean, Smartphones have been a part of most of the life I remember. Can’t really remember the world without smartphones.

    Idk what I’m doing here, but reddit banned Tor, so I have no where else to anonymously ask weird questions and rant about life.

    • Zink@programming.dev
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      6 months ago

      back in my day, there weren’t smartphones

      We of the fabled Oregon Trail Generation had the unique experience of an analog childhood and an adulthood in the digital hellscape we all know and love.

      So when we wandered off into the woods for hours, or even once I could borrow a car and head over to a friends’ place? Completely unreachable. The only exception was the house phone at a friend’s place if we were there.

      When I was in college, Wi-Fi was just becoming popular. The equivalent to walking down the sidewalk with your face in your phone was the couple grad student TAs who were busy or nerdy enough to walk between buildings holding their laptop open in front of them. Wi-Fi was not built in of course. It was a PCMCIA card sticking out of the side.

      When we were home or in our dorms, we didn’t sit on our phones, we sat on our PCs! And now decades later I’ve transitioned back to sitting on my PC at home and it’s great, lol.

      My first personal cell phone of any kind was my dad handing me down his old work phone when I finished college and moved a couple hours away. It was a Motorola Startac motherfucker! Look it up and be jealous!

      It’s funny because I’m only in my mid 40s and have very little gray hair. I don’t feel like an old, but I have absolutely hit the point of the “back in my day” attitude. I usually don’t actually say anything unless I see a good joke in it, because that would be cliched and obnoxious.

      I bet there’s something about being the age where you could be a grandparent. There’s something pretty damn wholesome about watching people who are young enough to be your children having their own families and careers and stuff. We had our kid about a decade later than we wanted, so I think my son gets to benefit from me being half chill grandpa and not 100% frantic young parent.

    • 007Ace@lemmy.ca
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      6 months ago

      Smartphones? I remember before cellphones. How about only having to remember 4 digits to call someone? Or… How about just going to their house to see if they wanted to hang out. No phones involved. Haha. I’m 40.

      • frostysauce@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Wow. I’m 44 and I remember the switch from seven digit dialing to ten digits but we already moved past four digits in my area before I was born. Unless you’re talking about the prefix being the same for the whole city, like everything started with 262-XXXX so you only had to remember the four at the end?

        • 007Ace@lemmy.ca
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          6 months ago

          Oh yes, for clarity, the first 3 digits were the same for everyone, so we didn’t have to think about them. Haha, well after the official change from 4 to 7 digits.

    • samus12345@sh.itjust.works
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      6 months ago

      I was probably older than you are now when you were born. It’s been interesting (in the ancient curse sense of the word) to witness firsthand a world without internet slowly becoming online, advancing, then decaying into the corporate-run AI slop hellscape we’re seeing today.

  • Jerb322@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    I’m nearly 50, not really sure how it all works. Just glad that I found something other than reddit.

  • foggy@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    There are either a ton of 12 year olds on here or an ever larger number of 18 year olds.

  • M137@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    I’m just happy there aren’t any, or at least many, teens and kids here. Reading the comments on Reddit, YouTube and anywhere else where they are is a fucking fever dream of stupidity, ignorance and weirdness. It’s mostly fine here, and it’s a nice break.

  • TheBannedLemming@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Is the average age of a social media user really that young? Are very young adults and legally speaking children the driving force behind the base of social media? Are even modestly older individuals not willing to try and engage with this developing type of medium?

  • fin@sh.itjust.works
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    6 months ago

    I remember when I created my first lemmy account on fediverse on lemmy.ml when I was like 15 or 16. 20 years old now, I’m in the elderly group…