We used to book computer time at the local library and I would walk by myself at the age of 8 to go play Oregon trail on a green monochrome monitor.

Hmm. As a kid it was mostly nice, but how much of that is the time it was, or the fact I was a kid and so had less struggles to think about?

People smoked a lot more. Our neighbors behind us smoked 24/7 but not outside. And yet, in the summer, we could smell their house from our yard. It was torn down and when you walked past the lot you still smelled it lol. I’m so glad cigarettes are out. It sucked as a kid.

There was so much more wildlife! Birds! Insects! Windshields filled with insect bits. It’s scary so much has died.

I was born when Carter was POTUS and recall the Regan presidency.

For my perspective the biggest shift isn’t technology or TV always being in color or even that the bigots went from smiling politeness to objects of derision to unapologetic hypocrites. Rather, it was the absence of the constant threat of nuclear Armageddon.

When I was in kindergarten we had air raid drills – what to do if the bombs started falling. Up until the very first Gulf War we lived with a constant awareness that any day could literally end us all, and most of us became extremely cynical because of it. Irony and punk ruled, and it wasn’t until the USSR fell apart that we all collectively realized that life would actually go on without a nuclear apocalypse.

The 90s were essentially one massive party. The cold war has been won, our long wartime compromises were unnecessary, and this fancy new Internet would bring us a future where we were all rich and happy and at peace.

2001 is just outside of your scope, but the terrorist attacks that year were the end of the 90s just like the fall of the Soviet Union was the end of the multi-decade horror that I was born into.

There are a bunch of other weird little things we could go into, like banking by phone or going to an ATM first and then shopping with the cash, or how cigarettes were everywhere and we thought everyone was cis and straight or “weird”, but that constant slow-burning fear is the thing I remember most.

It was so bad, and we were so convinced that doomsday was coming, that on the day of the 9/11 attacks I remember thinking “what took them so long.”

Late 80’s early 90’s

It seems, looking back, it was quieter. People didn’t move around as much as they do now. The town was basically shut down by 6pm. Most of the men worked within two miles of home, and most women stayed home.

We would play outside in the afternoons and listen for the church bells. Six bells and it was time for dinner. Everyone sat down every night for dinner with their families.

And just quieter in general. Less vehicle traffic. Less airplanes. Led lights hadn’t been invented yet so you could still see the stars. No cell phones obviously.

More structure, less noise

1970s and 1980s in rural Virginia, most people didn’t lock their doors and kids ran around outside until dark. Our phone was a party line, meaning if I picked up the phone I might hear a nearby neighbor already on the line having a conversation, so I would just hang up until the line was free. We were comfortable but not wealthy. By the end of the 1970s and early 1980s we had a microwave and a VCR. Video rental stores were starting to be popular. Going out to eat at Pizza Hut was a big deal.

Mid/late 1980s and onward, technology started making a bigger difference. I got a Commodore 64 computer, we moved to a small town and got cable television and MTV, I got a modem for the Commodore 64 and started logging into BBS systems. Those two things definitely expanded my horizons a lot. In the early 1990s a year or two before the Internet got big I played one-on-one Doom with a guy from Norway via modem, that seemed like magic at the time.

1990s and onward more internet, more television, more corporations, more technology, it just got faster and faster. Once we had our magic pocket computers that did phone calls, email, text messages, navagation, etc everything has just been evolutions of that with more storage and faster processors.

Without the Internet, you had to find other ways of entertaining yourself. Regular toys and board games and stuff were played with a lot. As an only child, I would sometimes play my board games by myself, acting as 2 players (yeah, sad I know). I remember getting lots of activity books and coloring books when I was really young. Then as I got older I read a lot of magazines and books. The Readers Digest was kept in the bathroom, and I would read jokes or stories from it while on the toilet. Things like Legos could keep you busy for hours. I got a Nintendo and it consumed most of my time. The games were simple, but tended to be difficult, and you would just play it over and over and over again. On Fridays after school you could go to the video store to rent a movie or game as some weekend entertainment. Going to the movie theater seemed to be reasonably priced back then. There were arcade games all over the place, like at the movie theater, inside convenience stores, even in the pizza hut. We used to actually go to the pizza hut and sit down at a table to eat, it was fun. Before cable or satellite TV, there were only like 3 channels, and they went off at night.

Gonna have to be more specific. What part of life?

I miss the non chain coffee shops that were open 24/7, I miss the non chain stores that were still around, I miss the mall parking lot improvised car shows.

I enjoyed being able to safely ride my bike the 8 miles to school, I enjoyed our little party island, I miss having hundreds of miles of canals to run my little boat on.

I do also remember the race fights in the middle of school during the Rodney King trials, I remember the AIDS scare where we stopped using water fountains just in case.

hate communists

As with any of these vastly for reaching questions, the answer depends on where you live, what you look like, and how much money you have. United States is a massive massive place with hundreds of millions of people

I remember the US in the 70s as incredibly violent.

1,600 murders a year in NY, Chicago, Baltimore, DC., EACH. People were scared shitless to go out after dark.

in 1975, 15,000 people were murdered in the US. When the population was 215 million.

Now it’s 14,000/yr, population 340 million. Still stupid high.

Canada: 788, 42 million people.

Not American and not old enough but I hear it was drugs, drugs and disco, skinny jeans imperialism and then idk how to describe the 2000s. Skinny jeans imperial decline.