What did you do before the Internet & cell phones?

I was a child of the late 80's/early 90's. To this day it baffles me how every kid in america knew to blew into a nintendo game to make it work, and to stack a game on top of it in the system to hold it down and make it play.


We didn't have the internet to spread and share that news, but yet every kid knew it. Same thing with some of the cheat codes for games.

 

Now to actually answer your question!

I spent a lot of time playing outdoors growing up. When home, I played with toys inside. We only ever had an atari, and I didn't get a first generation nintendo until well after they came out. We'd rather be out on our bikes, playing wiffle ball, football, basketball, etc.

We had cable, but our parents really limited what we watched. Sports were okay, everything else had to be approved of first.

I didn't get my first cell phone until 2003. I still don't like carrying one, and I keep it on silent almost 99% of the time.

I do like the internet though. Great place to find books to read, old tv shows to watch, games to play...and of course message boards.

 

I have a $10/month ten cent/minute cell phone which is only turned on when I am picking someone up at the airport. I also take it when traveling by myself - not very often. It is much cheaper than putting a second phone on The Wife's account.

 

I remember television entering the house....a big old black and white jobbie. Dad had the sole rights over the television as he was the breadwinner. He watched the news and the weather and current affairs stuff as it was introduced.

As a teenager, my mates and I went to the local Rib joint with a flagon of wine (not underaged I hastily add) and wasted enormous amounts of time talking and playing space invaders and pacman on those desk like game machines.

The telelphone was in the most public spot in the house and this used to irk me as a teenager as the handset was connected to the big black phone which could have seriously injured someone if it fell on their head. I seem to remember lying on the floor with my legs up against the wall until mum went ballistic.

I did not know any (?) Americans until the internet, but corresponded with a couple of penfriends....one in Latvia (in Esperanto for heavens sake) and a friend in New Zealand.

 

Any time we could, we were in the woods behind our house. When it was time to come in my parents would blow the car horn.
We moved when I was 11. No more woods :tear:
Reading was a slow hard process (still is) so I watched TV, worked the garden, or worked in Dad’s mechanic shop.
My main mode of transportation in the community was a bicycle (without helmet).

 

When I was a kid, if you wore a helmet (if you could even find one) while riding a bike you were picked on.

 

Before the internet, I didn't visit Baptist Board very much. :smilewinkgrin:

 

It is amazing how much time to kill people have. To repeat the same arguments over and over again with the same people.

 

Back before I had the internet, I played with the PlayStation one, then the Game Boy Advance, and then the PlayStation 2. I still do in fact. :laugh:

 

....and of course, that fun thing families indulged in...feuds

 

As a child we played outside...riding bikes, playing with Barbies on a blanket under the tree. Telephone coversations were limited to a maximum of 15 minutes. We didn't date without permission and boys didn't drive up and honk, they came to the door. We had to be IN the house by 11 at night (in the driveway didn't count.) We attended church, read books (I am still a voracious bibliophile) and took a family vacation every summer. We had a television (had one of the very first color televisions when they came out) but Daddy was King of the tv so I grew up on Bonanza, Gunsmoke, and any Western that was telecast, except for Thursday nights when my Daddy bowled...then kids were king! I still remember the thrill of getting to watch Family Affair, Batman or Bewitched.

I do have a cell phone, but it's usually in my purse and while it's turned on I rarely hear it, much to the consternation of my children and grandchildren who no longer know how to carry on a decent conversation but prefer to text using their thumbs. (I'm a one finger hunt and peck method gal). I can't get them to understand that if they'd call what they have to say would take a minute or two instead of the ten or fifteen it takes to text back and forth.

I still prefer reading a book, being outside, or just enjoying God's creations. I enjoy the internet, it's a grand encyclopedia and library rolled into one, but I can do without it just as well. I'd prefer sitting and watching the sunrise over watching a movie, I'd prefer playing a game of Candyland or Memory with the grandkids over playing a video game (yes, we own a Wii, which we've used twice...it was a gift), I'd prefer a quiet meal at home over the best restaurant out there. I want to savor life, not have it pass me by in a whirl.

And yes, Margaret, there is a Santa Claus....oh I meant, there is life without the internet and cell phones.

 

It was HORRIBLE! Like life was just on stand-still until this stuff came about. ROFL

Seriously though...I'm very glad to have this stuff. If I get a flat tire or there's an emergency, we're able to call each other. Thinking back, there were more than a few times when having a cell phone made a lot of difference.

One was when one of my daughters collapsed. I was able to immediately call 911 and follow instructions right then and there while they sent an ambulance, didn't have to carry her to a regular phone and struggle with holding a tethered phone and regulating her heart and breathing.
Another was when a daughter was in school and needed help and called me.
Once when I had a flat tire, another when stuck in a snowstorm and had to make arrangements for the kids because they were still in school.

Internet: It really helps with staying in the loop and getting information. There are books online that I don't have access to or no room/money to buy, yet I can go online and read them for free. When one of us is sick, I can get on there and look up natural remedies and go on interaction checkers and make sure they're safe for whoever needs it. My older kids are able to look up a wealth of information for school assignments and papers. During the times when I'm sick or when my kids were younger and I was newly divorced, it was my lifeline to sanity because I didn't have family and never was able to get out and have adult interaction for some years because they were all so young, I was home schooling, and I wouldn't have felt right leaving them with a sitter just to go have fun on my own, not worth the risk of them getting abused by a sitter. When my babies were little I felt it should be me or my husband with them, at least until they were old enough to understand right and wrong and clearly communicate what happened to me and be able to make phone calls and be comfortable doing what needed to be done if the person was doing something wrong.

I do think they are over-used, especially the internet and computers. It seems stupid to me that they have replaced hard copies of stuff and are used to store sensitive information. That seems like a security threat to our nation and I just don't get why our country puts that stuff out there that controls major stuff like travel, security info, etc.. It's an invitation to make things easier on terrorists and that just isn't logical. It can all be wiped out so easy and then half the people have no clue how to handle that. Crazy. We definitely shouldn't be dependent on it, especially not for things that have to do with our safety and security.

They're nice to have for personal use and for science/construction, flights, etc.

But now even cars do it. That makes me really mad. I can't fix a car now, most new ones are all computerized and you have to pay a wagon full of cash just to fix things we used to be able to figure out on our own. Even the stupid key is connected to the computer. Our car key is a $200 key and guess what? If you break it, it's likely to crack and need replaced and we can't just go make an extra copy or two to have in case of an emergency or if we lose the one. We cant jimmy the lock if we lock ourselves out because the security system will block that from happening.

So yeah, I think we should have them and they're nice and even important to have, but they've been over-used to a dangerous, abusive degree.

 

Before the days of the internet and cell phones, I was a child of the 80's. I played outside with my neighbors. We rode our bikes up and down the street, played in the creek, made a clubhouse in the woods next to their house, and had a blast! We had a swimming pool and my neighbors and I went swimming all the time in the summer. We'd have sleepovers and I'd sometimes go to church with them (even though I thought their church was kind of weird....a Pentecostal "speaking in tongues" church). My mom read lots of books.My dad went fishing a lot. We had family dinners at the dinner table each night and hardly ever ate out.

I firmly believe the introduction of a computer into my family began its downfall. My dad got me an old DOS computer for Christmas when I was 11. I soon stopped going outside with the neighbors and stayed inside playing games on the computer. My dad also played games on the computer. My mom says that's when he stopped socializing with us. He'd get his dinner and take it into the office with the computer.

Then cell phones came about. My mom got the first cell phone in our family. It was a monstrosity of a device, attached to her car and looked just like a big black block. It was terribly expensive to use so we just kept it for emergencies. Beepers were more common then, and all three of us had one. My dad got a cell phone for business use when I was in high school and I got my first cell phone when I was in college. Back then it was just a phone, not a mini-computer.

We got the internet in 1997, right after my parents divorced. My mom let me get it for educational purposes as I was about to go to college and would need that vast amount of information for research papers and such. I remember our old dial-up connection on Mindspring was slow and took forever to get websites to load but I thought it was awesome. I found message boards and chat rooms about one of my favorite subjects (Star Trek) right away and made some good friends there.

The more technologically advanced we've become the less human interaction we seem to have. People don't work on building relationships with friends, family, and co-workers anymore and it's kind of sad really. Sure, the technology is really cool but the machines don't compare to getting to spend time with friends and family in the real world.