So in the spirit of those TikToks, I put together a list of what everyday things would have been like for Y2K teens, and yes, of course, I am aware that having such advanced technology now plays a huge difference in the way teens live today. I am also not saying that growing up back then was better than today, or that this is a "Millennials are better than Gen Z'ers" debate (it's not). It's just a fun look back at what life was like!!!
1. Nobody really owned cellphones. Yes, in the late '90s and early '00s, they were becoming popular, but they were still incredibly expensive, and most people would not have gotten one for their kids. And if you were a teen with a phone, you used it sparingly because there was a limit on how many minutes you could use a month, and if you went over, it got very pricey.
2. You shared an entire landline with everyone in your house, but if you were lucky, you could get an extension in your room so you could talk in your bedroom (which, of course, also meant your parents could listen in or demand that you get off when they needed to talk). And if you knew someone who did have their own private line, then not only would you be jealous, but you would also go over to use their phone if you wanted to talk to a crush, etc.
3. You would also use AIM to talk to your friends — especially as soon as you got home so that you could catch up with as many of them at once on what the day's gossip was. Also, you'd leave cryptic "Away Messages" if you were in the mood to start drama.
4. Most families shared one computer, and it was usually in a home office or "computer room." Also, fighting between siblings over who got to use it so they could get on the internet was an almost everyday occurrence.
5. Aside from the computer lab, no classrooms had computers. And if they did, it was probably for the teacher or for very specific uses...basically, you weren't doing anything on a computer.
6. You'd schedule* your week around your favorite TV shows. If you weren't home and missed it, you literally had to wait until summertime to watch it again in reruns.
7. More likely than not, you were pretty dependent on TV Guide or the newspaper television guide to see what shows were on, which shows were reruns, and which ones were new episodes.
8. If you hung out with your friends at your house, you were probably just sitting around watching TV, playing video games, talking, or listening to music while reading magazines. Honestly, you probably wouldn't go online unless you wanted to talk on AIM with a crush and needed your friends to tell you what to say.
9. Bands and artists would have world premieres of their newest music videos on MTV — so you'd watch an entire episode of the making of it just so you could catch the premiere of the video at the end.
10. You literally would watch MTV in hopes that it would play the music videos you liked at the time.
11. If you had a crush or made a new friend and wanted to give them your phone number, you'd have to write it down on a piece of paper, give it to them, and hope they didn't lose it.
12. You likely owned a telephone book or spiral notebook where you had written down the phone numbers, email addresses, and home addresses of all the people whose numbers you didn't already have memorized.
13. If you weren't already heading to the mall with your friends, you'd agree to meet up at a particular time and spot. Truly, you just trusted people to show up.
14. You always carried around change in case you needed to use a payphone if you were out. As I said before, a lot of teens didn't have cellphones, and if you, for example, wanted your parents to come pick you up from the mall, you needed to make sure you had change to call them.
15. You waited in long lines for popular movies. There was no assigned seating, so if you and your friends wanted good seats, you'd have to wait in a line before being let into the theater (sometimes the wait would be almost as long as the movie itself).
16. You wrote out invitations and then handed them to your friends at school if you were having a more "formal" party. This was also super awkward if you were handing them out in front of classmates you weren't inviting. As my coworker Andy put it, "Yeah the hand-delivered invites always had a very 'and none for Gretchen Wieners' vibe."
17. You had to research schoolwork in encyclopedias and books in the library. And there was no worse feeling than getting late to the library and finding out that someone else had already checked out the book you needed.
18. You had to make sure you got to the video store early on Fridays if you and your family wanted to rent the newest movie released. They'd run out of copies if it was a popular movie, and it wasn't unheard of for people to drive from store to store trying to locate a copy.
19. You or your parents would "special order" something if the store didn't have it in stock. Basically, the store would order it directly from their headquarters and have it sent to the store; they would then call you when it arrived (usually a week or two later).
20. You burned CDs for every occasion and then carried them around with you in cases that looked like this.
21. You had to call and actually talk to someone on the phone when ordering pizza and then had to wait around for them to show up. Listen, I am not saying that doesn't happen today, but back in the day, you didn't a contactless delivery option, and you couldn't track where your order was.
22. You would pick out clothes from a catalog — and either mail in the order form or call and place your order with a telephone rep.
23. You learned not just about celebs but also about the latest trends, makeup tutorials, and hairstyles from magazines. Yeah, they came with step-by-step instructions on how to do the hair and makeup.
24. And lastly, you didn't have or take photos of everything you did. First, you'd have to carry a camera with you all the time. Second, photos were expensive to print, so you really didn't waste taking pics of moments that didn't matter.
