Even though certain decades are known for specific trends (e.g., '80s hair and '90s clothes), they may have been completely different from how they appeared on TV or in movies. So when Reddit user u/WeirdJawn asked, "Older redditors, what do young people get completely wrong about past decades?," people had plenty of thoughts on the matter. Here's some of what they had to say:
1. "They understand that restaurants had 'smoking sections' and that bars and clubs were filled with cigarette smoke. But I don't think many understand how pervasive smoking was. There were ashtrays and people smoking literally EVERYWHERE. Jury boxes had ashtrays in front of every juror. You smoked on planes, trains, buses, taxicabs, and all transportation centers. Hell, you could smoke in the courtyard at my high school as a student. A nonsmoker would often come home smelling like smoke. One was constantly surrounded by smoke. It was wild."
2. "Just how little people knew what they were missing out on. If it wasn't on network evening television (channels 2, 4, 7, 9, and 11) or on a store shelf in your town, or in the Sunday newspaper...it simply didn't exist for you. If you had an inkling something existed — say, tinfoil that comes in sheets instead of one giant roll — you could go around asking people, if you wanted. But you were more than likely to just get a shrug and that's it. 'Why would you want such a thing?'"
3. "Probably underestimating how few choices there were. Today it seems as if everything imaginable is available in a variety of sizes, delivered to your door overnight. We had catalogs and mail order, with four- to six-week delivery. Malls were the best thing ever. All the stores in one place, and not downtown."
4. "I am definitely an older redditor (born in 1949). What today's young people don't appreciate is how, growing up, we had to invent our own sources of fun. There were no video games (which I enjoy playing), just three channels on a black-and-white TV (we didn't get color until 1967), and no real entertainment aimed at kids. All we could do was interact with each other and play established games like marbles or maybe an organized sport like Little League Baseball. There was a baseball diamond, overgrown with weeds, across the street from us, but mostly we played in the woods that surrounded us, climbing trees and pretending to be pirates or some such. I loved the bookmobiles that would visit my street, and I must have read every biography (all bound in blue covers) in my elementary school library."
"It was a different era with far fewer distractions and much more time for sustained imagination. Being in a different place and time, we developed different skills for interacting with the world and one another than young people do today.
"Was it better? That's hard to say. We tended to have an insular view of our own little world, while today it is hard to escape what is happening everywhere on Earth. We had to wait days for a letter to arrive, and we shared a party line with our neighbor's phone. That is a far slower pace than today's instantaneous texting culture. (Yes, I do text.) Some things have been lost, while others have been gained. That's the way it always will be. Just wait."
5. "Probably just how often you had to accept that you couldn't find out the answer to something. If you had a question, you could ask your family, maybe your friends, maybe your teachers, and your last chance was to check the library. But if the library didn't have the answer, then you just had to accept that you weren't going to get an answer (or you'd have to hope to come across that answer someday in the future). Now you just ask google and get 10 answers in just seconds."
6. "How common drinking and driving was. Until Mothers Against Drunk Driving came along, people did this routinely. It's where 'one for the road' originated."
7. "Up until video rental stores in the early '80s, at school the next day, every kid was talking about what was on TV the night before, as every single family was watching TV together every single night. With some exceptions, most people watched the same thing as their schoolmates or coworkers, just to be a part of the conversation."
8. "A lot of people sound as if they think we lived in silent bubbles because we didn't have smartphones, and computers weren't common. On the contrary, we talked a lot. Like, A LOT. If you had questions, you talked. Then you went to the library. And then you talked some more. And wrote letters. And passed notes like crazy. The chatter never fucking stopped. People would scold women for gossiping and make jokes about it, but the men were just the same. Everyone is like, 'Kids these days have no privacy,' but you couldn't kiss your boyfriend on the street without hearing about it from every fucking rando in the neighborhood."
9. "Kids think Y2K was a joke, but the panic was real. People legit thought computers would end us."
10. "How on time you had to be for your favorite shows because there was little to no chance you’d see that same episode again until they (hopefully) did reruns during the summer. I remember waiting anxiously for the nightly news to be over so I could watch my favorite TV shows. Commercial breaks were just mad rushes for the bathroom or to the kitchen to get something quick to drink."
"HOLLERING through the house to your sibling, 'IT'S STARTING!'"
11. "People say that the '80s were all about consumerism, which is true, but the products were well made and fixable. Towns had repair shops for everything. You didn't just buy a disposable TV. If it broke, you took it in to get fixed. Nowadays, if your TV breaks, it's tossed and you get a new one."
12. "I think younger people don't fully grasp what older generations mean when we say our parents had no idea what we were doing and really didn't care. I see so many young folks angry about their parents not helping with grandkids, or going no contact with their parents, and they don't grasp that many boomers and Gen X'ers raised themselves. Dinner was provided and basic needs were met (shelter, clothing, yearly medical physicals), but so little of everything else. I'm a Gen X'er, and so many of my friends are only now realizing how bad life was for some of our boomer parents as they are suffering from dementia, and as their sexual and physical assaults are coming to light."
"My friends and I left the house on our bikes on Saturday morning, rode all over town, played by the river, grabbed lunch at whatever kid's house we were at, and went back out again. We landed at home for dinner and then went back out until the streetlights came on.
"I don't think people today realize the lack of organized entertainment and lack of electronics. We had almost endless freedom. It was wonderful."
13. "That it was incredibly common to just not have pictures of events or other things we see as important now. Not only did we have entire vacations where no pictures were taken, but we could go months without a single picture being taken of any member of our family unless it was particularly notable. A trip to St. Louis? No pictures. A trip to Disneyland? Maybe a picture at the entry gate or one of the souvenir pictures of us with a character. A trip to the zoo? No pictures. An average day? Forget about it! Frequently, the only pictures taken were at major holidays like Christmas or on someone's birthday."
14. "Travel. Reading paper maps and scanning for road signs and landmarks to guide you to destinations you have never been to. Half of my younger coworkers couldn't point north if asked without their phones."
15. "Landline telephones had seriously great audio quality. They were better than anything for remote conversation today, in my opinion. I distinctly remember being a teenager and just talking on the phone with someone late into the night, hearing them breathe and sigh, hearing their every little sound. There wasn't the lag and the noise canceling and the high compression that ruins telephony today. It was a much purer way to feel that you were closer to someone than anything we have today."
16. "Your fashion was 100% dictated by what was at your local mall and stores. Unless you lived in a big city or could order from a catalog, it was what was at the mall. So you’d go to school, and it was not uncommon for kids to have the exact same shirt or hat as you did. I remember, growing up, we only had three to five stores that sold kids clothing and only two that my parents shopped at. So lots of Bugle Boy, Polo, Chip & Pepper, Too Rad for Mom and Dad, etc., clothing for me and all the kids I knew. I think one kid had a leather biker jacket at school, and he was the envy of hundreds of kids."
17. "Saturday morning cartoons were essential for anyone 12 and under."
Is there something you believe young people get completely wrong about past decades? If so, tell us what it is and why in the comments below.
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.