What was life like before social media?

Greengrass1

I didn't have to see pictures of "my healthy breakfast" or dinner.
WHO CARES??

Cupcake_Crisis

I miss getting paper invites to people's parties.

Eugene Norman

Your Superior wrote: »

We didn't have to worry about people posting photos of us on nights out. We actually took the time to see our friends in person. We didn't have mobile phones so would arrange to meet at a certain time, and then actually be there. We didn't seek likes or retweets to validate ourselves. We read books, listened to music, played and watched sport, went to the cinema, even watched TV believe it or not.

We honestly seemed a lot happier and more rounded than people in their teens and 20s today. Less concerned by what others thought of us, as other than your friends, you didn't really give a shït what anyone thought.

Indeed I too used to be with it, then they changed what it was.

I have no idea if kids these days are any more screwed up than in my generation ( late 30's), but they seem to be less fond of graffiti and wrecking the place than we were.

Every generation seems to think that whatever sliver of the life they live is normal and correct, and anything before or after is an abomination. This seems to accelerate when there are major technological changes, but to me things are exactly like they were except some people take photos on Facebook and some don't. If you don't want any of this you can exit Facebook.

anncoates

Bob.Carcass wrote: »

People knocked for each other...I would turn up at a friends house uninvited his mother would open the door and i'd say is "john" coming out to play? You spent hours playing football in a field or on a road,

Assuming you're serious, I hate to break this to you but kids still do this. The practices didn't suddenly die out around 1992.

Eugene Norman

And I am not on Facebook.

SMJSF

Photos were actually pieces of paper that you had to wait days to be developed instead of on a screen, and were only viewable when you visited some ones home.
People bought news papers.
People actually verbally spoke to each other in person.
There wasn't hundreds of smiley faces to show how you were feeling or if you were serious or joking.
The most used processes on your phone was messages, calls and snake.
Computers were used to write documents and for business such as accounting.
Competitions were names written on paper that you had to physically attend a location to enter.
You had more flyers true the mailbox, instead of email and spam.
the list could go on.....

Into The Blue

Eugene Norman wrote: »

And I am not on Facebook.

How do you know if someone is not on facebook?
How do you know if someone hates apple products?
How do you know if someone hates Dublin?

Doris300

**** this thread. Life is exactly the same.

arcticmonkeys

Whats mainly changed for me and I never really thought about it until I've read this post is how little contact I now have with my friends( not so much family relations and such still see plenty of them) but before Bebo or Facebook I would see my friends maybe 3 to 4 times a week (but since and I don't know if this is just me getting older) I maybe see them once in a blue moon, but if I ever want to see how there getting on, how there relationships are, how there getting on at work or how they are in general I wouldn't think lets go see how they are its straight to their Facebook status or latest comment they have posted. Also trying to have a conversation with someone who has their head buried in mobile phone while texting someone else maybe one of the most irritating things ever :mad:.

Plus I really miss the days of going into HMV or Golden Disc wondering about the store trying to waste as much time as possible and actually buying a CD or DVD although it doesn't seem all that long ago now in retrospect .

custard gannet

Your Superior wrote: »

We didn't have to worry about people posting photos of us on nights out. We actually took the time to see our friends in person. We didn't have mobile phones so would arrange to meet at a certain time, and then actually be there. We didn't seek likes or retweets to validate ourselves. We read books, listened to music, played and watched sport, went to the cinema, even watched TV believe it or not.

Yep. Nobody watches TV, reads, plays sport, goes to the cinema, or does anything that doesn't involve staring at laptop screen or smartphone. You sound like one of these people who makes an i'm deleting my Facebook send me your email address status updates every few months but ever actually leaves it.

In response to the OP, most of the rose tinted bull here is just that. Life was no different in all truth, bar maybe that people texted far more constantly back then whereas now they occupy themselves with the news feed. The primary difference I can think of is that people only seemed to start buying digital cameras en masse around 2005, the year that Bebo really took off. Before that they were fairly niche, techno geek devices, and I've always reckoned that it had a fair bit to do with the sale of the cameras in Ireland from 05 on.

Aside from that there is very little difference from the late 90's and the popularization of the mobile.

endacl

Your Superior wrote: »

We didn't have to worry about people posting photos of us on nights out.

We also didn't have to specifically ask them not to post those pictures, and then have to waste time explaining the bleedin' obvious because they couldn't process the fact that you don't want to be visible to twats on Twatbook. Back then, whenever I played at a gig or session I didn't have to stop to tell feckin' tourists not to post their memento on YouTube. Most are good about it. Some just don't get it.

There was privacy back then. I miss that.

Eugene Norman

Into The Blue wrote: »

How do you know if someone is not on facebook?
How do you know if someone hates apple products?
How do you know if someone hates Dublin?

Oh I agree. But I was previously defending face bookers and expected that comment to come immediately after. Just saying that you don't have to be on FB, and it probably isn't changing much of society. But I wasn't doing that because I use it. I'm a Twitter guy.

I don't buy the whole people not talking to each other. We never talked to strangers on rush hour trains, we may have read books but plenty of people staring at mobiles read books. On the mobiles.

And in fact these things are probably keeping older friendships together rather than the opposite.

Dr_Bill

People didn't post stupid stuff up on the internet and get fired or wonder why their employment opportunities were limited based on posting their whole life or weekends up on the Internet with them rolling around in the gutter at 4am.

AnonoBoy

Fields.

All this was fields.

marcmc5

People made an effort to stay in touch. With socal media people cant be arsed and have so many pseudo friends they feel they dont need real ones

Salvation Tambourine

Eugene Norman wrote: »

I don't buy the whole people not talking to each other. We never talked to strangers on rush hour trains, we may have read books but plenty of people staring at mobiles read books. On the mobiles.

sashafierce

This post has been deleted.

dublinman1990

Well life for me before social media was not an enjoyable one as I was bullied in school for a fair amount of time when I was young kid in primary school.

The reasons for me for being bullied at the time were largely unknown and petty. It was spoken and heard from other kids in my class while going abut through school trying to be a normal everyday child. I should have actually said to them long ago to say stop and let me have a bit of privacy. There is a big positive after going through that ordeal back in the day in that those incidents didn't have to be spread in social media of any form when I was in there. It felt like what happened in the classroom and talking back to your parents stayed like that until social media had began to ruin that experience for probably large swathes of young people in the early 21st century. I was extremely lucky in a sense not to endure that sort of life back then. I would seriously consider it for anybody to that make job all the more preventable for themselves if they had tried to look back on it.

Cyberbullying is basically happening on a daily basis with people being at such a young age and it could happen to people of other ages while you don't expect it. It is a horrid experience for anyone to be cyberbullied at this time in their life. Older people, including my mum, wouldn't have thought that this aspect of life would be a 'normal' thing for people to do to each other online another over one simple facebook post that could potentially damage it within a split second. A person's life should not be totally focused on hearsay or gossip that could be greatly damaged from behind our backs. It should be tackled head-on and within an instant.

On the positive side of living life back in the day, watching lots of TV, playing the playstation for hours, playing actual sports outside was a thing to be greatly enjoyed. I used to get great enjoyment playing a couple of games from Colin McRae and Spyro the dragon on the playstation while I was experiencing life as a young kid. It was also a good way to get away by zoning out from all that earlier ****e while I was in school all those years ago.

_Kaiser_

I have a Facebook a/c but I almost never use it and then only the chat part as it's the only way to keep in touch with some people - my last "update" was last year thanking people for wishing me a happy birthday (even though most of them I haven't actually talked to in years)

One of the things I hate is how social media nonsense has made it into mainstream news - Breakingnews has a story on the front page about how to load a bloody dishwasher FFS! :rolleyes: Then there's the whole "selfie" shyte and "challenges" too of course!

The whole idea that your employment prospects depend on what you do on social media and/or if you have a LinkedIn profile is stupid too. Perfectly good, hard-working people rejected because they acted like an idiot with a few pints or because they DON'T have a profile for the world to see!

I think it started with The Sims myself - a game where you sat at your screen developing a "life" for your characters at the expense of your own! Things like Bebo and Facebook just expanded on this by allowing you to create a whole virtual persona to try and impress others with.

In effect, what this thread shows I think is how far we've devolved socially since the 80s/early 90s.. rather than getting out and living life and meeting people, many are content to sit there watching updates about how "cool" (or not) other people's lives are! In a wider context, coupled with the Americanised-culture we've been exposed to since the dawn of satellite TV in the late 80s which told us that "nothing is your fault" and "you are a special snowflake", it's led to a society of responsibility-shirking, superficial eejits more obsessed with competing with each other for "likes" than what's going on around them!

I know I sound like an old fart (even though I'm just shy of 40 and work in IT myself and have the latest smartphones, tech etc) but I really think that Social Media has become more of a hindrance than anything else - and I worry about my own little fella who's a few years off from dealing with it yet (thankfully) but who'll inevitably be dragged into it one way or another. Even limiting his access won't help and it could actually make him a target for the bullying that's rampant on it (as others have described above). Being a kid is hard enough but these days it must be a nightmare if you're not in with the "cool" crowd!

Ah I miss the 80s.. and not just because music, TV and movies were better then!

Robsweezie

my brother's unborn child could arrive within the next day or two, if I see it plastered all over facebook before I even meet the child that will unsettle me somewhat. would you care?

you know the usual crap '' tyler clayton Sebastian Johnson arrived at 3:36 this morning weighing x pounds x ounces couldn't be happier im so chuffed with my little angel xxxxx''

youreadthat

I'm 25 and people at school seemed to first get myspace around 2005. To be honest life wasn't that different before then. The only difference is that the 14 year old narcissists you knew too much about then are now 25 year old narcissists with a webpage dedicated to them. People were still communicating en masse on msn and text so the amount of time you'd spend looking at a screen isn't that different if you're a fairly prolific user of social networks today.

Further back than the late 90's though and there are marked differences.

KevIRL

A lot less written sentances finished with 'x'

DEFTLEFTHAND

Not as many 'right on' merchants, people decided which ideology they wanted to follow and didn't rely on what cool kids were doing online. For eg a level headed young man with a worthwhile degree in a subject such of Law would mature around the time of graduation, 22 or so. The guys who did Arts never grew up, the toy department as they were jokingly referred to as in UCD.

Adamantium

Sitting around watching amazing TV shows on summer Saturday afternoons, Big Big Movie at 6. Formula 1 racing on RTE. Hearing dad with a chainsaw out back and coming out to sweep sawdust away between breaks.

My neighbour who was 10 years old at the time wrote a strongly worded letter to RTE for pulling Baywatch from the air, but expressed how thankful he was, that Xena (Lucy Lawless) was till there.

They even sent him back a reply and everything.

Anesthetize

Adamantium wrote: »

Sitting around watching amazing TV shows on summer Saturday afternoons, Big Big Movie at 6. Formula 1 racing on RTE. Hearing dad with a chainsaw out back and coming out to sweep sawdust away between breaks.

My neighbour who was 10 years old at the time wrote a strongly worded letter to RTE for pulling Baywatch from the air, but expressed how thankful he was, that Xena (Lucy Lawless) was till there.

They even sent him back a reply and everything.

Nowadays people are sitting around watching amazing tv shows on Netflix. How the times have changed.

rewind28

It's hard to say. I'm in my early 30s. It wasn't much different; people my age were still glued to their phone texting then while messages cost 13 cent each. If fb was around then I probably wouldn't have used it. I was always the last one to sign-up. My age group are prob on the cusp of technology; we certainly relate to a time without it and also a time with it. I'd be more a Nokia 3310 type. That's the symbol of my teen years. No internet - only texts and calls. Picture phones came out in 2003 and that's around the same time as WAP phones did to. They were prehistoric compared to now but early to mid 00s were the start of what is now; except life was still the same as the late 90s: nobody took photos out on random nights out

Paramite Pie

Redhenrun wrote: »

You could go off for a month with a rucksack on your back and your parents wouldn't even know what country you were in, much less who you'd met or what you were having for dinner that day. Bliss!

I did that in three years ago. Went back-packing in the Andes for a few weeks and had no internet, and often no running water or toilets.:D

My parents had an idea of my itinerary but I had no contact with them for up to two weeks at a time between reaching more developed touristy areas.

There were some big elections on in France and other parts of EU, and all the Recession news and Facebook updates just felt so irrelevant. I'd recommend it.

MarkAnthony

Everything people are moaning about is a choice. Social media has been an overwhelming force for good and truth. It has it downside, but much like all information technologies these are largely down to the end user.

A couple of things sum it up for me. Ben Elton's routine where he compares the internet to a library, this was the 90s I think, what's the first thing you did when you got a dictionary; looked up the dirty words!

And the epicness that is the West Wing.

Leo McGarry: My generation never got the future it was promised... Thirty-five years later, cars, air travel is exactly the same. We don't even have the Concorde anymore. Technology stopped.

Josh Lyman: The personal computer...

Leo McGarry: A more efficient delivery system for gossip and pornography? Where's my jet pack, my colonies on the Moon?

Cold War Kid

It's ideal for my age (30s) but a lot of it would suck for teenagers.
No way would I like to have been an adult in the 80s. Great being a kid then, but reality was a lot harsher for adults at that time.
Being a kid in the 80s/early 90s makes me appreciate how great the internet/smartphone is too - e.g. any music/video/information you want is just a click and a few words away; the 13-year-old me fantasised about that. Contact with people being so easy, from anywhere.
It's fantastic - makes life a lot easier in many ways. But harder on kids for sure.

You can still have your older style stuff too though - books, TV, CDs. I have all of those and utilise them regularly.

Lia_lia

beks101 wrote: »

You knew all your friends' home numbers by heart.

I still know a few of my school friends numbers off by heart, haven't spoken to them in years! And probably haven't phoned the numbers since I was about 10. They just stick in your head!