I watched a show on youtube on growing up in past time periods vs today....

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Being born in 57...I was a 70's kid....grad HS in 76 and college in 80.
Im very glad I grew up when I did ....I had a blast on motorcycles /dirtbikes.
everybody had a 10 speed bike in HS.
I bought a Rolex sub for 395? dollars in 74....I was the only kid in HS with a Rolex that i knew of...one time my Algebra teacher walked by my desk saw it on my wrist looked at it and said....what did I do wrong...i cant afford a Seiko...and a 16 year old has a Rolex,
I told him my Grand father died and left me some money and I got to use 500 bucks on what i wanted....I bought the watch and a tape deck for my Duster.
We had No AIDS to worry with....my GF went to an all girls Catholic school .....they were wild.
Sure we had long hair and some crappy 8 track tape deck in my Duster .....later i got a Datsun P/U to haul my motocross bikes around AZ and CA
Cell phones who needs it? like the pagers of early 90's elec ball and chain for work....im sure i tossed 3-4 pagers out my car window in the 90's
Only 6-7 channels in the 70's..... now I have 300 still cant find much to watch...I remember my first color TV a Toshiba 13 inch ....it was 400 bucks
lots of money in 78.
No internet.....easy read a book.
Except for the advances in medical and drugs......much rather live back in the 70's or 80's
I had gall bladder out in 89 and it almost killed me i was split half open.....was out of work 3 months....and 3 years later i still felt bad.
My wife had hers out ,....2 small cuts....2 days later she was walking around the hospital like nothing happened....i was in shock in over hers vs me.
 
Simpler times for sure.
One difference I have noticed between my kids and myself when in our early twenty's is that international travel is easier now, as the internet makes it easy to research destinations and book tickets. I did road trips using gas station maps as a young guy, my kids booked flights to different parts of the world.
 
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Simpler times for sure.
One difference I have noticed between my kids and myself when in our early twenty's is that international travel is easier now, as the internet makes it easy to research destinations and book tickets. I did road trips using gas station maps as a young guy, my kids booked flights to different parts of the world.
I went all over the world in the oilpatch....flying was better .....much more expensive...I flew from Cairo to London KLM on a 747 once ....only 5 people on the whole plane tht night....I Just got drunk at the bar and hit on the flight crew .....had some hot Brit and Dutch ladies back then...wow wee
Now the police would be waiting to throw me in jail...
 
Simpler times for sure.
Maybe selective memory. It seems that nearly every past generation was the good ol' days.

The 60's and 70's had the Cuban missile crises, the Vietnam War, the oil crises, race riots/racial tension/crumbling cities. Plaid bell bottom pants. Disco. Repeat disco, and disco dance clubs (even in Michigan's Upper Peninsula). Watergate. Ebola. And a ton of other challenges.

I recently joined Ancestry.com for a 2 week free trial. Talk about fun, holy cow, looking through my old 1970's year books is quite the hoot. I recommend it to everyone. Very interesting also. I learned that my great grandfather, age 23, married my great grandmother, age 16, in the early 1900's.

Ahh, yes, good movies too:
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Grew up in the late 80s early 90s. Graduate HS in 96 was born in 78. Skip through the video "Mid 90s" and a Hulu show interviewing a child star growing up around that time, sort of hit close to home.

Have no cell phones back then and pager were the thing we used to show off each others back in HS. I still remember what 143 (and 43) means. Had no car back then but was fun watching other wealthier kids picking up girls with their new rides and how they rice their cars. Wonder where they are now and how are they doing.

I remember video games were just something you buy and play on your own or with friends in their homes, not the predatory micro transaction and gambling addiction crap they pull on the mentally weak these days.

None of my circle of friends became mom or dad in HS, but I know a few kids in our school did (Catholic school). No Tinder, so life was simpler back then instead of all the swipe right 247 like the kids today. I feel bad for the young guys today.

People make less but cost of living was also way lower. I know friends who work McD jobs to buy toys and cars, but have no problem financing their way through colleges as rent was only like $350/room and food only cost like $200/mo with $6 min wage. Gray Davis era was paying a lot of public education on the house so we didn't really have much student loans, like 10-20k max to most of us.

We do have to stop by the "labs" to "check email" between classes and sometimes we were just using ICQ to chat. Once in a while some people would forgot to log out their ICQ between session and people would prank on them. I pretty much stopped ICQing in computer labs after hearing that.

Cell phone came at the end of our college days. We had to wait till after 9pm to call using "unlimited" or we have to make sure our friends are on the same network to call before 9.
 
I thought I was cool in my new bell bottom jeans in junior high. Look at those pictures now though and have a good laugh.

I remember visiting Toronto at age 13 in the seventies, the sky had a brownish yellow haze and the smog made me nauseous. We visited my son and his wife in Toronto last summer, and the air was clean and the sky was blue. So that's a plus for current times and technology, vs the past.
 
Maybe selective memory. It seems that nearly every past generation was the good ol' days.

The 60's and 70's had the Cuban missile crises, the Vietnam War, the oil crises, race riots/racial tension/crumbling cities. Plaid bell bottom pants. Disco. Repeat disco, and disco dance clubs (even in Michigan's Upper Peninsula). Watergate. Ebola. And a ton of other challenges.

I recently joined Ancestry.com for a 2 week free trial. Talk about fun, holy cow, looking through my old 1970's year books is quite the hoot. I recommend it to everyone. Very interesting also. I learned that my great grandfather, age 23, married my great grandmother, age 16, in the early 1900's.

Ahh, yes, good movies too:
View attachment 113050View attachment 113051
I
Maybe selective memory. It seems that nearly every past generation was the good ol' days.

The 60's and 70's had the Cuban missile crises, the Vietnam War, the oil crises, race riots/racial tension/crumbling cities. Plaid bell bottom pants. Disco. Repeat disco, and disco dance clubs (even in Michigan's Upper Peninsula). Watergate. Ebola. And a ton of other challenges.

I recently joined Ancestry.com for a 2 week free trial. Talk about fun, holy cow, looking through my old 1970's year books is quite the hoot. I recommend it to everyone. Very interesting also. I learned that my great grandfather, age 23, married my great grandmother, age 16, in the early 1900's.

Ahh, yes, good movies too:
View attachment 113050View attachment 113051
 
Looking at those 70's cars i get a butt puddle just thinking about my 72 Duster in AZ heat.....the plastic seats.... get in the car and 5 mins later your back was wet.....pants etc....then it sticks getting out.....i dont miss that one at all.....
 
Despite the simpler times we mention, I think the tradeoff of less connectivity and conceivably slower pace of life is worth it for the medical advances, access to medicine and information. There was very little chance for having an early diagnosis for many ailments and even worse treatment options. Medicine is still in the dark ages and I look forward to the advances in stem cell technology literally rebuilding cartilage, nerve cells, and many other tissues. Imagine having your teeth regrown, research is taking place and a child with cerebral palsy recently was able to walk and talk due to new therapies.

Personally I love the immediate access to information which otherwise would have required going to the library, pulling out the card catalog, and finding the relevant books. I like automation and better safety technologies in vehicles. As we all know that requires its own skillset to deal with.

I think people will call the 2020s simpler times in the future since it is likely we will be tracked on a micro scale, with city wide surveillance drones monitoring all our moves under the guise of being able to rewind footage when a crime happens and solving kidnappings / trafficking easily.

Mind, computer, and internet integration via brainwave devices will make Googling just a simple thought and you will become part of the database if you offer to answer questions mentally. Terminator style exoskeleton suits helping the infirm regain movement...."Grandmas here! She ripped of the door handle again!" Anyway, just speculation, but the unforeseen technological advancements and black swan events in the next 50 years will make our current reality seem like the old days of the 50's - 90's we grew up and our ancestors will look back at them as we do the 1800's

You have to roll with the punches of new advancements or get left behind. Whatever is comfortable for you. I can see my self becoming a luddite one day but I hope that's a long ways away.
 
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I was also born in '57, but graduated in '75. Yes, the '60's and '70's were very turbulent times in many ways. I had family and friends that had low draft lotto numbers, so they signed up to the National Guard, in hopes that their Guard unit wasn't called up. Living in the West, the race riots were something that really didn't impact my life, at least at that time. It wasn't until I was much older that I understood it more.

But with all that, I still believe the late '60's and '70's were an awesome time to grow up. Even though there must have been dozens of rifles and shotguns, hanging in the back window of trucks, in the high school parking lot, no one ever heard of school shootings. The closest we came to school violence is the occasional fist fight between a couple guys in the parking lot after school. Thirty seconds later their differences were settled.

Instant information access is awesome, but there was something special about digging through resources to do a report. Every family I knew had a set of encyclopedias on the bookshelf.

Although there are many wonderful advances in medicine and technology, I would gladly go back to live in that time again. Even if we did have to put up with 8 track tapes. Ok, we could do without disco. Disco sucked.🤮
 
Maybe selective memory. It seems that nearly every past generation was the good ol' days.

The 60's and 70's had the Cuban missile crises, the Vietnam War, the oil crises, race riots/racial tension/crumbling cities. Plaid bell bottom pants. Disco. Repeat disco, and disco dance clubs (even in Michigan's Upper Peninsula). Watergate. Ebola. And a ton of other challenges.

I say this all the time when one of these boomer type threads pops up: Your golden era is YOUR golden era, not everyone enjoyed the same luxuries and lifestyle.
 
The show sure favored the 50's.....Elvis and Ike as on of the greatest times in the USA. My parents sure like the 50's
 
Looking through the eyes of a child growing up, the 70s were awesome! We had to make our own fun. Playing army in the woods, seeing who was brave enough to climb the highest tree, making a racetrack for our Big Wheels with chalk rock on the street, making spaceships and forts out of cardboard boxes, actually having to walk or ride our bikes to our friends houses to interact with them, and so much more. I remember us talking our parents into taking us to Radio Shack to buy parts to make our own PA system out of pure experimentation, and it actually worked! One of the things I loved to do was take small appliances apart to figure out how they worked.

People I know now who have rugrats, all they do is lay around all day indoors like catatonic zombies on a phone getting fat and lazy.

I feel in a way, technology has dumbed up society.
 
I say this all the time when one of these boomer type threads pops up: Your golden era is YOUR golden era, not everyone enjoyed the same luxuries and lifestyle.


It wasn’t as luxurious as one might think. The Vietnam War was on every guys mind. Iron lungs which were solved by the vaccine. Smallpox, getting the tiny fork jabbed in your arm.

But we were able to play outside and drink from the garden hose except if you had one of the three diseases that everyone got. Measles, Mumps, and Chicken Pox. Then you were stuck inside.
 
Looking through the eyes of a child growing up, the 70s were awesome! We had to make our own fun. Playing army in the woods, seeing who was brave enough to climb the highest tree, making a racetrack for our Big Wheels with chalk rock on the street, making spaceships and forts out of cardboard boxes, actually having to walk or ride our bikes to our friends houses to interact with them, and so much more. I remember us talking our parents into taking us to Radio Shack to buy parts to make our own PA system out of pure experimentation, and it actually worked! One of the things I loved to do was take small appliances apart to figure out how they worked.

People I know now who have rugrats, all they do is lay around all day indoors like catatonic zombies on a phone getting fat and lazy.

I feel in a way, technology has dumbed up society.

Definitely. We were fortunate to have a appliance store a few blocks away. Those big boxes made great hideouts. We would sleep in them as well.
 
Definitely. We were fortunate to have a appliance store a few blocks away. Those big boxes made great hideouts. We would sleep in them as well.
We would go to the back of the grocery stores and they’d give us those HUGE boxes so we could take them home.

We were just talking the other day about how much of a privilege and badge of honor it was to drink from the garden hose. Kids I see now think they’re “too good” to drink from the hose and that it’s beneath them, and insists their parents buy them expensive designer bottled water.
 
It wasn’t as luxurious as one might think. The Vietnam War was on every guys mind. Iron lungs which were solved by the vaccine. Smallpox, getting the tiny fork jabbed in your arm.

But we were able to play outside and drink from the garden hose except if you had one of the three diseases that everyone got. Measles, Mumps, and Chicken Pox. Then you were stuck inside.
yeah i got all three...
 
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