You can read books and watch movies about the past but you probably won't understand what a certain era felt like as well as the people who lived through it.

So when Reddit user WeirdJawn asked older platform users to share what young people have gotten completely wrong about past decades, their post received plenty of replies.

From the entertainment industry to social movements and everything in between, continue scrolling to learn what history looked like when it was still the present from the ones who witnessed it.

#1

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 the 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.

Image credits: john_jdm

#2

Up until video rental stores in the early 80's, 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 co-workers, just to be a part of the conversation.

Image credits: Grimjack2

#3

The 80’s was not day glow. The 80’s was brown and grey with a dash of pastel towards the end.

Image credits: -Words-Words-Words-

#4

Probably under estimating how few choices there were.

today, it seems like everything imaginable is available in a variety of sizes, delivered to your door overnight.

catalogs and mail order, with 4-6 week delivery

Malls were the best thing ever. all the stores in 1 place, and not downtown.

Image credits: 2Loves2loves

#5

I remember lying in bed every night worrying about nuclear war happening. This was late 70s early 80s. That was a huge fear for a long time.

Image credits: temujin1976

#6

This will be hard to believe for many - but MTV used to be amazing

Image credits: Decent_Leadership_62

#7

Women weren't valued. Full stop. If you know any woman 60 or older who is a business owner, doctor, attorney, C suite professional, tell them thank you. You have no idea what they went through to get there.

Image credits: Three60five

#8

My mom had to request a non-smoking hospital room when I was born.

Image credits: yzedf

#9

That feminism isn't some mouldy concept from the distant past.

In the US, sexual discrimination in education wasn't outlawed until 1972, which just happened to be the same year unmarried women were legally allowed access to birth control. Additionally, prior to 1974 women were not allowed to have credit cards or loans in their own names, they were simply authorised users of their husbands' credit cards. Some employers also required married women to have their husband's permission before they were offered employment.

When people talk about how women in the 1950s and 1960s stayed married even when the marriage was clearly rocky, it was less about devotion and more to do with the lack of equal access to education, work and finances. The divorce rate skyrocketed in the '70's but not because women were suddenly wanton and looking for a good time, it was because they were no longer forced to remain in a bad marriage as a matter of financial survival.

Image credits: protogens

#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 re-runs during 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.

Image credits: ladyeclectic79

#11

That all 80's and 90's music was good. There was plenty of c**ppy music released then like there is now, it's just that the cr**ppy music got buried quickly while the best hits continue to get played today.

Image credits: DeathSpiral321

#12

Kids think Y2K was a joke, but the panic was real, people legit thought computers would end us.

Image credits: lord-mate-lad-man

#13

how common drinking & driving was. Until MADD came along, people did this routinely. It's where "one for the road" originated.

Image credits: HailRoma

#14

How self sufficient you had to be. If you got a flat tire, you had to change it yourself or walk. You had to make arrangements to meet up with friends well ahead of time and then show up. The world before cell phones was completely different.

Image credits: kelimac

#15

Netflix really DID come in the mail at first

Image credits: AdmlBaconStraps

#16

A lot of people sound like 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 f*****g 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 f*****g rando in the neighborhood.

Image credits: lyan-cat

#17

I remember having to call stores to ask them if they had something in stock before actually making the trip to get it.

#18

They understand restaurants had "smoking sections" and that bars & clubs were filled with cigarette smoke. But I don't think many understood how pervasive smoking was. There were ashtrays and people smoking literally EVERYWHERE. Jury boxes had ashtrays in front of every juror. Judge smoked, lawyers smoked, the gallery smoked. You smoked on planes, trains, busses, taxicabs, and all transportation centers. You smoked at the library, the PTO meetings at schools, the town hall and all city offices. Hell, you could smoke at the courtyard at my High School as a student. You smoked in the elevator and on the escalator. The mall. Sports venues. Doctor's offices. Hospitals. The movies. The plays, opera, concerts and every other public performance. A non-smoker would come home often smelling like smoke. One was constantly surrounded by smoke. It was insane.

Image credits: parkerjh

#19

Landline telephones had seriously great audio quality. 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 like you were closer to someone than anything we have today.

Image credits: BangBangMeatMachine

#20

Maybe not everyone’s experience but for me there was casual violence everywhere. Smacking kids was not only tolerated but expected. Hit by parents, friends parents, random adults in the neighborhood, teachers etc. Then you’d get beat for making the teacher hit you. “What will the neighbors think” was real

Image credits: TheMarsTraveler

#21

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, 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 Disney land? Maybe a picture at the entry gate or one of the souvenir pictures of us with a character. A trip to 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.

Image credits: bbbbbthatsfivebees

#22

Journalism has changed. You used to be able to trust in the integrity of the journalist. Now, they're interchangeable, and all we know is the network. It has changed the way we trust the new media, and it's not good. We shouldn't underestimate the danger of this change.

#23

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 just didn't buy a disposable TV. If it broke you took it in to get fixed. Nowadays if your TV breaks its tossed and you get a new one.

Edit: TVs are just one example that I used. Look at many different examples under the comments e.g. shoes, household appliances, cars, et cetera.

#24

How brown the 80s was, everything furniture cars wall paneling everything was brown.

#25

My grandmother smoked basically every second she was awake from age 13-75. She loved it and said she would rather die than stop. She smoked in her house and car. Even in bed. I used to stay with her a lot. I went to a strict private school for High School, they were on campus off campus, which meant you had to conduct yourself the same way at home as at school. My parents went out of town for 2 weeks, I had to stay with my grandparents. I was about 15 and knew i smelled like an ashtray- what could I do? I had to stay with her. Even my hair smelled like it. So I’m at school and I get called out of class and sent to the principal. He explained to me that several teachers had complained that I smell like smoke and he knows I have been smoking before I come to school. I told them I was staying at my grandparents and my grandmother smoked nonstop and that’s why. They said that was not true because my hair smelled like smoke and that only happens if you smoke. So they’re about to suspend me, they call my parents. My parents had to tell them I was staying with my grandparents and that’s why. I was so embarrassed and self conscious until my parents got back and I got to go home. Also when we moved my grandparents to another house, we took down everything from the wall. Realized the walls are yellow from smoke, where something had hung the walls were bright white. I often wondered what my grandmother lungs looked like after this

#26

A lot of the time you were bored s**tless. In the U.K. TV had three channels, and most houses had one TV. If someone in the house was watching something you weren’t interested in, then that entertainment avenue was gone. You had radio of course, and that was much more important in my early years. Books and comics too. But I still remember hours and hours of complete and utter boredom.

#27

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 3 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 is 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 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 many fewer distractions and much more time for sustained imagination. Being a different place and time, we developed different skills for interacting with the world and each other 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 it 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.

#28

Young people today think it's normal to carry a water bottle or other drink with them everywhere. My teenaged neice and her friends apparently can't be out of the house for more than 5 minutes without having a drink in hand lest they suddenly die of dehydration. She can't comprehend that we used to walk a half hour (another rant for another time) to school without having something to drink the entire way, or that the school simply did not allow any drinks in the classroom (and many employers didn't allow drinks at your desk either).

#29

TV used to be incredibly important. It wasn’t just a thing to do if you were bored. There were certain TV shows that nearly everybody watched, and if you didn’t watch them you’d still have to listen to people talk about them. I hated the Dukes of Hazzard, but I could tell you the main characters’ names and sing most of the theme song.

We used radio to listen to music. A lot. There were 8 tracks, records, cassettes, etc. so you could play music whenever you wanted, but radio was where a lot of music was discovered. Much love to Queen and the Buggles for their tributes to radio.

#30

I don't think they understand the extent to which we were "Free Range Children".

In the summer time, we would leave the house at 10AM and we would rove far and wide with our friends all day. We would often not be back until 9PM.

Usually we had to be back at certain times for meals but aside from that, we were off having adventures with our friends.

Riding our bikes through slag dumps, riding our bikes through trails out in the woods, climbing things that were not safe to climb, throwing lawn darts and general daredevil s**t that kids today cannot fathom.

#31

Being a young "boomer" was not easy. I worked in a steel mill, night shift, at age 18. I was the first woman to work in the foundry. I had to be escorted to and from the lavatory because my boss was afraid I would be assaulted. Then I finished nursing school and was propositioned by doctors. In my final career I was a PM at an engineering firm and was told repeatedly that I did not deserve the job. I hope younger women realize what us "older ladies" did to pave the way.

#32

There was a horrible amount of poverty in the 60s, 70s and 80s. That whole thing about one job supporting a family of four is not true at all. However, until Reagan came along and destroyed benefits for struggling people they had government help.

They also don't understand how absolutely f*****g horrible it could be for women in the workplace. Our mothers and grandmothers had to fight to be treated decently not to mention equally. Harassment, limited opportunity, inequal pay for the same work.

My mother was forced to quit her job when she was five months pregnant because pregnant women shouldn't work. Same with my grandma but she was made to quit teaching when she got married. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Girls of reddit you owe your Grandmothers a lot.

#33

There was not something like a computer or the world-wide-web. Information moved slowly and whole areas of industry were dedicated moving information around on paper.

#34

How hard life was, and how comparatively easy and good it is now. I have had two friends who in recent months have had children born with conditions that would have resulted in death even 20 years ago, but with today's medical advances will likely live full lives. Of course, these treatments are very expensive, but obviously it's a price they will gladly pay. Young people today complain about the cost of health care as some abomination and yet totally fail to appreciate how good our medical system is.

Young people today complain about 40 hour work weeks as if it's a violation of human rights, but even when I was a kid I worked long days in high school, and my grandparents told stories about their childhood and lives in the depression where if you stopped working at 40 hours, you simply starved. My grandmother grew up with 6 siblings in a 2 bedroom apartment with a single mother. Now people with 2000 sqft homes complain because they pay so much in rent that they have to take fewer vacations.

Never before in human history have so many people enjoyed so much luxury.

#35

How little we had and how hard the average young person had to work to get what people today take for granted. Asia hadn’t yet opened up to provide cheap goods, and most of what you needed to buy had to be produced in your own country. Like if you look at old newspaper flyers from the 80s, a sweater on sale at the discount store costs more than an average sweater today, but minimum wage is six times as much. Most kitchen stuff cost the same in 80’s dollars as today. Printers, cheap computers, TVs were easily a couple months pay. It was just really hard for people starting out because there was no “cheap” alternative for basic goods to tide you over until you could afford better. Getting dishes, cutlery, pots and pans, a mattress, basic furniture etc was all a struggle. Unless you had a wedding with well off relatives it could take years before you had enough household essentials to be comfortable.


Also, a word about comparing what people could afford then compared to now. When people compare 80s dollars to today, you gotta remember that there’s a lot of adjustments in the standard of living and the formulas for calculating costs between years is weighted heavily by housing and transportation. So all the comparisons people do about haw many years salary to buy a house then and now don’t take into account how s****y life was for people who couldn’t afford a house.

#36

The 60s weren't *all* flower children and hippies, and the general population reviled protestors back then every much as much as they do now, for the same reason: media representation. Anti-war protestors were painted like antifa and BLM are now by the media, i.e. most made them out to be quasi-terrorists. I personally supported what they were doing as an 8 year old, but my family thought they were horrible.