23-07-2025
21 Things Kids These Days Will Never Understand
Recently, u/Hidden_lust__ asked r/AskReddit, "What's something kids today will never understand?" And we thought we'd share some of the top responses.
"Going into a phone booth, especially when you're a kid, just to jiggle the coin return in hopes of scoring a nickel or dime so you can buy some candy. My cousin Brenda beat me to a phone booth at the beach & got $1.15. She was the first rich person I ever knew."
"Spending hours curating the perfect mix CD — carefully choosing the songs, getting the order just right, and writing the track list in Sharpie like it was a love letter. If someone made you a burned CD… That was real love."
"Limewire. God, I gave one of my laptops a wild amount of viruses with it but I got to listen to Simple Plan on my mp3 player, so it was all worth it."
"Renting a VHS from Blockbuster."
"Performing surgery on a cassette tape to get it working again."
"Dial-up internet: The screechy connection tones, and being kicked off the internet because someone picked up the landline phone."
"That weird, magical era where you made plans, kept them, and just showed up — no texts, no tracking, no group chats. Just: 'See you at four' and somehow… everyone did."
"Needing to have a quarter (or a dime if you're THAT old) on you just in case you needed to call home with a payphone."
"The desperation to get snacks from the kitchen quickly or going to the bathroom fast during a commercial break while watching an episode you waited all week for. Bonus points if your sibling screamed, 'it's back!' when you were still out of the room and you had to run back, lol.
"Getting a new phone number every time you moved."
"The peace of not having a cell phone."
"Actually knowing phone numbers. Like your parents number, the numbers of several friends... Shit, I still know some of those numbers even today."
"That sacred moment when your favourite song came on the radio, and you had to run to hit 'record' on the cassette player, hoping no one spoke over the intro."
"How before Google you had to look through an encyclopedia in the library or in a large home collection and possibly spend hours looking, only to still not find what you're searching for. Yes, back then, if your parents and/or teachers didn't know the answer to something, and you couldn't find it in the library, then you really had no idea how to figure it out then."
"The Dewey decimal system and the physical card catalogue at the library."
"How exciting it was when Pong was invented. We could interact with the square ball on the TV! It was incredible! Being able to control the paddle (in that ever exciting up and down thing it did, lol) just seemed to be so futuristic."
"We were really poor growing up and couldn't afford to buy VHS tapes so my parents would tape Wonderful World of Disney every Saturday night."
"Playing outside all day and inventing your own games, using your imagination and without needing money."
"People smoking literally everywhere. Airplanes, restaurants, hotels, even hospitals. So much that old technology like typewriters or radios are still often covered in nicotine residue when you find them. It's so rare now that when I come across a smoker, I can't get past the stench."
"Blowing into a game cartridge like your life depended on it, praying it would finally load so you could play Mario before your sibling claimed the TV."
"When I was a kid, if one of my parents was expecting an important phone call, it meant I wasn't allowed to use the internet."
H/T to u/Hidden_lust__ and r/AskReddit for having the discussion!
Any more to add? Let us know in the comments below!
