What was life like in the 80s?

I turned 16 in 1980. The 80s were great, I had the most fun of my life. No doubt I'm remembering it all through rose tinted specs, but I loved it.

I was a teen as well. Music was fab, the fashion was interesting. I look back with a lot of fondness but guess the unemployment, etc passed me by as I was too young to notice.

It seemed like everyone smoked, you could even smoke in McDonald's. Not many people I knew went abroad for holidays. We went to the cinema, went roller skating, ice skating, met friends and hung out in town listening to music on our Walkmans.

Listened to the top 40 every week with my finger on the record button to record any songs I liked onto a tape. I had quite a fancy radio which could pick up American radio stations so knew American bands my friends hadnt heard of. I could also pick up the local police frequency which was entertaining.

We had terrible games consoles where a game could take 30 mins if not more to load up.

Tv was dire. 4 channels and often they'd switch off for a bit in the middle of the day and then shut down about 11pm/midnight. Sky tv came out, my friend at school had it but I didn't.

My parents used to try to drag me out to garden centres on a Sunday as it seemed it was the only thing to be open.

A lot more racism, sexism, etc. I can remember pubs having signs saying "no blacks, no Irish".

So different to now. No supermarkets where I lived in Cornwall. No escalators either!

Sending old clothes and toys to the miners strike.

No brand snobbery. My snazzy outfits came from Woolworths or pool market.

I was 9 at the start and and 19 at the end.

I was worried about nuclear war aged 13 and AIDS scared me. Other than that it was Top of the Pops, Smash Hits, Duran Duran, Studio Line hair mousse, school discos, first boyfriends ......happy days.

I waa born in 1980.

Many mums were still housewives/stay at home mums.

I was fairly unusal at most of the schools i went to that my parents were divorced. Which meant that a) i couldn't just play at the weekend cos i'd be at dads b) my mum had to work.

But nothing was thought of kids riding in the boot of the car, certianly there were few seatbelts

Going to the pub and only being allowed in the garden or if you were lucky the play room, if a pub had neither you'd sit in the car with your pop and crisps.

Well this question makes me feel super old.

Great.

If you were a kid in the 80s you probably ate what your parents learned to cook in the 60s and 70s. Chips with everything, fried everything, boiled veg, tinned meat, Heinz beans and spaghetti. American food was starting to become popular so you occasionally saw burgers, pizza and pasta. Also new stuff like Viennetta, microwave meals and Birds Eye Supermousse.

Health and aerobics were just starting to become a thing. My Dad used to laugh at the idea of running for fun when you weren’t actually going anywhere. People started wearing sports clothes all the time, shell suits and leg warmers. Music was great. Hair was big and crimped or curled. Bright lipstick and eyeshadow. Clothes were totally over the top with shoulder pads and bold patterns and colours. Everything seemed new and progressive and exciting.

The world was very small though. If someone moved away they were never heard from again. I had a friend who lived next door to my aunt in another town 30 minutes drive away and I only saw her twice a year when we visited, with no contact in between - because there was no way to stay in contact except for letters (phone calls cost too much). Your friends were the people who happened to live nearby. If you didn’t fit in it was tough, you had no way to find other people you might have something in common with. Equally you had no way to find out what was on; unless you saw a poster you had no idea about events you might be interested in. There weren’t that many cars either, so you probably couldn’t have met up with anyone or attended any events anyway. You could only watch what was on tv, could only read what the local library or bookshop happened to stock. It was very isolating and lonely and I’m glad the world isn’t like that any more.

I was an art student in the 80's.

It was fun. But I hated the music. We listened to Velvet Underground cassettes on the cassette player in the studio.

It was grim. Very rainy. Thatcher. People were hard and mean-faced. Everything was grey.

It’s sad reading about those who suffered unemployment and hard times during that era.

We can only comment on what was happening to us at the time and our own personal experience and I am very grateful that my world at the time was wonderful.

We were known as Yuppies by the press and were fortunate to work in the banking industry where we were highly paid, given great perks and our working conditions were great.

A long way away from mining towns and people less fortunate.

I can understand how leading such different lives shapes your political views but for me, Mrs Thatcher was wonderful.

The biggest difference in education. We were the ones who took the blame for poor grades. Teachers (good or bad) just taught you and the blame was not passed to them if you didnt work.

I was aged 5-15 in the 80's so my childhood, I remember playing in the street as soon as we got home from school until tea time, all the neighbours kids would be out too so we'd have games of Ackey 123, bulldog, Tig etc and ride our bikes or rollerboots.

Dad worked for Radio Rentals which was a TV repair shop so he'd bring the latest telly's home at the weekend for us to try, I remember the first ones with a remote control which was a novelty although they only did the channel and volume, we also had a recorder that you loaded the tape in the top, the control for that had to be plugged in then trail the wire to wherever you were sitting.
He also used to borrow Atari consoles, they seemed so futuristic! In fact they were very basic with the early Pacman and Space Invader games.

Both parents smoked and the living room was always a haze of blue smoke with ashtrays on the table.

Early teens were spent sneaking into the over 16's disco at the local leisure centre, everyone seemed to get on better in those days, there was less bitchiness and bravado, there was no social media telling us what we should look like so looks weren't that important.

Donkey jackets stolen from proper working men
short hair
skintight stonewashed jeans
second hand DMs
Radio would shut down after John Peel
smugglIng radio into school and meeting the boys from the neighbouring school to listen to the midweek chart rundown at lunchtime.
dancing at working mens club to cheesy disco on a summer night
pineapple fritters were our go to once a week treat from the chippy by the beach
people playing Dare on their boomboxes that they had on their shoulders walking round town
going swimming all day, every day at the local new pool
bumping into lads who were over on cycling holidays for the summer
weird late night signals on the radio which apparently really were russian codes. We would listen to these for hours just chatting.
caked on make up, white lightning and cherry brandy liqueur chocolates.

bloody loved the 80s

I was born in 1980 and being 5-10 years old from 85-90 was just glorious. I remember my first day of school in August 1984.

It was a truly great time to be alive. Being in and around Glasgow in 1988 in particular was amazing. The Garden Festival, Celtic winning the double, being out and about all day with friends in the summer, kids TV, the amazing movies, music etc etc.

It was a glorious time to be a kid. I don’t think it looked as much fun to be an adult given the damage being done to working communities by Thatcher at the time, but my memories of the 80s are undeniably golden.

I was a teen in the 80’s. I don’t recall it being much different to today. My teens are having a fairly similar experience with the addition of social media. We didn’t travel as much or eat out quite a much but broadly the same as today

'support the miners' with the buckets rattling down Church Stree - yes!

We drove fiestas
We wore anais anais (if we could afford it)
Our fashion was tragic
We really worried about getting and keeping a job

Other than that just people living their lives exactly like now

I'm also from Liverpool and was a 'one in ten' at a few points - unemployment/threat of redundancy was a much greater feature of everyday life than it is now. Yes to all the shops being closed on a Sunday and only four TV channels!

However I did love the music, the clothes and the general 'style over substance' ethic Happy days.

I got married in the late eighties so after spending the early part of the eighties unemployed and saving like mad through the middle (mortgage queues meant you had to show regular saving) we were houseowners at the time interest rates hit 15 per cent at the end of it!

It wasn't exactly loadsamoney for us and I am always surprised when posters on MN seem to think it was a golden time to buy property

For anyone struggling with their sexuality the 80s were a really difficult time. It wasn't quite on the Alan Turing/Oscar Wilde level, it wasn't illegal to be gay, but it was acceptable to joke about gay people, Section 28 meant that schools wouldn't touch the issue, gay marriage only existed in the aforementioned jokes and there were rumours that the Lesbian and Gay Switchboard (a telephone support line for gay people) would recruit you to their 'cause' if you rang them. The emergence of HIV/AIDS didn't help.

The ironic thing is that much of the superb music that came out of the 80s was written and performed by gay people, both 'in the closet' and out. Boy George, George Michael, Freddie Mercury, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, the Pet Shop Boys...

I was 16 in 1982. i plans to marry Simon Le Bon

We watched bbc1 , BBC 2 and ITV. Channel 4 came along in the mid 80's.
Favourite programmes were
The Young Ones
Top of the Pops
Grange Hill

We wore
Pedal pushers
Ra-ra skirts
Boob tubes

Sun-in on our hair to lighten it
Lipcote over our lipstick
Anaïs Anaïs perfume

We or our boyfriends drove a MK 1 Fiesta, MK3 escort or a Golf GTI.

Hard to get a job. Long dole queues. Unemployment stats awful. High inflation.

Otherwise 80s were great.

The most important thing about the 80's for me was that shops were closed on Sundays. We spent time with family, there was always a huge Sunday roast cooked by my dad. Me and my sister cleaned out our rabbits. We played board games, watched films that we had recorded off the t.v. Played in our bedrooms. Sometimes grandparents joined us for dinner, that was always really exciting! We all mucked in clearing up from dinner, laughing and chatting. I often reminisce about Sundays back then. Very happy memories.

I was married on my second, third or fourth house depending on the year.
Had a perm, wore great clothes and women often wore Deirdre (Coronation Street) big glasses.
Went out a lot, cinema, drinking, and took as many holidays as possible.
Had to work hard against sex discrimination at work, was asked more than once by male managers when I was going to have a baby. Managed to get promoted despite them.
I liked 70s music better but I was a teen then and a bit of a hippy