What did you do as a teenager that would never be allowed to happen now?

[slippyfeet]

Reading threads today, one in particular about teenagers having phones has got me thinking about how times are so different now and the sort of things myself and my friends got up to as teens that just wouldn't happen in a widespread way today. Mostly a good thing, from a safety perspective, some of the things we did were downright dangerous and stupid. I was a teenager in the late 90's early 00's.

For me it would be:

• Arranging sleepovers where we'd all say we were staying at someone else's house when in fact we were all just staying out overnight, usually with a bottle of something alcoholic and the local teenage boys
• Sneaking out from sleepovers to wander villages in our pyjamas, god knows why
• Going to nightclubs and pubs underage (pre-photo ID being a thing)
• Watching films at the cinema that we were too young for
• Sneaking magazines with sex in them (hello MORE Magazine) to read about when parents were in bed
• Playing spin the bottle, properly, with the boys

Most of ours revolved around illicit alcohol actually. I should add that we all grew up unharmed to be responsible drinkers with good jobs and families now, in our mid thirties (I still have mostly the same friends!)

Most of your list but also me and my friends all had boyfriends 18 or 19 when we were aged 14/15 they would collect us from school in their cars this was 80s

Same age as you.

-parents going out for the night so 16/17 year olds could have a house party
-getting trains across the country at 16 to stay with a boy I’d met for 5 minutes a year prior Still friends with him now actually 15 years on, but I’d freak out if dd did the same!

• Having older friends that took me clubbing
• ‘camping’ ie pitching tents up in a random field for a few days and just drinking. That was v good fun, though no idea what I told my parents I was doing!

-raving. Oh the raving! Convoys of hundreds of cars and riot police at the big parties. Madness to look back on it now.

I really hope dd is nothing like me when she’s older!

Oh and I’ve grown up sensibly now: good job, mortgage, child etc. So my escapades didn’t turn me into a hooligan!

Lots of yours, but also being allowed to the local pub 2-3 nights a week - even school nights from age 13.

Older boyfriends (18-20) being totally ‘the norm’

No parental involvement with university open days (this actually I think was better)

We were just generally more independent and ultimately it built confidence. Some things now I’d have preferred to have been clamped down on - I needed more sleep than I got so I should have been in the local with friends until 11, and looking back now there was a level of sexual activity from the older boyfriends which feels gross.

Older boyfriends with cars...id go beserk if my 15yr dd even suggested this! The hypocrisy😂

These things still happen 🤷‍♀️

Oh god yes, the house parties. Never had one at my house (sensible mum!) but I went to many. Usually at my friends house who had an older brother. From about age 13, and we all drank those packs of cheap Tesco stubby bottles of beer and lambrini. The 16th birthday parties were messier than the 30th's I think!

Funnily enough though none of us had underage sex (plenty of other stuff but not sex) and no one took drugs either.

I hope my daughters (who are still tiny) grow up much more like their sensible and generally well behaved father than me!

I am 39. I used to stay with my friend in the summer from age 13 till 17 and we would be out from 9am till 8pm. She lived in the country and no one would know where we were. No phones and no phone boxes.

Her parents would travel with work and we would be in the house alone and would go out to see her boyfriend on the other side of the village, walking across the fields in the dark. We would camp out in the woods in big mixed sex groups and drink alcohol that one of them had bought from a farmer. We had no way of contacting anyone at all and it was all sex and alcohol all summer. The thing was, all of the parents knew we were all camping out together and walking around in the dark.

I can't see any parents being so relaxed about it all now.

Oh and I agree about the older boyfriends. My first serious boyfriend at 14 was 18 and no one batted an eyelid when I would go out in his car

Yep, I had a 19 year old working boyfriend when I was only just 16. Who I met in a nightclub that I shouldn't have been in.

No one batted an eyelid.

Going clubbing aged 14, not being asked for ID. Being served copious amounts of alcohol and walking home through the (now very dodgy) park. I shudder just thinking about a 14 yr old doing it these days.

Oh and yes, I had a 19 yr old boyfriend aged 13. For about 3 weeks. I dumped because, well it's just fucking wierd isn't it, and thankfully I could see it even then.

We went to several parties at teacher houses in the sixth form where lore of drinking and inappropriate conversations were happening.

Also was common to drink in the same pub on school day lunchtime.

Ah yes, uni open days. It horrifies me that parents muscle in to their children’s open days now.

“They wanted me to go with them”. Hmmm, really?

Soooo many but I was from a neglectful home so many of the things I did growing up weren’t standard, even then!

I remember I didn’t come home for 3 days aged 15 and no one even asked where I was.

Also routinely skiving off school when you fancied. Now I believe there's lots of automatic parent notifications if your child doesn't turn up isn't there? My friends and I were clever (but badly behaved). Miss a lesson and someone will notice because you've gone missing. Just don't go for a whole day and they will assume you're sick or something and no one will know. A few times a year we'd all 'leave for school' and just go to a friends house whose mum worked long hours for the day all day. Although the teachers must have twigged when all four of us weren't in for a day together. We never got found out though, they must've not cared.

Nightclubbing at 15 until 2am and coming home in a taxi.

Oh yes the skiving! I used to hide in the woods behind my house having pretended to get the bus, and wait for my parents to go to work.

I never enjoyed it as I spent the whole time panicking they were about to come home again. How I passed my exams I’ll never know.

I think a lot of it was not caring, I got 50% attendance once in year 9 and no one ever spoke to me about it. If I didn’t want to go, I just didn’t. No one ever chased me for a note. I used to walk out of school, no one asked why.

We used to go and see bands a lot when we were 15, and the indie scene was happening so the clubs were great!

I'm a little younger and was a teen in the 2000s but definitely did some of these!

-Definitely said I was staying at a friend's and went out camping/drinking instead.
-Snuck into nightclubs using borrowed photo ID or doctored photocopies of passports.
-Friends had 18/19yo boyfriends at 14. And yes we would go out in their cars!
-And yes got a train across country at 16 to stay with a boy I barely knew!

And yes, I skived off school a fair bit and nobody really chased it up - including leaving school at break/lunch and not coming back on a few occasions . I actually think my school should have been hotter on this as anything could have happened to me!

Drinking in pubs from age 14
Staying out all night at parties with complete strangers, with my parents not knowing where I was (they never even noticed I wasn't home. They never used to sit up and wait for us to come in or give curfews.)
Not turning up for school for an entire term during my O level year and no one chasing up where I was or why.
Hitchhiking from the North East to London and sleeping on station platforms when I got there.
Hitchhiking to Edinburgh and sleeping on park benches.

All under the age of 16.

@Frith2013 - I think parents go to uni open days now because they are paying thousands of pounds each year whereas uni education used to be free. Only fair to check whether the cours eis worth paying for. I know several families who have forked out thousands and the course was a waste of time with next to no tuition and a heavy drop out rate. I don;t think it's just precious darling syndrome.

Went hitchhiking round Europe the summer after O'levels . I was 16and 2 months and boyfriend was 17 and a half. Mum helped pack my backpack !

My friend and I went to see La Bamba at the cinema and snuck in with Bacardi and coke in a coke bottle. We got kicked out after getting too merry and singing (badly).
We were 15 🙈.

A lot of teacher/pupil or youth worker/youth relationships. They were commonplace. And 15 year olds who bagged an adult partner were treated with real respect. I met my first boyfriend when I was 16 (in school uniform) and he was 23, already out of uni with a house, a job, a car, a fiancee I didn't know about who he dumped when we met . Totally accepted and unquestioned by anyone.