How did we spend our time before phones?

[EmeliaKate]

Today has been a fairly regular day in our house..bits and pieces going on, none of it wildly exciting. I feel - like I do at the end of most days - that a large part of it has been punctuated by me scrolling through my phone. It's provided a bit of distraction in a fairly monotonous day but it's also left me feeling a bit...grubby.

I try and leave my phone charging on the landing so I can hear it if I get a message but I still find myself sitting on the top step whenever I go up or down the stairs, mindlessly scrolling through nonsense for a few minutes.

I can't even remember what life was like now before or how I used to fill my time, but I'm sure it was better than this

I think I used to read more and at least twice a week I'd have 2 hour long phone (landline) calls with my best friend

Read more. I always had a magazine or two on the go, as well as a book.

Watch/stare at TV
Read magazines

Scroll through pages of teletext
Play bamboozle

Yup, I used to read books at night. I followed soaps.

Having seen an 14 month old baby glued to an iPhone for an hour I’m wondering the same thing 😬

Soaps.
Books
Phone calls
Printed newspaper

Oh and crosswords. I've recently rekindled my love of them.

MSN/AOL messenger on the Desktop
Looking random shit up on Encarta or Ask Jeeves on said Desktop instead of Google
Reading Just Seventeen, Glamour, CosmoGirl instead of MN
Talking for hours on the landline, hanging up an hour and ringing straight back to keep the line free
Watching DVDs
Listening to CDs
Reading actual books
Drawing
Crafts
Hanging out with friends outside the house in parks etc

Playing the sims or other computer games. Going to the gym, reading, watching tv and actually following the plot

I definitely read more. And long phone calls, and more of them.

I defo read more and had a much longer attention span.
I think that I also was more productive; I got shit done because there was no phone tempting me away.

And I think I sometimes just literally did nothing. Like, I would sit and just daydream. My brain had to work a lot harder!

Good topic OP. Am following and plan to try to reduce phone/screen use. The alternatives described will help me rekindle old habits or develop new ones, I hope.

I noticed that before smart phones, I had a lot more sex in my relationships.

Read books, watch television, DVD's, listen to music, surf the Internet. I now do all these on my phone, if someone had told us 25 years ago that we would have a device that fits in our hand & we could do all of the above plus do our shopping whilst laying in bed, work from home in our pjs we would have laughed & called them idiots.

Well for me before phones was before kids so the dynamic have changed anyway.

Prior to having kids I'd have:

Exercised more
Read more
More TV or films
Cooked more
More sex

Before phones :

As above really

🤔

I don't think my life is much different. I only use my phone occasionally (& ignore it a lot of the time).

Books, TV, sports, knitting, embroidery, board games?

We spoke to each other

This and the mumsnet addiction thread are leading me to some stark truths.

Definitely read more. Went out more. Used landline to TALK to friends. I hate talking on phone now, would much prefer to text. Went bed earlier!

Read more definitely. Something I'm aiming to improve over the summer.

If you look at tv viewing figures and compare, a lot more tv watching.

Speaking to friends instead of texting them (although tbh I prefer texting)
Reading (which I still do quite a bit of)
Endlessly scrolling through Mumsnet on laptop instead of on phone 😆

Books. You rarely see anyone on a commuter train or bus now with a book, whereas before smartphones it was common.