what was it like being a teen in the early 2000’s?

[neroforte]

as a teen myself in 2021, i love early 2000’s emo/sceneish fashion, music etc. i’d love to know what it was actually being a teen in this time? (bonus if you were emo/punk/goth etc!)

Oh and MSN and MySpace they were the best!

Bertie, sounds like we could have been in the same sort of places around the same time. I was exactly the same in terms of music/ fashion taste and worked in a rock pub in Birmingham for a bit so was always off out to the rock clubs after work finished. It was a great scene in those days - no idea what it's like now!

I was a ‘mosher’ according to twats at school, mid 00s rather than early though. Did get into Avril Lavigne in the early 00s and started wearing camo tank tops with a tie wrapped around it and big baggy jeans which were always soaked at the bottom from puddles… I wanted a dog chain too but my Mum drew the line at that (I was probably about 10 at the time ).

In the mid 00s when I really found my way I dyed my hair every colour under the sun, had about 30 piercings at one point and used to like shopping at the corn exchange in Leeds. Loved going to gigs and getting involved in a mosh pit. Loved annoying my mum blasting bullet for my Valentine, system of a down and rage against the machine too. I had a weird hoodie that had cat ears at one point and purposely ripped my school tights and wore doc marten boots to school or plain black vans.

Sorry forgot to add this was around 2004 and well into 2010 (ish)!

@PenelopeP1tstop

It makes me feel really uncomfortable to be engaging with teenagers on here. If they are teenagers, of course.

i’m also a mum, i have as much right to be on here as you and all the others mums on here, my age doesn’t make a difference at all

Oh yeah, MySpace… loved MySpace, I’d spend whole days at a time just fucking about with HTML codes.

I used to buy weird powdery eye shadow in green or blue and wore that all around my eyes. So weird looking back.

I was 14 in 2000. I loved my teens in the early 2000s. I was mostly into hardcore punk, and tried to avoid even the alternative trends - jeans and band t-shirts for me. Concert tickets were so cheap, so lots of gigs, but a lot were in pubs and 18+ only so I missed out on a lot of bands. Had many arguments with my parents who wouldn’t let me go, despite the fact I’d never have got in. I used to hang out with my friends who were all skateboarders and go home to chat to them on MSN messenger. It was great having cheap access to the internet after the days of 1p per minute, and I spent every free second posting on a message board for my favourite band. I met my first boyfriend and my best friend on that forum. It felt like it was a time of nothing exciting happening, but in retrospect it was fantastic.

I was 12 in 2000 so younger than some of you.

By the time I started going out to pubs at 16 they really were checking ID, so the best way to get in was either to go early before the bouncers were out or borrow someone's spare ID. There were always some places that were easier to get into than others. Then you'd send whoever was 18 to the bar and most of the time you'd go unnoticed. We did get kicked out of a few places if the police were out doing a sweep for underage drinkers. It tended to be challenge 21 rather than challenge 25 so if you said confidently enough "I didn't bring ID, I'm 23!!" sometimes you'd get away with it.

Smoking was a bit less cool by then, not everyone did it and that was OK - I don't know what it's like now. I used to smoke not to feel rebellious but because I enjoyed it. I don't do it any more for health reasons and not wanting to be a bad example to my kids, but I sometimes miss it.

We drank spirits with coke, or Lager and lime or cider. WKD and smirnoff ice was also popular. Red bull and vodka if you were clubbing or loaded, but that was later in the decade really.

I was 15 in 2004. Huge baggy jeans and tiny tops. Had my lip pierced and had many different colours in my hair. Listened to funeral for a friend, alexisonfire, brand new, taking back sunday, the used, killswitch engage, atreyu etc. Lots of all dayer gigs, missing trains back from shows in London, drinking beer. MSN messenger and MySpace. Still had dial up internet too. Downloaded all our music and films from torrent sites. My boyfriend would set a film up to download ALL WEEK for to watch the next weekend. He had broadband before me but still only got like 30kb/s download speeds. We had shit phones, but we had phones. I think it was a great time to be a teenager. Could get new music online, buy tickets to go places, learn about new stuff and culture online and talk to friends but no real social media. I see it as best of both worlds. Would be horrendous to be that age with Instagram I think.

The Internet felt like an amazing secret place/club that grown ups and the "popular kids" didn't know about. I loved it!

I did my GCSEs in 2000. I had a purple velvet cape that I was completely in love with, used vaseline to stick sequin stars to my face and used my sister's membership pass for the local goth nightclub to get in.

Oh and a good Saturday was meeting friends in town (by the fountain in front of McDonald's) and you had to be on time because none of us had mobiles. Go round the shops, maybe see if there was something good on at the cinema, if we were organised we'd have checked the listings in the paper or on ceefax. Then bus back to the local shops near home, rent a film from blockbusters and buy sweets and ice cream from safeway then back to my house.

I was a "Greebo" (spent teenage years in Suffolk and that was the term for us!) I used to wear enormous trousers with tiny t shirts, armfuls of plastic bracelets and everything Hello Kitty that I could get my hands on! Loved Green Day, The Offspring, Blink 182, Jimmy Eat World etc. In a constant battle with the "Townies" at school who used to wear a lot of Kappa and want to listen to Garage in the Year 11 common room.
Me and my friends used to go to the under 18s rock night at the Corn Exchange in Ipswich and we would get the oldest looking person in the group to buy us booze from the dodgy corner shops nearby who would cheerfully serve a 15 year old.
Spent a lot of time on MSN messenger and then on MySpace from 2004ish. Did a huge amount of stupid things with boys for which I'm glad there were no smartphones to record.

Ah, @polexiaaphrodesia I had the plastic bracelets (we called them shag bands!! ) and battles with the townies many of them had those gold clown necklaces from argos!

Still love Jimmy Eat World too.

On borrowed time tonight, so looking forward to catching up and writing in more detail tommorow, but yes to PP who talked about HMTL code perfection and the Internet being a "safe space" for expression.
MSN was huge: sad story, a friend a few year younger than me reaching out. As I was leaving for my favourite rock club, went on to take his life that night.
For everyone on the outside, he was alternative, but kind hearted and popular, won't go into details on how his body was found, but it was shocking and I think in some ways today's "opening up" about mental health, will help certain people.
Will also add, for how safe I felt amongst my peers, you were also likely to he preyed upon with elders.

I was grunger/goth, walked around in massive wide leg jeans that could absorb an entire lake, several chains attached to them along with band patches everywhere.
I lived in band tees and band hoodies. I cut holes in the wrists for my thumbs. I loved to wear Lolita dresses, corsets, sometimes I’d dress up punky or cyber gothy etc, I had these amazing hair “extensions” made of latex and cloth 😂
I used to go nuts with my eyeliner aswell and draw patterns around my eyes, always wore a choker, fishnets and stripes! (Sk8r Boi).
I had a huge group of friends, we were like a horde and all hung out in one or two areas in our town, we were one big family.
I was (still am) obsessed with linkin park, evanescence, korn, Metallica, Slipknot etc, nu metal is my favourite genre.
I really enjoyed my teen years and had a lot of fun!

It was amazing. I look back fondly. I was a "mosher" to begin with, I've been goth ever since. I have a child of my own now. I found my people then and really haven't changed much. It was a great time to be a teen.

In 2000, I had a Polaroid camera - I remember bringing it to the pub and my friends and I all took photos of each other. No selfies - that would have seemed very weird.

I didn’t use the internet much back then, but I remember having a few conversations with strangers on chatrooms, before the novelty wore off. The internet was dial up, I remember many households argued over phone/internet use. If someone was using the internet you couldn’t use the landline.

I had a mobile, but it definitely wasn’t a smartphone. You could text though, and we used all the abbreviations - “RUOK?”, “2moro”, “w8” etc.

It was utterly horrible to have big boobs/ be anything other than skinny.

Section 28 was only repealed in 2003 and homophia was still latent.

The McPherson enquiry into institutional racism had only just been published, in 1999.

There was a remarkable amount of latent misogyny in the media but 'girl power' was quite recent and it felt as though we were gaining our voices. Sexual harrassment, groping, were just things you had to deal with though if someone grabbed you in public you'd yell them out.

Social media was non-existent. Mobile phones could text and call, and that was about it. We didn't self - regulate in the way I perceive teenagers today do because they're wary of being photographed - digital cameras were barely a thing, and you would struggle to share the photos anyway.

After 9/11 the invasion of Afghanistan and the dotcom crash took an edge off the optimism, but climate change seemed far off and the UK felt like a world player.

I had an arm full of shag bands, huge wide jeans held up by a shoe lace belt, ridiculously wide skate shoes , riding and hanging out at the skate park all day. Habbo Hotel, MySpace, MSN and a 3310

Well I became a teen 2004-2005 so just make the cut! Im late 20s now.

I met one of my best friends on MSN chat in 2004 when we were 13, he is a guy and we are still great friends today. Yes also myspace where you'd rate friends from 1-10! We also had a Bebo and we also built our own websites using a platform called picso (I think?)

Yeah I also went through an emo phase. Tbh though I didn't feel pressure to lose weight or anything. The thing I liked about that time was you were only on platforms where all your other friends hang out.

Now teens have to deal with Instagram and everything where there is more pressure to look a certain way. At least that's how my 16 years old feel and it takes a toll on their self esteem (I'm a teacher).

I was at university in 2000. Not sure I was emo but it was a great time! Definitely recognise the flared jeans / courdroys that covered your shoes. I wore these constantly and when it rained they would absorb the puddles all the way up to my knees and become so heavy they started to fall down. I loved them though and wore them every day with mini t-shirts. My favourite was a Hogwarts one.

I was a young mum, turned 18 in 2000 with a one year old. £10 was enough for a night out, £1 alcopops and guys buying drinks for girls 😂 Smoking in clubs. Bootcut jeans and a ‘nice top’ for going out. Those French Connection FCUK tops we thought were edgy. Mobile phones with 100 free texts a month, and 10p each after that.

Early 2000s you wore flared jeans, lowcut with a showing pink thong. It would then rain and the bottoms would get soaked and travel up your leg. This was typically teamed with a spaghetti strap top, most often in black or pink(think Girls' Aloud Sound of the Underground video)

If you dyed your hair a weird colour, like I did, it was red or purple. None of this blue hair malarkey. Most people had stripey chunky highlights and layers though.
We plucked our eyebrows thin and wore very shiny lipgloss. No one was good at makeup and we went out as full blown Monet's see clueless

Everyone owned the same belt (made up.of little circles) around 2004-5. UGG boots were relatively fashionable and again we're another disappointment in the rain. As was your hair in pre ghd early straightener days

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We passively aggressively changed our msn names to song lyrics and changed our status' to 'appear offline' and back again to get attention from boys we liked.
Boys were mostly terrible (that hasn't changed)

In the early 00s we stayed in to watch our favourite episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sex and the City and Friends. We video recorded Ally McBeal before upgrading to illegally downloading Desperate Housewives and Lost(Getting more disappointed as the series's went on)
James Blunt was our Ed Sheeran and everyone had that Snow Patrol album.

We had flip phones and anyone with a blackberry was envied and mocked.

We knew everything and older generations were sad and out of touch. We applied this knowledge to all aspects of our lives: from voting Liberal Democrat to dying our hair gingery blonde with Sun in.