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!)

I was 11 in 2000, first year of high school. At my school you were either: 1) peasant blouses and circle belts with Britney Spears low-rise bootcut/flared jeans, often accessorised with a pointless tiny Playboy handbag. For the boys - think Simon from the Inbetweeners.
2) Mosher (this then morphed into either Emo or Metalhead) - baggy jeans, multi-layered t-shirts, wallet chains, skate trainers (the more padded the better). This sub-set also included your skaters a-la Sum 41, Offspring etc, or for the more faint-hearted ahem Avril Lavigne. Wallet chains then made way for the studded belts and jeans started getting skinnier around the time of American Idiot. These were also The Gamers - playing Fifa did not count, and you rarely found anyone who played proper games in other groups.
3) Neds. Shell-suited, aggressive, too much hair gel (both sexes). Took great pride in doing an elaborate middle finger that involved their thumb also sticking out.

Universal through all of this was MSN, MySpace (or Bebo). MySpace became more music orientated so group 2 tended to MySpace more. Oh the angst of organising your top friends.

I was group 2 - holy multiple ear piercings, Batman.

I also had the massive flared jeans and cords. At clubs or gigs you’d end up with the bottom of your trousers soaked in beer and god knows what else! Loads of black eyeliner (top and bottom) and straightened hair. Loads of those brightly coloured plastic beaded bracelets up my arm and studded belts/chokers. Pierced lip.

I was a bit young for MySpace or Bebo - email was just becoming a thing when I was at sixth form and I remember waiting aaaages for the dial up internet to connect to see if I had a message. Mobiles were just coming in but were only for texting or calls and not everyone had one.

We listened to nirvana, green day, foo fighters, system of a down, rage against the machine, Jimmy eat world, nu metal stuff, and loads of smaller/local bands. Later I also got into ska and punk. We mostly got music on CDs but I had a Sony Walkman that played cassette tapes and used that into the early 2000s - I’d borrow CDs from the library and copy them onto tapes or make mix tapes.

My town it was hard to get into pubs/clubs underage (and I was very uncool and young looking) so in sixth form we’d smoke weed in the park, or go to house parties. Once I was 18 and at uni we’d go to gigs and rock clubs, usually in basement venues where there’d be sweat dripping off the ceiling and half an inch of beer and fag ends on the floor. Fun times!

David and Goliath / Emily Strange T-shirts ( I reaaaaly wanted the Emily Strange hoodie with paws and cat ears on!)

We were all obsessed with Skins.

Hahaha I love this! I was a bit emo/scene. Fallout Boy were everything. Spent every night on MSN and MySpace, going to gigs in the tightest hottest black jeans and tight tee shirts and converse
My hair was blonde and brown and I went behind my parents back and got several facial piercings!
It feels like a distant memory now. It's funny OP, because when I was a pre-teen I was obsessed with the 80s and wish I had been a teen then!

Epic. It was epic.
I was a garage girl with a slight hang on from the late 90’s britpop era. Bundling as many mates in your car as you could, sitting in foot wells, boots, laps and off you go.

Had a test boyfriend who put a stop to too much fun. But for 18 months it was epic.

Oh reminiscing!

Yes to massive flares that got soaked at the bottom in the rain.

Wearing a handbag to secondary school and having folders sticking out the top because it was hugely impractical.

Wearing jeans around your arse.

Legally buying cigarettes at 16 and smoking indoors!

Wearing huge, full length skirts and a massive belt, shaped with circles.

Belts with studs the whole way round.

Jeans that restricted your breathing they were so tight.

Wearing hair half up: straightening fringe and then putting a whole can of mousse on the bottom half to get crisp curls.

Lyrics as your MSN name in a weird font.

Appearing online and then offline repeatedly, just in case the person you liked was away from their computer and didn't realise you were available to talk to. Spoiler: they did, they just didn't want to talk to you (me) 😂 😂.

@prsphne I'm possibly a bit older than you. I was 15 in 2000.
I was also not cool enough to be part of any 'scene' haha. The hair colour choices were black, plum or red if you were alternative, chunky highlights of you weren't. I think some peoples would have branched out into coloured streaks, but no one had full heads of blue, green or pink hair like today!
No one under 18 got their hair done by a professional. It was all boxed colours.

This is my favourite mumsnet post of all time, so much nostalgia. What a time to be alive.

[quote ListenLinda]@waitingforwinter are you me? Haha you’ve described my experience to a T [/quote]
🤣🤣 @ListenLinda It was a great time, wasn’t it?!

I was a teen in the early 90's and think it was the best time!!

i started secondary early 00s, 9/11 actually happened the second day! 😕 crazy stuff remember every teacher having the radio on and walking into Art and my teacher watching it on the tv and how strange the atmosphere was.

it was i think, a simpler time just before the influx of social media.

@PasstheBucket89 oh gosh, yes of course! I had just started year 7 too. I remember that our lessons were cancelled for the afternoon and we watched the news unfold on the tv in our form rooms.

Totally forgot about the studded belts. I had a white one and wore it everywhere at one point. My friend had one made with his name flashing across it in LED lights . Some people wore the Jesus rocks belts as well despite definitely not being religious, I never had one of those! The boys had long fringes swept over their face, some girls did too. I used to backcomb my hair and douse it in half a tin of hairspray at one point.

We did take selfies too but from above and we’d usually be looking down so all you could see was our big hair and checkered vans…

Skinny jeans of all different colours were popular too. I had red, purple and orange ones I believe- all from primark and definitely worn with either converse or vans.

We all loved watching skins. Some people liked misfits too but I never got into that. I liked Hollyoaks at that point too, there was an emo kid who had schizophrenia. Think he was called Newt or something, had a big crush on him anyway.

I preferred classic rock, punk and ‘heavier’ stuff like Rage against the machine but some of my friends preferred ‘pop punk’ like Jimmy eat world and blink 182.

A couple of my friends were really into Mcfly but I thought they were completely lame. They dragged me along to a CD signing one day and I didn’t have a choice but to buy the bloody album, you had to buy it to get in so I had a useless mcfly album I knew I’d never listen to and I stood rolling my eyes nonchalantly as my friends got excited in the queue. They were practically falling over themselves when it was our turn to talk to them but I really wanted to get out of there ASAP! I just remember Dougie complimenting my leopard print creepers and asking to see them up close and I died a bit inside because that lame twat thought my shoes were cool 😂. As it goes, I own and read his plastic sucks book to my DC now so he isn’t so bad!

@PasstheBucket89

i started secondary early 00s, 9/11 actually happened the second day! 😕 crazy stuff remember every teacher having the radio on and walking into Art and my teacher watching it on the tv and how strange the atmosphere was.

it was i think, a simpler time just before the influx of social media.

I had a part time job and all of a sudden everyone started heading to the break room, and we were all just stood staring in shock at the news footage showing the planes hitting the twin towers. Everyone was silent, some people had tears rolling down their faces, no one could believe what we were seeing.

It's the first time I can remember ever being truly aware and affected by the news myself. Although I have vivid memories of my mum sat staring at the news channels in disbelief for hours when princess Diana died.

I'd forgotten the super baggy trousers with straps and chains hanging off them, they were sooooo cool, I remember loving mine even though they were heavy, the back hem was ragged from dragging the floor and they absorbed every drop of water in every puddle I walked near 😂

Inflatable bags was another one although if I remember correctly that was more a late 90s thing that early 00s. I had a blow up pink messenger bag, had to be careful what you put in it as completely see through and didn't want it to pop.

A couple of weeks ago I fell down a YouTube pop punk rabbit hole. I had the urge to listen to “Girl All The Bad Guys Want” and then 2 hours later I was still watching videos.

I was a teen in the mid 2000s.

Bebo was more popular than MySpace. I never joined either though
I owned a black shirt and red tie because I wanted to look like Billie Jo Armstrong
Studded belts
Impractical Handbags for school
Taking your P.E. Kit to school in a Jane Norman carrier bag
black very skinny jeans
Barry m eyeshadow
Very heavy fake tan phase
Literal grease paint in a shade called “clown white” worn on my face phase
Trigger Warning: Self harming

But tbh I'm not overly nostalgic about being a teenager. I didn’t have any friends. I wasn’t happy.

OP what's your take on 9/11?

Like I thinks it's probably hard for those of us who lived through it to articulate just what a massive impact it had, I'm curious to know how it's perceived by your generation?

It was wonderful.
Everything seemed so much easier then. Everyone seemed happier and more excited about life in general.
I remember listening to Pulp ‘Disco 2000’ and the bit that goes “let’s all meet up in the year 2000, won’t it be strange when we’re all fully grown?”

I hear it now and it seems like only yesterday.

I didn’t get a mobile phone till I was 18 so at 16 I had a Motorola pager 📟 which always seemed pointless as unless I was at home I couldn’t respond to any messages that were sent to me
I was a massive Suede fan and has posters of Brett Anderson covering my bedroom walls (and ceiling) much to my mums annoyance. I’d go to the pub (aged 15/16) with my mates and drink Archers and lemonade or Malibu
On our breaks at College we’d sit in the local shopping centre smoking Silk Cut and sharing a portion of chips between 6/7 of us.
I’d wear boots from Mr Shoe with the biggest, chunkiest heels I could find - because being 5’11 barefoot wasn’t tall enough already!

Meh…take me back

@MargotEmin

OP what's your take on 9/11?

Like I thinks it's probably hard for those of us who lived through it to articulate just what a massive impact it had, I'm curious to know how it's perceived by your generation?

@MargotEmin That’s a great question for @neroforte actually! I’ve never really thought about how it’s perceived by the younger generation. I was only 12 but remember the feeling I had watching it unfold on tv like it was yesterday 😔 just the most horrific day!

Oh yeah...so many choices of belts. Who remembers belts that were like plane seatbelts?

@LushHeaven

Oh yeah...so many choices of belts. Who remembers belts that were like plane seatbelts?

Yes! I can't remember when I switched from those to my beloved studded belts. Possibly when I shifted from skater to more emo in style.

I remember 9/11 like it was yesterday. We had our S1 assembly that day and when we went in the teachers were all acting odd and there was talk of the towers getting blown up. It wasn't until we got the school bus home that we realised the magnitude of what had actually happened because you couldn't just check the news on your phone or whatever.

Ah, the noughties. I was 13 in 2003.

I was a girly girl so was into Britney, Christina and J.Lo, I used to wear Juicy tracksuits and big hoop earrings to look like her.

Flared jeans that used to drag on the floor and get soaked and ripped in puddles.

Portable CD players and you used to have to take your CDs out with you.

Everyone had a Jane Norman bag to take to school. Stripy blonde highlights in your hair!

9/11 was such a somber experience, I had just started secondary school and we had a big assembly.

I was 15 in the year 2000 and caught the last of the rave generation. For me it was all about an all night rave or free party.

Everyone at school smoked. There would be clouds of it coming from behind the science block or at the end of the school field. We also all got served in the pub from about 15. In all honestly teenagers seemed more wild than they do today. Social media wasn’t a thing, people had mobiles, but most rarely had credit. I’d go off for days and my parents wouldn’t really know where I was, seems unthinkable now to allow a 15/16 year old to do that!

I was all about the massive flared jeans and cords that soaked up the water whenever it rained.

I was in my last year of school when 9/11 happened. I can remember very clearly coming home from school and my mum sitting in front the the tv with tears screaming down her face, watching the horror unfold. It’s a scene I’ll never forget.

In a way I feel sorry for today’s teens. They live their lives through a lens, everything is on SM and so much of their lives is virtual. Also parents are much more closely involved in their lives it seems today. They don’t have as much opportunity to just get up to no good!

I think I must have been 13 when 9/11 happened, but I was quite a young 13. I didn't feel/understand the magnitude of it at all.

I could tell it was a major disaster of course, but I didn't really get why it was different to any other major disaster.

Also I don't feel like anything since has compared to it, which seems...weird? Like the calibration is off somehow. But someone else mentioned Diana dying and that felt similar in the way all the adults became obsessed by it and it was all over the TV all the time.

But then again there have been news stories since that I've been horrified and obsessed by, like the plane that was "accidentally" shot down, the one that just went totally missing off the coast of Australia, Grenfell tower, Brexit results, that latest suspect in the McCann case, the US White House breach, and I suppose I didn't put those stories on the TV and keep it on all day for updates (except for Brexit), I just kept refreshing online news pages and kept it away from the DC. So I think perhaps it is more that the way we consume news has changed. In 2001 if you wanted up to date information, the best place to get that WAS the TV, and there weren't discreet online streams, so the most accessible TV was probably the one in the living room.

I was a emo/alternative. Side leg skater jeans, chains, dog collar, head scarf. Listened to evanescence, green day, Linkin Park. Had bright red hair