Were things really boring in the 80s?

[Egyptiancottonhouse]

I was born in the 80s, grew up in the 90s but it's difficult to imagine now how things were.

I'm watching reruns of Brookside from 82 I think.

It's very nostalgic but things must have been so boring, although people didn't know any different. I don't think most of us today would cope without the Internet, TV on demand, online shopping, social media.

Being able to research anything you want in a second, look up a recipe, look at a map and street view.

The Internet really has changed our lives beyond recognition.

No not at all, you don't miss what you've never had and all that!

Life was much simpler, and smaller then, but definitely not boring.

I was born in the early 70's, I remember being bored out of my brains on Sundays as nothing was open!

I was born in the 70s and grew up in the 80s. I went all the way through university in the 90s, got a degree without the internet or email. Essays were handwritten. I didn't really use the internet until working in the early 2000s.

Things were not boring. 😂

We went to the shops, we met with friends, we talked to each other. We wrote letters. We read newspapers - we had a morning paper delivered and then bought the evening newspaper. We watched the news. We went to libraries. We had maps.

Yes the internet has changed things. Brought in many conveniences. But not all the change has been for the better.

I don't think most of us today would cope without the Internet, TV on demand, online shopping, social media

I have just spent a week abroad on holiday. Without internet, mobile phone, TV, online shopping or social media. It was brilliant. I coped fine.

No, it wasnt! I went to the library to study, read the paper every day, people talked to each other rather than staring at their phones constantly. I read loads of books, went to the pub with my mates ( do young people still do that?) I went dancing, to the theatre and cinema, to more restaurants than I should have, concerts and also watched quite a lot of telly.

it was boring sitting on a train if you had forgotten your book but that's about it.

No, it was better. I was never bored personally, I had loads of books, it was easier to play out with friends, radio was a constant companion etc.

It was also less stressful in some ways, the biggest thing for me was being able to switch off mentally. Now we are bombarded with bad news constantly through TV, internet, social media. This started in the 90s with the upsurge of 24 hour news channels etc.

The cold war was a constant existential threat in the 80s, but now it's Russia, environment, covid etc all hanging over our heads no matter how much we "detox".

Access to information and entertainment has improved beyond recognition.

Yet we as a society are more insular, narrow-minded, lonelier, plagued with mental health struggles than people were in the 80s.

The 80s were brilliant!

The music was good, the fashions were fun, I saw loads of amazing bands in concert, there were good comedy programmes on TV, I got a degree, worked abroad, slept with lots of sexy men, had fun with my friends without the pressure of social media making us feel terrible about the way we looked!

Boring?! Pah! 😁

No. It was lovely. But things were made to last, so buying new wasn't necessary a lot of the time.

I too was born in the 80s but OH MY DAAAYS I wish I had have experienced it for all its glory.

Take me there anyday! Please!

I think if you're not careful if can be more boring with the Internet.

It's great to be able find info quickly, but it's very easy to spend all your time looking at things you could do rather than going out and doing them.

I used to go once a week to the library to look up what I needed for the week's homework. I'd go with friends. That wasn't boring.

Sounds dreamy ❤️

I would really miss the www now, but back in the 80's I met DH, got married, bought a house, birthed our first child and got pregnant with our second. No, not boring at all.

No. Not really. Teen obsessions were facing outwards into music, clothes, politics (sometimes). Not all this narcissistic crap about identity nor the Maoist determination to shut down anyone who doesn't comply.

I read music newspapers, listened to John Peel and whoever was on before him, bought clothes in charity shops and customised them. Somehow, I got along without having 24 hr access to porn or fast fashion.

Why would it have been be boring? Were the 70's or 60's boring?
Do you think people have been bored for the whole of history up until the internet?
Life still happened!

All of the above plus the joy of pub debates that could go on for hours without any of that tedious fact-checking on the Internet.

Music went through what I would consider a bad boring period in the second half of the decade, for many there were long periods of unemployment, but I would not describe the 80s as boring. Very different though.

I was a young adult in the 1980s. We went out a lot as we had to meet in person. I do regret losing touch with people, which wouldn't happen now with social media.

There were a lot of music venues attached to pubs and I photographed bands in the evening. I had a darkroom set up in my flat, joined a photographic society and exhibited pics.

Rents were more affordable and I lived on my own in inner London from my early 20s despite a low salary.

Fashion was exuberant (check out some of the hairstyles), men could be flamboyant and wear make-up, and no one considered that gender benders were really the opposite sex.

Having said that, I'd struggle to cope without the internet now - and, in the 1980s as now, I'd be lost without the public library.

No! It was exciting in terms of music and fashion. And people went out and socialised a lot more (comparing myself as a teen to my dc.) Not sure how we ever learnt anything new but we seemed to.

The 80’s was the best decade IMO.

Of course they weren't boring. I was there and in my teens/20's.

sundays. Shops were shut. Apart from garden centres which my parents used to drag me round for hours.

I think all the new technology has pros and cons. As a teen in the 80s there was a lot more 'looking forward' to things than my own teens have. Eg. watching episodes of TV shows each week as they aired, waiting for a film to be at the cinema or released on video (sometimes years later, and then having to go on a waiting list to rent it from the local video shop), planning trips out etc in advance. This created a sense of excitement and shared experience that I think is sometimes lacking now that we can binge watch several series of a TV show and don't want to discuss with friends as they have watched more/less than we have. Trips out seem less planned as everyone just whatsapps to say where they are etc. Visiting somewhere new also seems less exciting, as everyone has watched videos of the area/read 500 reviews of each hotel/restaurant/attraction. There seems to be much less of a sense of discovering new places for yourself- although obviously the other side of this is that now we are much less likely to go somewhere that turns out to be rubbish or get lost looking for somewhere.

I also think sometimes teens feel less able to 'switch off' than we did. They feel they need to check their phones all the time or risk missing something exciting/not being part of the discussion etc. Nowadays teens also know that anything they do/wear etc is likely to be photographed/videod and may be shared on social media. Back in the 80s, I once had a 'make over' with a couple of friends before going in to town for the afternoon. I ended up wearing a canary yellow polka dotted jump suit and my makeup was my friend's facial bronzer, yellow eye shadow and blue mascara. As a very pale red head, the effect was a cross between a children's TV presenter and an umpalumpa. My friends were also dressed... interestingly- although we thought we looked amazing. We were laughed at and called names by a group of boys in McDonalds so we went home, agreed that they were idiots who would not know fashion if it bit them on the arse, and continued to think that we were awesome. Nowadays we would almost certainly have been posted on social media and pictures shared with every teen in the area- with loads of negative comments.

I was a younger child in the 80s and had a wonderful time. It seems like one long summer when I look back on it. We were outside so much of the time. You didn’t arrange to meet friends; just went round their house on your bike to ‘call for them’. A huge group of us played games of ‘I Free All’ which went on for hours.

I was a teenager in the 90s, and although the internet was around by then, I certainly wasn’t using it and nor were most of the people I knew! I think I probably sent my first email around 2000, and got my first mobile phone just after that. So the 90s were wonderful too. Partying, music, mischief and boys were what I was into, and I didn’t need the internet for any of that.

When you don’t know that it’s going to be possible one day to carry in your pocket an atlas/encyclopaedia/dictionary/sound system/TV etc, you don’t miss it or hanker for it.

I miss it. The internet has destroyed my attention span. And being bored is a good thing, people cant even stand in a lift for 30 seconds without scrolling their phones.
We have access to all the information in the world in our hands and we are not any smarter or kinder.
I remember as a teen laying next to my stereo listening to the entire top 40 charts, reading books I got from the library - in fact I read anything I could get my hands on.

Certainly different and more limiting in some ways. I absolutely love the wealth of information we have at our fingertips now and would definitely not go back to a world of paper reference books, four tv channels and relying on local shops. I remember getting so many craft books out of the library and thinking "where will I get THAT from?" (Easy Amazon these days) Most of the exciting projects on Why Don't You required kit I didn't have, or at least a relative you could convince to save you lots of matches for modeling or whatever. I never did. If a book was recommended on Blue Peter, say, I'd know there was very little chance of finding it in the local library and there wasn't a bookshop in our town so that was that.

My older DS has taught himself amazing things about politics and other topics that interest him, using just free internet resources. I remember doing a project at school where we were supposed to find out about a particular beach resort in Yugoslavia. I think it was all supposed to feed into an amazing geography based adventure game. We could not find ANYTHING in the school library so that was the end of that.

I did a lot of reading in the 80s and spent loads of wholesome time outside but we also did so much dangerous, aimless hanging about including committing minor vandalism on building sites (I was RIDICULOUSLY law abiding and restricted compared to my friends and nevertheless we would spend hours destroying plasterboard and lobbing rocks into setting cement just for something to do)