I was born in '72 so I went from 8 at the start of the '80s to 18 at the end of the decade. It was a fab. time to be a child and teenager.
As kids we didn't have time to be bored. We were out of the house all the time in summer. As soon as we'd eaten breakfast, we'd head out to meet up with our friends. We spent the whole day outdoors, engaging in activities - playing games like chasing, riding our bikes, skipping, roller skating, playing tennis, playing with hula hoops etc. Sometimes someone would have a birthday and get something exciting like a kite and we'd all queue up to have a go. When I look back at photos of me from that time, I was so skinny! There wasn't a pick on me wish I could say the same now. The older kids looked after the younger kids. We just came home long enough to eat and then we'd be back out again until we were called in at bedtime.
If the weather was good, we'd head to the swimming pool - the whole neighbourhood. We'd run home, tell our mothers where we were going, throw on our swimsuits, get money for the baths, throw a towel and underwear into a plastic bag and head off - sans parents obviously. I don't remember this happening but my older brother recently told me that he ended up in the deep end of the pool as a small kid (he couldn't swim) and was flailing around in the water. The lifeguard fished him out using a hook or net or something. The lifeguard never asked him if he was ok or anything - he just lifted him out of the deep end and deposited him in the shallow end. Can you imagine that happening now?
When we got a little older, we'd head to the roller rink on a Saturday morning and skate around the rink to all of the current music. They'd have a slow set and we'd stare enviously at the couples skating around holding hands.
It was a really colourful decade - neon clothes, beaded necklaces and bracelets, legwarmers, colourful eyeshadow etc.
I turned 12 and moved on to secondary school and discovered boys. Had lots of crushes on assorted boys and male teachers but it was all very innocent. We had some brilliant school discos in first year. When I got older, I went to more sophisticated nightclubs but I never enjoyed them as much as I enjoyed leaping around the PE Hall (all transformed with spotlights) to Van Halen's 'Jump'. And dancing around in circles to 'Come on Eileen' - by the end of the song, we'd be spinning around faster and faster and laughing our heads off.
I also got into music in a big way (I was a major Whammie). Top of the Pops on a Thursday night was compulsory viewing. Everyone would be talking about it at school the next day. Some of the music videos were brilliant - like mini-movies. At weekends we'd hang around record shops flicking through the singles and albums and admiring the posters and eyeing up any blokes who were doing the same thing. We never seemed to actually buy anything. The cinema was really popular, much more so than now. I can remember queues around the block for really popular movies like ET. Sometimes you might miss the show you were planning to see 'cos it was so busy and you'd have to wait for the next one - maybe 30 minutes later. You couldn't buy tickets in advance so you'd buy a newspaper to check what was on where and then turn up and hope for the best.
Comics were a big thing back then. When we were kids we'd get Mandy, Bunty and Twinkle (eldest sister, middle sister and me). My brother would get Dandy or The Beano or Roy of the Rovers. When we were finished our own comics, we'd swap over. As a teen I moved onto Jackie and Blue Jeans and Just 17. My best friend and I would buy a magazine each on a Saturday and get some goodies and settle down for a good read. Then swap over when we'd finished. The teen magazines had posters of bands which you'd hang on your wall.
There were some great TV series and if you were a fan of a particular TV show, you had to tune in and watch it as it aired because if you missed it, that was it. There was no catch up TV and we (my family) didn't get a video recorder until maybe the mid-80s, so there was no way of recording anything. Even if you did record something onto a video tape, there was no guarantee that my brother a family member wouldn't record football something else over your favourite programme. Because there was no internet and no streaming devices and limited TV channels, everyone watched the same programmes and then talked about them at work or school the next day. It's not like now where people have a huge selection of TV series to watch, on multiple platforms. Or they can just ignore the TV altogether and surf the net.
I started college at the very end of the '80s. We bought text books or borrowed them from the college library. I typed up assignments on an ancient manual typewriter that we had at home. I think we had limited use of the word processing lab - we'd type out assignments and save them onto floppy disks. We handed the printed assignments to our lecturers. We hung around student flats a lot, drinking coffee and eating biscuits. Or we'd go to a cafe and chat. Occasionally we went to the pub but we didn't have much money for buying drinks. Two of the guys set up a film club. I've no idea where they got the equipment but they'd order film reels and project the films onto a screen. Sometimes we'd have a little reception before or after the film and we'd drink warm wine out of plastic cups. We weren't very sophisticated 
.
Although I have very fond memories of the '80s, there was a dark side too. The troubles were raging up the road in Northern Ireland. The decade started with the hunger strikes. Every night the newsreaders would list the people who had died in the conflict by their religion i.e. "Two protestants were killed in a bomb blast in Belfast", "A catholic man was shot dead...." etc. We were in the midst of the cold war and the news would often feature stories of western diplomats being expelled from the USSR (or vice versa). There was the ever present threat of nuclear war. I watched 'Threads' as a teenager and was terrified. The accident at Chernobyl was very scary. And of course the AIDS epidemic. There was a lot of unemployment in the '80s and a lot of emigration from Ireland. The miners' strikes in the UK were very divisive.
There are lots of benefits to the internet (I wouldn't be talking to all of you lovely people if it wasn't for the internet) but it's not the be all and end all. There was definitely life before it arrived.