Things that you can’t quite believe were the norm

[ItsNotAShopItsAStore]

What’s one of those things you think in 10/20/30 years people will go “WTF why was that acceptable?”

For me - the Jeremy Kyle show. I’m so pleased it’s off air - awful poverty porn hosted by a nasty little bully and enabled by god-complex shit stirring producers. Also who wants to watch so much shouting and arguing at 9.25am!

Oh, I do hope so!

Playing out was fantastic! I think we will look back in 30 years and feel really awful that kids were cooped up inside with telly, phones and games and that they weren't allowed to play out.

Not so. I went to boarding school in 1979 and we all had duvets in the dorm - though to be fair we did call them continental quilts!

My parents had a Ford Escort which had no seat belts in the back. We were just told to sit as far back as possible and not lean forwards during a journey 😖

Grid girls in F1 or the podium girls who had to kiss the winner in cycle races.

Hearing children playing on the street in summer.

Oh the bedding, yes!
In the 1970'S we had a sheet and a candlewick bedspread in summer.
In winter one or two thick and ancient brown blankets were added.
Also a hot water bottle.

Around 1979-1980 we had 'continental quilts.'
A flowery, fibrous top layer.
It wasn't a duvet.
They came later to our house.

This does make me so sad. The days of summer when a gang of us from the estate were out in the fields and just playing out all day. I understand why it doesn’t happen now but it’s a shame kids will never experience that really.

Orange juice as a starter in restaurants.

Fake astroturf type grass instead of real grass in people's gardens. Please let this die a death ASAP

Still the norm where I live!

Sunbeds. My mum hired one to have in our house and used to let me use it as a child 😮. Can't remember if I even wore suncream. I'm high risk being fair skinned and moley too.

We had duvets in the 80s! I’ve never had anything other than a duvet (except as a baby). Google suggests they were introduced in the uk in 1964 but they were very normal in the 80s growing up in Kent. We always wore seatbelts unless the middle back seat as that didn’t have one.

In years to come I think we will be disgusted we have given 11 and 12 year olds access to literally the views and influence of every man woman and person on earth (the good and bad) via a device they can carry in their pocket.

I think more than that our children (or the ones we have given this access to) will rightly hold us to account and ask us why we wouldn’t let them play unsupervised for fear of stranger danger but thought it was accepted and “normal” to watch the worst of humanity on apps like TikT0k and IG.

they’ll also tell us how stupid we are to think parental controls are actually safeguarding in any shape or form.

it’s not normal and it’s not okay. Thankfully people are hopefully stopping the tsunami of childhood mental health trauma that results from this poor parenting decision to allow addictively designed devises into the hands of our precious children.

peace out.

It was at my UK school in the mid/late eighties.

I can't believe they belted kids in school they were still belting when I was in high school

I got the belt six on each hand, right hand so bruised I couldn't hold a pen
The trick was to warm your hands up before hand! It didn't hurt then!

To fast forward 30 years I think we'll look back on open plan kitchen/sitting/dining room spaces with horror. So hard to heat and so little privacy or peace.

Oh and we'll remember the noisy/smelly petrol and diesel cars and petrol stations instead of the rollover charging pods alongside major roads.

Also the times when people drafted letters themselves rather than relying on robots/AI

Department stores will be an historical memory.

👏 @Horsebox27and yet here we are all on our devices! We need to take this advice too. It's rotting our brains as well as our kids. They look at us as their role models.

Chris moyles doing a countdown to Charlotte Churches 16th when she becomes 'legal' He's a bloody creepy perv.
Chris Evans making Victoria Beckham being weighed a couple of months after she had Brooklyn. The footage is on YouTube and it is cringe to watch.

Indeed. The irony is not lost on me. However……The difference is my frontal cortex is fully developed (or I’d like to think so) so my impulse control is significantly stronger than our children’s!

I can recognise when a company like meta / apple is vying for my time and personal data. I can then choose to adjust my behaviour if I so wish. (This was one of the reasons I recently played around with changing my phone to greyscale! And Yes I definitely reduced my online shopping as a result! 🤣)

Underage drinking and to add to the previous posts about older men having schoolgirl "girlfriends" - when I was 15 my boyfriend was 19 and he used to pick me up from school with a bottle of alcohol in his car for me! That would be a Safeguarding now.
When I finished with him he started dating a girl who was in the year below me. She would've been 14 and he was 20. He met her at the school disco where he was paid to DJ. Shocking nowadays but nobody batted an eyelid then. This was the late 90s.

The whole wild child thing in press like Mandy Smith/Bill Wyman.

I was 12 in 1976. I remember the showers at secondary school. A female teacher would hold our towels and we would stand naked and shower in a communal shower block. It was awful.

woodwork and metal work for the boys for o level / Cse options and home economics and needlework for the girls.

a school cruise on The SS Uganda at age 14. It was amazing.

I remember smoking on planes when I was cabin crew. Even the crew smoked. We were trained to put fires out. Defeated the object at the time 😂

My uncle used to use page 3 as his dinner coaster. This was a man who was a sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, racist pos. Luckily he’s dead and it stops there as he never had children, which is a blessing in itself!

Why just girls?