If you were a teenager, what would you be doing now?

[Noonelikesasloppytrifle]

My 16 year old DD is currently sat in her room on her phone and my 14 year old DS is badgering to go on his console. Everyday is a battle to get them off technology. At their age, that wasn't an option for me. I would have generally been reading, watching a bit of TV, hanging out with friends maybe doing some crafty stuff. Technology seems to have robbed them of other (unstructured) interests.

If you were a teen, what would you have been doing on a lazy Saturday afternoon? I want to offer alternative suggestions!

I would either be at my best friend's house or she would be round at mine.
Or we would be 'up the city', pootling round the shops and buying chips.

Probably in town or round at a friend's house. My friend was a scout and her group used to run very fun evening socials so we went to those a lot- for some reason, we were allowed to bring alcopops and neither the leaders (nor our parents) had an issue with us drinking them openly. So we were quite drunk quite a lot.

If nothing else to do, I'd be agitating for my designated hour on MSN messenger via the dial-up connection or a fiver to buy credit for my Nokia brick to text boys. The internet and mobile phones became a thing when I was about 15 and as we were the first generation to have it, it was very difficult for our parents to manage because it was undiscovered territory for everyone. It definitely had a negative impact, and was a source of tension for my sister (4 years younger) as she had access to it younger than I did because it wasn't an option when I was 12-13.

We both took risks with drinking/potentially risky encounters with men and I think the internet gave us a new avenue for risk-taking (by talking to strangers in internet chat rooms, for example). And bullying got worse because for the first time, people could be contacted at any time without any of this being overheard via a landline conversation. If you were having troubles at school or with friendships, you couldn't escape from it during the weekends or let situations cool off like you could before.

So, after that massive ramble- having been a teenager both pre- and post- technology, I think teenage-hood without tech was better. I can still remember being totally preoccupied with even the very basic tech options we had, so I think it's very very difficult for teens to resist the draw.