If you grew up in the 80s/90s, what was life like for you?

[Grabacoffeeandcake]

What things do you miss? What was worse?

I miss how simple life seemed back then. I’d get up, go to school, then after school watch TV until the o'clock news came on. I loved reading, a habit I’ve lost since bloomin smartphones.

There were far less supermarkets where I lived so a fortnightly trip to the big supermarket felt quite exciting. My mum shopped locally mainly and went to the butchers, greengrocers, bakery, those shops have long gone and been replaced by a massive Select and Save.

Going to the cinema or renting a video on a Saturday night was peak weekend.

As a teenager I’d walk for miles with friends just chatting and being silly.

Sundays were always really boring, absolutely hated when the antiques roadshow came on, but we did have a lovely roast.

I can remember shops closing half day on a Wednesday, anyone remember that?

The streets were definitely cleaner. Not as much fast food and nobody would dream of eating on the street really. Clean and people were proud to keep there streets tidy.

It's a knockout was a staple, the whole family sat down together to watch. Socialising with friends and family filled your cup -

Life pre internet and particularly smartphones was actually gorgeous in so many ways. If I had the power to go back in time and put the genie back in the bottle, I wouldn't hesitate

born in 66 so grew up in the 80s.

Agree Sundays were so dull! My parents were practising Catholic and I was dragged to Mass on Sundays but had doubts early on (no religion now).
plus until mid 80s there was barely anything on in the way of shops, entertainment. So for RC kids Sundays = Mass, maybe a coke in the church social, Sunday lunch (highlight) finish off homework then that was it.

Things improved towards mid/end of 80s, starting work gave me independence. Plus even though I was still at home I was working as a nursing assistant. This meant working Sundays was the absolute legitimate excuse to get away from Mass without having a row! Plus relaxing of restrictions from a legal standpoint and me becoming an adult and leaving home late 80s made life so much better.

I forgot I was midway through comp school when they allowed girls to wear trousers. I remember us all rocking up wearing them thinking how amazing it was!
My first year of primary school the uniform was shirt and tie. It changed to polo shirts the year after I think.

Born in 79. Spent my childhood in small town Cornwall. The walking everywhere it’s funny that only occurred to me now. Both my parents had cars but you only used them to drive to another town. Shopping was done on foot in town - greengrocers, butchers, paper shop and bakers which also sold pasties and cheap day old cakes round the back. No supermarkets until I was a teen. Hardly any own brand food so everything was dear.
walking up to the top of town to the video shop on a summer evening was magical. It’s closed like all of them but what a place it was huge!
Much less awareness of brands and labels and you could buy an outfit off a market stall and not get any grief at school - same with make up.
My single mum had it so hard though. No tax credits back then. Out house was lovely but so empty. Furniture and home wares came via her mate who got it from a car boot or off the back of a lorry.
Peiple just knocking on the door for all sorts of random reasons and that was normal - no texting or having to plan it.

I grew up in quite an old-fashioned town in the north in the 80s and 90s. In the late 90s and early 2000s I went to university and moved down to the SE, and felt very much like I was leaving my boring provincial childhood behind for an exciting new world.

For a while now, though, and definitely since the early/mid 2010s, I have been grieving the loss of an era that none of us knew was so good when we had it. The late postwar period was actually amazingly secure and luxurious in loads of ways that were only realising now we’re losing them. And even if we weren’t well off materially during that time, the luxury of living before the digital world, constant availability by email, online porn, online social media and political culture, AI, the reduction of everything to commercialism, hyper-inflation of housing, the disappearance of any general community feeling or public sphere where we could depend on being looked after or cared for by the education system, the healthcare system, the state; the encroachment of every aspect of our lives by depressing materialism, advertising, every bit of culture out to make a buck off everyone… it’s all depressing and dystopian as hell. Now I’m reading serious articles suggesting that AI coders are finding it’s got emergent real intelligence, dangerously so, but such is the money people think there is to be made, nobody is stopping it or thinking about the consequences. Bloody hell!

Growing up in a suburb in the 80s and 90s, where you watched the news every evening to find out what was happening in the world, where you weren’t constantly exposed to digital content, where you walked down to the library with your four green paper cards to borrow books, rang your friends for chats about boy bands and school work, had lots of headspace to be bored, dream, teach yourself to sew, read a book, record the charts off the radio onto a cassette tape, where you looked forward to the Big Film on TV on Christmas Day etc. — who on earth then would have thought that in 2026 it would be like living in some kind of dystopian film, with Trump as president invading other countries, AI and self-driving cars, Brexit and waiting twenty hours for an ambulance and all this shit we’re currently living through? It honestly feels like some time between 2010 and 2016 we all slipped without noticing into an alternate universe.

Somewhere out there must be our real timeline, where life looks a bit more like 1998 or 2012 did. Prime Minister Miliband is celebrating ten years of boring technocratic centre-left politics. We are still in the EU, and can still take cheap flights to Italy for lovely cheap holidays, and there’s serious talk about when Britain should join the Euro. President Michelle Obama has just made an announcement that some crazy man called Elon Musk has been locked up for financial fraud. AI is a pipe dream, and social media use is like Facebook in 2006 - mainly people posting about their lunch recipes and photos of their pets. The U.K. is a confident, prosperous, well-run country with excellent education, healthcare, affordable houses, and a sensible centrist government of well-qualified people. There are plenty of local libraries about, and potholes in the roads are unheard of….

Well, one can but dream…

I miss playing outside all day in the holidays with the other kids on the estate.

I don't know what parts of the UK the pps have came from but I think there are definitely some who are wearing rose tinted specs! Easy to get jobs ? Yeah must have been a different 80s and 90s to me then . Let's forget the mass unemployment and shite wages then ! We had long periods of time when the country had three million people out of work. My family was greatly affected by this and it was absolutely soul destroying. I know many communities up and down the country were destroyed by the aggressive policies of Thatcherism which the British public voted for and unemployment was a side product of this. Yeah but lets all talk about how great it was cos houses were cheap. As long as you got yer cheap houses.

£1-2 kept you going for a day in the 80s and 90s?

So much freedom, but also so much isolation. As a teenager I felt like I was the only “weird” person out there - now with the internet, well, I know I’m not 🤣
but I had close friends, and we were never looking at our phones. We didn’t have much photo evidence of ourselves, so it doesn’t seem like it was as high pressure as it is these days for kids to look a certain way.
but I remember fashion being fairly high pressure! Forget about it if you didn’t know how to peg your jeans. 🤣

special memories of London in the 90’s in particular - it was such an exciting, fun time.

Some things I'm nostalgic over. Eg speaking to people on phone more. Others I'm not eg how much children were allowed to be smacked. Awful.

Everyone smoked EVERYWHERE!

10p for every empty pop bottle.
The pop van each week.

Soda stream where the height of sophistication.

Fashion was horrific, music was life. Press play & record at the same time for top of the pops on my tape recorder. Everyone had to be quiet.

I cold get a can of coke, packet of walkers crisps and a lion bar with my 50p pocket money.

Walked everywhere or got the bus, only the well off had cars.

My first car had a pull out tape player, then a pull out CD player.

Sunday night was bath & hair wash night, then the Muppet show and songs of praise.
Watching the little house on the prairie while Sunday dinner cooked.

3 TV channels until channel 4 arrived. No TV shows until the lunch time news, playschool then it went off again. TV finished at around 11 at night. Just finished! No more programs.
Had to get up to change the channels by pressing a button.
If it didn’t work, snowy reception you had to move the antenna on the top of the telly or give it a bang.

The insurance man knocking every week for insurance money. Filling in your book.

Skinny kids, and REALLY skinny kids with holes in their clothes and smelling of urine. Safeguarding wasn’t a thing back then. Poverty was.
Kids getting hit was an everyday norm. No one batted an eye.
No allergies, food intolerance or fussy eaters, we got what we were given and that was that. Food was cheap, filling and nutrition was never considered. There was never enough, we were ALWAYS hungry.

Hand me down clothing was the norm. Everyone did this.
Very few women could drive, men did all the driving.
In my world, Women stayed home or worked part time in menial jobs, I didn’t know a single female Dr or Lawyer, Margaret Thatcher (for all her sins) was my only example of a woman out of the home in charge of anything. Female teachers didn’t count for some unknown reason.

So glad those days are no more.

I used to ride my bike any chance I got. Just going up and down our road, no helmet or pads back then.

Not a happy home or childhood and bullied from year 6 to year 11, but so happy we didn’t have phones or the internet.

I miss not being forced to have a smartphone and having the attention span to read more, but overall I found life more boring then than I do now

Life was simpler. I had less choice but appreciated what I did have and utilised it to the max. Pocket money, magazines, TOTP, recording the charts on to tape every Sunday, 10p mix, cuddling up to my Mom on the sofa watching Bullseye sharing a pot noodle. Going to the library and getting a new book then reading it under my duvet with a torch.

God, life was so great yet so simple.

Yes, yes and yes to everything you’ve said.

The simplicity of life was great although we didn’t appreciate it at the time.

I do not remember the abundance of poor mental health in young people. I put it down to social media.

Born 1972 and lived in a very deprived area of Manchester.

life now is infinitely better. I don’t have much nostalgia for those times at all, other than for the amazing public libraries. There was litter everywhere, dogs roamed the streets and i was terrified to walk near where I lived, I was flashed at several times, and gangs of young men used to shout horrible comments as I walked home from school.

Money worries dominated everything and I didn’t imagine that I would ever be lucky enough to have nice things. And life was very, very dull, particularly on Sundays. I read all the time because there was nothing else to do.

God yes the dogs everywhere. And dog shit!

The best years of my life. Freedom, a proper childhood with no phones, simpler TV, sunny summers, days out with parents might mean just accompanying them to B&Q but everything felt like an adventure. The world wasn’t so child focussed, but in one way I think that helped, because we made everything an adventure.
Christmas was magical and began in December, not months before.
Halloween was nothing but a bin bag and a sweaty plastic mask, but my god it was fun.
You read magazines with your friends. You rode bikes and called at your mates houses.

The smart phone was the worst thing to happen to humanity, I genuinely believe that.

There were negatives but it was definitely more simple. I’d get in from school watch citv until 5 then have tea while watching home and away and neighbours. Then at 6 I’d either call for friends and hang out for a bit either in one of our houses or walking the streets (depending on season) Or talk on phone (had to be after 6pm!)Then I’d go home watch tv with my parents usually casualty or Roseanne or Home Improvement u til bed.
Weekends would be Saturday morning tv and chart show. Then I did a dance class in afternoon and then hang out with friends until tea. Saturday night we would often watch a film on VCR. Sundays were boring as dad would have Sunday sports on but i would go hang out at the park or play board games or read and mum would cook a roast.
We never really went anywhere other than odd visits to Grandparents on a weekend for couple hours and a weeks holiday at seaside once a year.
When I got to early teens me and my friends got into ice skating so would do that a lot and there was a kiddies night at the local night club we would go to. Then we started going round town at around 15 and life centred around the pub and buying clothes/make up / fags for the pub. I don’t really remember home work until year 10 when coursework started.

i feel sorry for kids/teens now as life is so much more pressured for them, school is much more demanding, social media and having 24 hour access to everything . There’s too much choice and expectation.

I remember sometimes it being white (I’m assuming a lack of nutrition)

In the eighties where I was there were the miners strikes and the three day week. Definitely a rough time for trades. We were poor (dad was a bricklayer and mum didn’t work) but when I started looking for a job in early nineties the local news paper would have five pages of local jobs there was definitely a feeling of you could get a job easily enough and if you left one job replace it with another within a week. (Shop/bar /factory jobs)

I live miles away from where I grew up but yesterday I was looking at the place I lived in just 20-26 years ago in a small cul de sac and I had literally been the only person to park on a particular pavement back then (I'd just learnt to drive), but now there were 6 cars parked on it, completely blocking the path.

It really shocked me and felt like an example of how much the world has changed even in the last 20 years.

I was born in the early 80’s

Parents very much did what they wanted and children were expected to behave. I remember being taken to the pub often and smoky bingo halls. You were given a half a coke and a packet of crisps and expected to sit quietly for hours whilst your parents drank. If you were lucky it would be somewhere with a beer garden or some kind out outdoor space.

School was far less stressful and there was no testing. I don’t think it was very structured and I don’t remember being taught any grammar (apart from full stops and capital letters) at primary school which was a pain when I got to secondary as they expected good grammar but I hadn’t been taught it.

Does anyone remember watching Gladiators and Blind Date on Saturdays?