to ask how young people passed their time before they had screens 24/7

[WeneverownedaniPad]

This is not a "it were all fields round here" post but ...

DD(14) has been getting a lot of headaches. The optician says it's a combination of tiredness and possibly too much screentime so I need to act.

Thing is, her teachers say she gives 100% in school and her behaviour is excellent. I never have to nag her to do homework and she is very sunny-natured - no adolescent mood swings. She trains a couple of evenings and every weekend for the team sport she competes in. The rest of the time she is on her phone/laptop/Netflix. She's not interested in social media and her friends don't seem to "hang out" in real life - probably because they're glued to their bloody phones!

What did we do (those of who are that old!) before there was so much screen time available?

What do your teens do?

I remember reading book after book and DM nagging me to put it down and go outside.

As a child /teenager I was extremely lonely, so I read books or was constantly out on my own exploring.

Loads of reading. I think I read the whole library, completely inappropriate adult stuff.
Lots of chatting on landline.
Visiting friends and waking there/ getting buses which could take an hour.
Hanging about 'dan the tan' and going to McD's.
From 16 I worked in Sainsburys all of Friday night 5.30-9.30 and Saturday 8.30-6.30.

We have a bookcyle near us that recycles old books and you take three books a day and pay what you want.

At the weekends with friends – mostly just hanging around in the village or getting the bus to town and hanging around there instead! Sitting at the park talking, rollerskating, going to the shops and the cinema.

Just "hanging about" really!

At home, well Nintendo and television already existed, so we still had plenty of screen time!

I remember reading book after book and DM nagging me to put it down and go outside.

You're not my sister are you.

Walking, cycling, day trips, traveling, drawing, crafts, reading, listening to loads of music.

Got bored, got used to being bored, actively thought of things to do to not get bored - learnt to play the guitar, wrote a diary, went for cycle rides with a packed lunch, walked dogs with friends, did the gardening, visited my Nan and did her shopping. Yes, watched a fair bit of TV, but with only 4 channels, that was a limited resource.
Blimey, just read over that. Talk about feeling old. Was that me, or am I getting confused with a famous five book.......

And lots of baking!

A lot of what everyone else has said, really:

Long phone conversations on the landline in the hallway.
Went out most weekends wth my friends to a shopping centre or Camden market, mainly to browse as was skint!
Hung out at friends’ houses or in the local park.
Went swimming loads with friends).
Reading - books & magazines.
Lots of TV after school.
Yes to making mixtapes - I was also obsessed with pirate radio and tuned in to my favourite station at any opportunity.

I didn’t sctually do ANY after school clubs or organised fun as a teen, and I was lazy about homework, too. But I was never bored. I think partly we had so much more freedom in these das (I was 14 in 1991). No mobile phones for your parents to keep track of you . I’d go off out on a Saturday morning with a vague plan and do whatever I wanted all day.

I used to read a lot and spend time looking after horses and dogs

I think there is a balance to be struck here. Undoubtedly many teens spend too much time on their phones instead of doing physical exercise. However, I think people forget that we had separate record/CD players, radios, books, notebooks, alarm clocks, stop watches, puzzle books, etc etc to do all the things that we do on one phone now! So teens are still doing the same things, just in a different way!

On the other hand, I do worry about the "easiness" of it all...no need to make a physical effort, or interact with anyone in RL, or think or be creative because it's all just "there" at the touch of a button!

Having said that op, I wouldn't worry too much if your teen is playing sport three times a week, that sounds like a good balance to me if she is reasonably active at school during the week. I had the same concerns about my DD and her eyes/headaches (eye test was fine,) so now I insist DD comes with me on one of the day's three dog walks so she gets to focus on the far horizon and look at green trees!

I read a LOT as a child/teen, my main form of entertainment.
Went out to see my friends at age 12/13
Went to town most weekends with friends and a £10 if I was lucky
Watched TV

The Oxford University study concluded that looking at a screen is as damaging to children as wearing spectacles or eating potatoes. I.e not damaging.

Obviously the content can have different impacts. Passsive use such as watching films is obviously different from active use such as social media.

Before screens - children would have been outside for most of the day - that is pre-tv - watching tv is not 'the past'

Daytime tv is an even more recent phenomenon. There used to be lunchtime news and Watch With Mother and nothing else bar the test card until children's tv started around 4pm, unless there were big sporting events on.

I don't think daytime tv started till the mid-80s, so anyone over 40 or so had to entertain themselves for a good chunk of the day during the holidays.

When I was a teenager most houses only had one TV and a choice of about 4 channels. Programmes only started at about 4o'clock in the afternoon and, once your dad got in from work at about 6 o'clock you really had to watch what your parents wanted to watch most of the time. There was no question of young people having TVs in their bedroom and even the record player (yes, I'm that old) was kept in the main living room so you couldn't just listen to music on it anytime you wanted.

I did spend a lot of time up in my room listening to cassettes or to pirate radio stations, which used to drive my mum mad. But at least I was also thinking and using my imagination while doing so, not just staring at a screen.

If you wanted to engage with friends you had to make the physical effort to go out and meet them. You couldn't just lie on your bed and snapchat.

*At 14 I watched a shitntob if TV. If I thought really hard I bet I could remember the TV schedules of the time.

Home from school, TV on, Kids TV on BBC1 and ITV. Newsround at 5, Grange hill, byker grove or Blue Peter till 5.35, or home and away on ITV. Neighbours till 6 on BBC1. Then to BBC2 for Buffy, Due South, star Trek or The fresh Prince. Take you up to 7ish not long till the soaps would start at 7.30. 9oclock bed time.

As for weekends. Kids shows in the mornings, then afternoons would be Gladiators, Baywatch, steam reruns and night rider.

Sundays was all about the EastEnders Omnibus, recording the chart show, Howard's way and bullseye then a bath and bed.

So yeah... Lots and lots of TV.*

This.
I read, sewed, wandered the fens on my own, rode my bike. I remember my child/teenhood as a very long Sunday afternoon.

They don’t know how to do nothing.

Daydreaming will soon be a lost art. I've had some of my best ideas while idly daydreaming...

I'm early 30s and never watched TV between about 9am and 7pm on weekends/holidays. There were only 4 channels and during the day they showed nothing of any interest!

We watched a lot of tv but was further away and different (big fat old tv's). Also we spent at lot of time threatening to kill each other over games of monopoly (mum banned it eventually) and we went out window shopping with friends.

Reading this I was terrible teenager 😂🤣

Got bored, got used to being bored, actively thought of things to do to not get bored

Yes - same here! DD never gets the chance to be bored and therefore motivate herself to do something else. And I've let that lie because she is happy and slim* and nice and doing well at school. But certainly pre-GCSE they are spoon fed all their learning so she is used to being a passive learner. None of this going to the public library to do some research when it's all available on line.

*I mention her being slim because she doesn't fit the Daily Mail stereotype of obsese, pasty-faced teen addicted to their screen. But the headaches are a wake-up call for me.

I've also realised how little time she spends outdoors - her sport, for example, is done inside. And I drive her to and from school because that fits in with my work schedule. Right - that stops as of tomorrow!

only 4 channels and during the day they showed nothing of any interest!

And now we have hundreds of channels and still precious little of any interest!

I'm in bed with flu and we don't have iPlayer etc on the bedroom tv. Yesterday, when I was too tired to read, I ended up watching parliament live. It was the most entertaining thing on!

I definitely spent a huge amount of my teens with my nose stuck in a book.

Have three teenagers living rurally here and it's a massive challenge.

And now we have hundreds of channels and still precious little of any interest

Hmmm, we only have Netflix and the problem with that is you can watch anything at any time. So kids don't have to wait til 6pm for their show to come on, they can just binge watch it all day long!