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 would have been getting drunk on White Lightning or Lambrini at the park.

Leave her to her screen time!

In the 90’s: Outside playing with friends till dark then inside tying up the phone line for hours talking about lord knows what with the same friends. A lot of reading, homework, chores. I probably watched one half hour tv show in the evening.

I was a teenager in the 1950s, so no TV. We did listen to the radio a lot especially the service from a ship - can't remember the name

Radio Caroline?

At 14, I was doing a lot of reading (which my headaches were blamed on - mine were/are hormonal which wasn't figured out until years later

Yes, Fuzzy - I used to get stinking headaches in my teens. I think hormones might contribute to DD's as well.

ghostyslovesheets - thanks for that link to the TV Times. Might watch Opportunity Knocks on YouTube later. Remember the clapometer?

I watched a lot of TV and read a lot.
Reading isn't much better than screen time for eyes and neck.

Mainly watched a lot of TV.

But also:

• Read a bit (books and magazines)
• Hung around the shopping centre
• Got drunk in fields
• House parties (drink, fags, underage sex)
• Flirted with much older boys outside the local cinema
• Went for rides in cars with much older boys
• Stayed over at friend's houses at weekends to talk about boys, plan drinking trips
• Tried to sneak into pubs

I think screentime is probably healthier

When I was young teens spent their time:

Listening to music on their tapes or record players
Reading Jackie magazine
Working at Saturday jobs
Hanging around shops like Golden Discs browsing through the LPs
Walking and getting the bus to and from our friends' houses
Going to the library to 'study' ie do ten minutes revision and then head across the road to the café or burger place.

And yes to hours of time on the landline 📞

Which I guess was the 90s version of social media...

Oh also:

• Walked the dog a lot (again, mainly to flirt with boys)
• Chores set for me by parents

I had my nose in a book as much as possible.

I just used to watch shit loads of tv when I was a teen.

I was very studious, worked hard and went jogging as my hobby but the rest of the time I watched telly.

T'was ever thus.

We were sticking each other in tractor tyres and rolling each other down hills onto public roads

I think we used to gather together in little groups and hang around the neighbourhood trying to meet boys (all girls school). Watch TV. Chat on the landline (trying not be overheard by my family as I didn't have my own phone in my room). Read books and magazines.

It's not that bad!!

I did a lot of the things listed: I taped the top 20 on Sunday night. I wrote to pen friends ALOT!

Looking back, how is that any better than what they do now?

Teen in early 2000's, we just hung about a lot. We hung about the park, the town, the industrial estate, anywhere really. Always snogging each other and drinking white lightening (or vodka if one of us was brave enough to buy it) never got Id'd. We also smoked a lot!

Oh and yes to the land line! We and this boy from school would talk for 59 minutes, hang up and then call right back. We would do this all night, making sure to answer the phone quickly enough so as to not wake up the parents!

I was doing what jjemimapuddleduck was doing.
And when I wasn't doing that I'd read and watch lots of crap tv

Having sex and getting drunk............this generation are a lot more sensible than us 90s kids were

TV, lots of reading (books, magazines and the newspaper), drinking, smoking, sitting around in the park, quasi-sexual fumbling, occasionally a spot of homework, going into town on the bus, trying on makeup in the body shop and never buying anything, talking ENDLESSLY on the phone. Lots of music lessons and courses. Aged 11-13 activities like ice-skating and swimming.

Went out all the time, hung around, sat on walls, smoking, cadged money to sit in a cafe with 2 drinks between 5.
Video round someone's house.
Park
Lots of walking around.

If it were screen time causing it, all teens would be getting headaches.

It’s an easy thing for opticians to blame.

I watched TV, or played computer games, read stuff. Not that different to now.

Read books. Played on the beach. Went shopping and to see movies and socialise with friends. Also I often went out. I took tennis lessons. I painted my nails.

I was a teen in the early 90s. I read (a lot), chatted on the phone with my mates (a lot), watched tv, homework and I did a lot of extra-curricular music activities so had lessons and played in orchestras and other ensembles. We'd also hang out in town on a Saturday afternoon and mooch round the shops/ go bowling/ to the cinema.

At 14 I was either -
Spending time alone doing homework, listening to records, reading or going long walks by the river and writing teenage angsty poems.
Or hanging out with friends, one friend in particular. We used to listen to records, listen to the radio, tape songs off the radio, play cards, looking at records in the shops and occasionally buying one, go long walks by the river or in the woods.

I grew up on a very rough estate. But my teenage years seem so innocent looking back, and fairly staid. I watched very little TV at 14 as there was only one and I did not usually want to watch what my parents were watching.

And as a young child I loved TV. But kids TV was limited to saturday mornings and 1.5 hours after school. That 1.5 hours had programmes aimed at 5-12 year olds. So in reality I never watched the whole 1.5 hours, only the programmes aimed at my age group. I was a kid before video recorders, so most young children watched far less TV than kids today.

I read and masturbated and listening to music. Weekends, trips to town detailed diary entries .

So many us read a lot of the time. I was part of a two year project ( recently called lifelong readers. It included most european counters and showed that reading for pleasure for 11-18 years olds has decreased in every country. I do think screen time has replaced reading time and yes I know some of that is reading. But reading for pleasure and actual novel length books is becoming rare.