"there were no mobile phones" always makes me roll my eyes
right but in the 1990s, say, the average person would have
-bought a wall calendar and diary every year to keep track of their appointments
-still paid a monthly phone bill (I've never had a lineline since I bought my first house nearly a decade ago) which without texting or internet would have been your primary way of communicating with anyone, and would thus have been very expensive
-had a decent camera and spent money each time on film and getting photos developed
-had a sound system for the house
-if they were thirties or younger, had a walkman (or a bit later a cd player)
-spent money on records/tapes/cds regularly
-a decent alarm clock
-a decent watch
-bought books on a regular basis
-bought a daily newspaper
-A-Z whenever you wanted to go anywhere new
possibly other things like a printer, stamps, paper, scanner for important docs, or to send parcels, before you could just use your phone for labels. And that's not counting the things that might not have cost money but would be much more timeconsuming or annoying, like having to carry round a wallet full of store cards, or bus timetables, or cashing and writing cheques to pay bills without apps for online banking, etc.
all of which have been replaced for many people by a mobile phone, which for the £7.50 I pay a month with giffgaff I consider very reasonable!
And much simpler! How on earth can you say receiving bills through the post and writing and posting a cheque, and making a note of this for every single bill or card, every single month, is easier than all of this just happening automatically once you've taken 2 minutes to set up a direct debit?