Need your help with pre smartphone youth photos for new Rage Against the Screens campaign

[JustineMumsnet]

Hi all,
We’re looking for real photos from Mumsnetters’ gloriously pre-smartphone youths for a new Mumsnet ad campaign about getting kids off screens and back into real life (part of our wider Rage Against the Screen campaign).

We’re calling it Your Mum Thinks You Should Live a Little and the basic message to teens is:

1. Your mum was actually quite cool once
2. There’s more to life than staring at a screen and your mum wants you to go out and live it

It’s a celebration of the slightly chaotic, occasionally misspent, entirely offline lives we were living before social media arrived.
Think:

• blurry disposable-camera nights out
• giant trousers and tiny tops
• first festivals
• dodgy fringes
• snogging behind the bike sheds
• actual hobbies
• friendship groups that existed in 3D
• rave/goth/indie/skater/grunge pics
• terrible fashion choices
• chaotic holidays
• badly decorated teenage bedrooms
• anything that screams “1990s”

If you’d like to contribute, upload your photos here.
If we’d keen to use any as part of the campaign, we’ll of course contact you directly first.

We’ve shared a few examples below to get everyone started. Let us know what you think?
Thanks,
Justine

If all the photos from the 90s you choose photos of naked teenage girls? Well, I suppose it will get your campaign a lot of attention - sexualisation of young women always does.

I'd rather be a prude thanks.
The last thing we need is yet more bullshit about teen girls getting naked being bloody fun and empowering. As if girls don't get fed that shit enough already.

I don't believe a woman is behind this campaign. It reeks of bloke. Oooh let's chuck some naked teen girls in the mix.

Just catching up on this, the strap line makes it even worse tbh. Telling kids to go out and get naked with their friends because that’s better for them than watching a baking TikTok, is a really weird way to look at life. Plus nobody wants to hear about that from their mum. This whole campaign is completely misguided.

It is. I bet teens will see it as - do kids still say "cringe"?

There's no way this will appeal to teenagers.

They're going to think it's ridiculous - the way teens think when they perceive adults ('old' people) as trying too hard or trying to be 'cool'. They laugh at it if they don't know you and cringe their arseholes inside out if you're their mum with her tits out as a teenager plastered over the Internet.

I wonder how many bog standard teenagers they have showed this to and what the feedback was. It's not going to appeal to teenagers or get them to track down a kodak disposable camera, go outside and take pictures of their arses then find somewhere that still processes 35mm. (Thankfully)

It's adults who have forgotten what it's actually like to be a teenager coming up with something they think is fun teen stuff.

1. Your mum was actually quite cool once

If that was ever briefly true, it would have been by '90s standards. This would be the core of the reaction, and incite pity, from my 2026 teen, with or without photographic evidence.

Bit insulting too.
I wasn't always a boring, decrepit old lady you're embarrassed to be seen with. 🤣

Yes - it kind of reminds me of the reminiscences of the 60s and early 70s equivalent when of a teen persuasion in the '90s - took a long (long) time, via Deep Purple and probably Queen, to consider those decades as anything but eye-wateringly bad taste. Add a flavour of your Dad's photos from when he hung out with Steeleye Span, and - and....

Irrespective of the human tendency to criticise something partially because it's already been decided and it subconsciously gives people a little subconscious satisfaction to effectively say "You hadn't thought of THAT had you?" (and I totally get that inclination!!)...this is not it, Mumsnet.

I sort of understand the idea behind it and I also get the strong sense of nostalgia generated by the kind of photos you're looking for BUT this campaign's approach will appeal to the women who lived that 90s chaos, not their kids. And even that, for the avoidance of doubt, only once you remove the nude girls 😳

Encouraging teenage girls to go out and get naked when the whole world has a camera phone seems like just about the worst idea in the world.

Thinking about it now, the 90s was over 30 years ago.

I was an 80s teenager.

There is no campaign on earth that could've encouraged me to 'be more 1950s'.

I can't imagine me and my friends swapping dancing round our handbags to Wham in the local nightclub, for a nice waltz around the floor with Brian and Nigel at the local tea dance.

And had my parents encouraged me to do so, it would've made the generation gap between us wider than the Gulf.

The only bits of the suggestions list that make even the slightest bit of sense are 'actual hobbies' and 'friendship groups that existed in 3D'.

Bad fashion choices and holiday snaps are totally irrelevant to smart phone use - both happen in all time periods, and images can be captured with any technology. It's not as if selfies are unknown to the current generation.

Nostalgia only works on those who were there - and they're not the target of the campaign. You might get somewhere with one based on 'You could be doing ....' using current teens putting down their phones and going out to do things; you won't with one on 'What we did'.

As for the nudity. Words fail me. The picture is inappropriate, the strapline makes it worse if anything, and no teenager in history has ever wanted to think of their mother as a naked teenager.

Completely misjudged.

Exactly this. As a 15yr old we used to go into town on a Friday night and hang around pubs to meet people. Teenagers can't do that now, and if I were their mum I'm not sure I'd want them to (especially given how girls were routinely harrassed or assaulted).
They're not seen as old enough to travel to the places we did on public transport, to go to gigs and festivals, or even be left home alone. They have fewer opportunities to find jobs to fund things, especially before they turn 16, and many families have less money to go round. Third places basically no longer exist. How is any teenager in 2026 meant to do the things we see here?

How on earth would you be able to prove those non consenting females - as they aren't aware a photo is being taken of them from behind - are even over 18? I doubt that got through the developers at Boots in any case, as they wouldn't have processed naked children photos either.

And in any case the whole idea is ridiculous - dont carry a device with you that can taken decent photographs of your life, look at the crappy ones of somebody else doing just that? It's a complete 'do as we say, not as we do - and here's a photo that could be illegal for free'.

It turns out it's a print by an American photographer named Ryan McGinley, who has a thing for photographing naked teenagers.

One would hope they were aware and signed the necessary permission forms but who knows.

Either way, it wouldn't make it any less tasteless.

No mumsnet

This is inappropriate and offensive

I wouldn't worry, they're not going to get usage rights for that specific shot.

Ohhhh, so just your standard pervy photographer selling pervy photos to pervy men. Ideal for Mumsnet to show as aspirational images of what they think was the usual British teenaged girl's experience in the 1990s.

Actually, dodging perverts, creeps and rapists was a fairly common feature in the 1990s. Drinking alcopops and bottled beer featured a lot because it meant you had control over your own drink, too. No way of calling somebody to come and get you because there was somebody following you, no way of working out where you were quickly if you got lost, of having funds to travel if you lost your purse.

What could have been helpful would have been some sort of device, you know, one that held maps, travel information, a way of getting money, making emergency calls without tracking down a phone box, possibly of being able to get a cab without having to know where exactly you were or how you'd pay but also wanting somebody else to know where you were.....

Anyhow, this exciting life somebody wants people to upload (and of course there's no way that will get some unwanted or illegal things) photos of via the internet as part of an internet campaign by a social media site to stop people uploading photos to the internet via other media sites;

Dodging perverts and rapists.
Alcohol.
Drugs.
Smoking (every concert photo from that time that has lights like people do with phones now? They're Clipper lighters).
Alcohol, drugs and stripping off naked.

Ah, the nostalgia. Hitting me like the first Marlboro of the day.

ah, yes I get it now. Much better that the children are getting their kit off together and having underage sex than sitting in their rooms on their iPhones! Bring back the good old days!

Well if being uncomfortable with the sharing and posting of nude teenage girls makes me a prude then I’ll happily take that label. Part of teaching kids about safe use of phones is teaching about consent and how easy it is for nudes to be shared.

If your daughter’s mate took a naked photo without her knowing and then posted to social media, you’d think it ok? Because that’s what this looks like, I hope the photo belongs to MNHQ and that they’ve checked with all the naked people in the photos that they consent to their photos being shared on MN as part of a campaign.

I get the message they’re trying to convey, the freedom of living in the moment and impulsive swimming with your mates, the naked teen girls photos isn’t necessary to convey that and it’s disappointing to see MN choosing to do that. The strap line doesn’t make it sound any better. Sharing that photo contradicts what most parents try and teach their children about taking and sharing nudes and consent. If you don’t teach your children those things then that’s up to you but it doesn’t make others a prude.

I hope the photo belongs to MNHQ and that they’ve checked with all the naked people in the photos that they consent to their photos being shared on MN as part of a campaign.

The pervy photographer has been named 2 or 3 times in this thread.

I was the one that originally said it was a McGinley as it looks very much like his style. He did a lot of teen naked versus the sea shoots.

However when I tried to back search the photo it told me I wasn’t allowed to due to teen nudity. And I can’t actually find the print on the internet so it’s possible it’s not one of his and it is just some random non consenting girls. Sorry for any confusion

Oh dear this is totally tone deaf MN. Plus most teens don’t even care what their Mums were doing at their age, I doubt they’d find it cool or inspiring.

Even if they do feel suddenly inspired to go out and do an activity or meet up with mates (which I’m pretty sure a lot of teens are doing already), they’ll still take their phones with them, and no doubt keep taking selfies of said event!

The nude girls pic is just so badly thought out, or not thought out at all. We really don’t want to be encouraging teen girls to get naked - please think about the safeguarding and wider issues rather than portraying it as somehow innocent carefree fun or cool.

I was a teen in the 90’s and I didn’t know anyone who randomly stripped off or went skinny dipping anyway. Clothes only came off in sexual relationships. Also, why feature girls? There’s something pervy and predatory about that photo taken by someone behind them. You could always swap it for a group of teen boys mooning or something that’s more the vibe I think you mean, but I suggest dropping any nude or partially nude photos altogether.

I saw the name mentioned but also saw the poster who mentioned him couldn’t confirm it was actually a print of the perverts work, I missed a word out in my post and it should have said “if” the photo belongs to MNHQ.

Im currently having a bad flare of rheumatoid arthritis in my hands and the pain and stiffness affects my concentration and ability to move my hands when typing, combined with my dyslexia it means I make many mistakes and typos and even though I spend time trying to make sure I’ve got it right, I dont always catch all the mistakes and missing words.

Ahhh right, gotcha

This.