What was life like in the 80s?

[Strangerthanadeadting]

As a recent fan of Stranger Things and having only been four years old at the end of the eighties, I'm fascinated to know what life was like for teens & adults back then.

It's depicted as being so much fun on TV. So colourful, the music is brilliant, the fashion so vivid. It was a time before the Internet, social media, plastic surgery, the Kardashians.

I'm fascinated. I'd love to hear what life was like. What people did for fun, what they ate, how different a working day was, if it really was as glamorous as it looks, if the hairstyles took forever, what people thought the future would be like? Was it a better life? A better time?

In some areas negative equity was a big issue. House prices went up in some areas, but in other areas they fell. Repossessions also increased massively as unemployment rate went up.

Having a phone put in if there was not already a landline where you were living was very expensive. I seem to remember it costing £150. I lived in a bedsit for a bit so could not afford it. Instead phoning meant going to the local phone box where there would sometimes be a queue. Good manners meant you were not supposed to take too long if others were waiting. If they were, someone would knock on the door and tell you to hurry up.

This is the era when metal shutters started to appear in shops in poorer areas. I also remember areas of housing so run down and poverty stricken and crime ridden. I don't think there is anywhere as bad as those areas these days. Or I hope not.

Also remember when I went for interviews I would always wear a skirt as plenty of older managers thought women wearing trousers was not okay. Some schools still would not let wear girls wear skirts. Also my first factory job, I started at the same time as other girls and boys from my school at 16. All the boys were automatically given a higher paid job than the girls.

Wow, this thread is amazing and should be moved to Classics.
It’s very eye opening to hear about the effective North / South divide caused by Thatcherism.
I was 10 in 1980s
I think my decade was defined by Princess Diana. Loved the royal weddings!
Taping the top 40 on Sunday
I had my hair permed at least 3 times. Hair mousse.
Denim jackets
Underage drinking in pubs.
Everyone watching the same TV channels. I remember going into school the next day, after Boy George first appearing on Top of the pops, asking whether it was a boy or a girl!

Yuppies. Watched Wall Street in i think 1984 and I solemnly told my best friend, I was going to be a Yuppie when I left school.

The 80s was a shit time in many areas of the country because of poverty, a shit time for the disabled, lesbian and gay people, black people, and many women. Things are much better now.
I suspect anyone who had a happy childhood thinks when they lived was great. But as an adult for a lot of the 80s I saw and knew of things that would be shocking now.

So people talk about how poor mental health provision is now. It was much worse then. They were closing down the old mental hospitals, but I visited a friends sister in a short stay ward before they closed down. Old stained formica tables where people played cards all day. The only "therapy" was a daily group meeting. No community psychiatric nurses, no short term NHS counselling, no crisis team. People had monthly psychiatrist appointments and GP, nothing else.

For physically disabled there were some charities providing provision. For example trying to help people live independently, providing respite. But this was very dependent on where you lived, was very limited and very heavily dependent on volunteers. A friends mother was disabled. She could do very little and my friend cared for her. She got no help as the person who came to assess her said she did not need it as her daughter was caring for her. No extra benefits either.

The 80s is also when short term tenancies were introduced for renters. I remember having a hell of a time trying to find somewhere to live as for about a year landlords were all waiting for the change of the law and would not rent to you.

I was at senior school in the late 80's. Life felt less stressful than it is now, but I guess that could just have felt like that as I was young.

There was much less awareness of bullying. I remember a lot of kids who had an awful time at school because they were "weird". Looking back, many of them probably had undiagnosed autism.

Sexual harassment was rife. I remember being groped by male colleagues in one bar job. In a retail role, the all female checkout staff were nicknamed 'cashier bimbos' by the male managers (we were all uni students). When I hit my first full time job at 21, the male manager told me I'd got the job because I had 'great tits'. This was all 'banter' obviously and totally acceptable 🙄

Gay people had a tough time too. There was no one 'out' as gay when I was at school. The bullying would have been merciless.

Some of the music was good, a lot of it was shit. Like now really. I much preferred 90's music.

Sunday's were really boring as there was nothing to do and nothing on TV. I used to do my homework on Sundays, so I guess that was a good thing as I didn't have the distractions of social media and Netflix!

I was 16 in 1980 and a student nurse by 1983. I remember being asked by the ward sister to go to the finance office on my way to my break one day as there was an issue with the wards budget. It was quicker for me to take a memo with the queries than putting it in internal post and it was difficult to get through on the phone. No email, hadn't been invented. That's another thing about that era, things moved more slowly. I was on a late shift and it was my tea break so would have been about 4.30. Once I'd recovered from my amazement that there was a finance office, I was so naive I had no idea about budgets etc, I eventually tracked it down. It was just like the police offices in Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes. Those shows really brought back this memory. No one could hear me knock due to the noise of phones constantly ringing, several people on phones, typewriters & calculating machines clattering. I entered and it was a fug of smoke. Mainly men and the few women seemed to be secretaries. Everyone appeared to be smoking. Eventually was directed to a corner office, handed over the envelope with the queries to a portly man with a fag in his hand and a glass of whiskey on the desk! Offices and wards were so much noisier then, phones ringing and ringing (they still do on wards but not as much as then) typewriters and even photocopiers etc seemed to be noisier. Otherwise memories the same as others, great music, came from a working class background so money very tight, difficult to go shopping doing nursing shifts as shops were 9-5 with half day closing but as I trained in London you could find somewhere open but it would be dear. Nursing very badly paid but we had great fun. Lots of venues let you in free as a nurse and London cabbies often didn't charge and refused to take money even when offered when taking you back to the nursing home. Less TV, more reading, knitted a lot of oversized mohair jumpers!

Remember my mum paying for the weekly shop with a cheque.

If you ever had to knock on the staff room door at school, you were met with a wall of cigarette smoke!

Also, DH's parents got a video recorder just before we married. DH wanted something recorded and we had to buy a tape. A 1 hour, vhs, (before lp was a thing) cost £11. I was earning £35 a week and was considered to be on a reasonable wage!
Someone mentioned the Diary of an Edwardian Lady - we were given a tablecloth and matching napkins in that design, possibly from M&S, and it's still in daily use. Washes beautifully and other than the deign being a bit old fashioned now, doesn't look a day older than when we unwrapped it almost 40 years ago. Not sure that a big standard set of table linen purchased today would still be going strong in 2059!

I have been watching classic Eastenders sluj and we are currently in 1989 ,I realise it's a soap but it does show real life at the time ,and whilst I'm sure London was great for yuppies etc ,poor people were poor everywhere ,by contrast I lived in the Northwest I still do, my parents both worked for the Gas Board in secure employment we lived in an affluent area the high unemployment of the 80,s didn't affect our family it really depends on a great many things as to whether you had a good lifestyle or not ,it's not just about the North/ South divide

Leg warmers!! Don’t think anyone’s mentioned those yet!

I remember going to restaurants that had a smoking and non smoking section, and planes had the same. British people still did fruit and veg picking for money. Also at work a lot of people went to the pub at lunchtime. I worked in a nursery for a bit and we used to go to the pub at lunchtime. I remember wondering if any of the parents could smell we had been drinking alcohol, but nobody seemed to care, or if they did, they did not say.

Don’t forget the green shield stamps, don’t know where they came from but you had to lick and stick them in books to get money off in the shops.

We had a one bar fire in the whole house and it was cold! Couldn’t wash your hair in the morning in winter as you’d have caught your death.

We had milk men and window cleaners, dont really see them anymore!

Yes cheques were still in regular use. If you were paying a bill by post, you could screw up your cheque and then flatten it out and stick it in the envelope. The reason was that the machines the banks used would reject it and it had to be processed by hand which took a few extra days. So was a great ruse if you were a bit short of cash before payday.

I remember campaigns for a minimum wage that highlighted security guards being paid £2 an hour. I am not sure of the year in the 80s, but using an inflation calculator for 1989, that is the equivalent today of £4.89 per hour. So some wages were much lower than today.

@GreenTulips We have window cleaners, I thought everywhere had.

I used to talk for hours to my friends in the phone, sitting in our hall wrapping the cord round my fingers.

We made arrangements in advance and just stuck to them because we didn't have constant text conversations.

I was aware of the back drop of extreme poverty in some places, and of the miner's strike but it didn't affect me personally. I was lucky as I had a nice life I think.

We all had ridiculous curly perms and I seem to remember wearing a lot of dayglo yellow clothes.

The food we ate was similar to now really, a lot of oven ready food, stews, casseroles.... Chinese takeaway on a Saturday evening.

I was 14 in 1980. For me, personally, the 80s were ok, but for the society I lived in it was a terrible time.
I was out on the streets every weekend protesting about nuclear weapons , about they way the miners were being treated, about so many other things.
One of my clearest memories is the constant flow of RAF planes flying over my school because planes flew to the edge of Soviet airspace every twenty minutes or so and then back again. The cold war tension was very, very high.
Unemployment was everywhere, wages were low, poverty was just a fact of life.
I knew a good few families who lost husband's, father's, sons to suicide because of pit closures and factory closures. The industry in my own town was decimated by Thatcher's policy and this place has never recovered.
When I was at uni, which was free and for which I got a grant, I was the only Scottish person in my class and the only person who wasn't privately educated.
At school, girls did home ec, boys did technical subjects. We were taught how to cook, clean, iron, mend, see, lay a table, make beds, work a washing machine....There was no expectation really that girls would go to uni, the careers officer directed most of us to nursing or secretarial work. The very bright ones, like me, were pushed towards Craigie or Jordanhill teacher training colleges.
Striking was rife. Everyone from teachers to ambulance men. I remember being at uni and people out collecting in the streets for the ambulance drivers. I knew people who, during the miners strike, shot pigeons, crows and stuff like that, to feed their families.
It was a hellish time in Scotland. One of the benefits of that, though, was all the really good protest music that sprang up.
Another common thing was that no one checked your i.d. in pubs or for buying fags. I started clubbing at 14, when I got my first Saturday job. I would be horrified if any of my kids had done that.
People here were much more engaged in politics than they are now. No one seems to care much anymore and you never see the kind of rallies and marches that I was part of as a teen and young adult.
Around here sectarianism was even worse than it is now. No one in my school would admit to being RC. And as for being gay, that was even worse.
Oh, and the make up was horrendous, hair even worse, and the fashion, if you were into that kind of thing, was ridiculous. Thankfully, most of that passed me by because I was to busy campaigning and protesting about stuff.
Of course, by 1990, I was married with a baby. It was still almost impossible to get a job and there was the poll tax to deal with!

Wonderful 😆

I was early 20s, own fashion business that had me meeting & dressing loads of "slebs" meaning free entry to gigs & clubs & hanging out & work with the coolest & most colourful of people

I was lucky though, I made my own work, lots of friends really struggled at the time & did longer stints in college as a result

The Cold War & nuclear threat was always a bit of a dark cloud in the background of life & the IRA were a very real threat in that our family car was bomb checked every night, no street bins anywhere etc etc

Up north, the Ripper was a big scary shadow on our teenage lives too

My father worked in the city and there were regular bomb scares which meant he'd often be late home because of the trains. I used to worry a lot about that.

It was everything you see on tv in California. Drugs and weapons in high schools were non existent. Gas was ludicrously cheap. There were still drive-in theatres. Charity shops were full of what is now sold as “vintage” for 1000% markup. We’d scour our local Salvation Army store and pick up a “vintage” jacket for 50 cents. I remember splurging on a leather jacket once for $3. In the early 90s, when vintage shops first appeared, all the good stock from charity shops disappeared.

Everyone went to the movies because video players cost $800 in the 1980s.

An airplane ticket to London cost more than it does now.

You could go into an airport and watch people coming out of the gate off the plane... and try to guess where they were coming from

I wasn't a teenager until the early 90s but what I remember is that no one owned their homes that I knew of. Everyone lived in council housing. No foreign holidays, the only takeaway we ever had was a chippie tea, not eating out unless we were on vacation. In fact I didn't taste Indian food until I was about 13!

My dad always driving 15 year old bangers that had constant problems. Four tv channels, we didn't even get a house phone or a VHS until about 1990.
I don't remember feeling poor though. This was pretty normal for my working class area in Scotland.

Yes to fruit picking. I was at art school in the mid eighties and we used to go strawberry picking. The other pickers were mainly mothers doing a bit of seasonal work while their kids were at school. There was a crèche for small kids too but I didn’t take much notice because life was all about listening to Smiths and Echo and the Bunnyman mix tapes. We swopped these endlessly and if you bought a new album you would tape it for your friends.

Forgot to say, I lived in the south east but remember the miners strike as there was a benefit concert for the Kent miners. I was totally unaware there was a mining community in Kent until my late teens.

There was a small bunch of (middle class ex grammar school boys ) students who used to sell the Morning Star paper in the college canteen too.

We were changing, television had brought new ideas, things were getting more affordable.

There were teen shops emerging catering for teenage clothes. Before this Mothercare did cloths in larger sizes to fit teenagers. These were not fashion clothes lol.

Plastic emerged in large quantities. We could by milk in the supermarket and save £££.
Cheaper toys were produced and purchased, in the 1970's toys were good quality and British usually. 1980's saw an explosion of opportunity, quality fell but things became affordable.

Food developed and became more easily accessible, you could ask a deli to make you a sandwich! People would join a queue for ages to have a fresh sandwich cut for them. This was expensive.

The concept of snacking was introduced and exploded, lots of easy to grab food stuffs that hadn't been available before.

Nightclubs were fun, pubs were still proper 'spit and sawdust' pubs and everywhere.

It was safer in general. People weren't afraid of doing the right thing. I felt safe, today I fear for the safety of the teenagers despite mobile phones.

You left the house at 8, returned at 6 and no one other that you knew where you were. You were untraceable unlike today.

Phones were attached to the wall, usually in the cold hallway. A private call consisted of you saying very little whilst shooing away whoever dared to walk past you. A call lasted less that a minute as it was so expensive.

Recording equipment (video) was huge, heavy and took a man to lift it. Compared to a quick press of a button on a phone now!

Early 1980's school was fairly relaxed, a bit too relaxed. No pressure to get an education. Parents attended parents evening and that was their total involvement for the year.

Flights became more affordable, we had our first package holiday in the early 1980's. The whole of the 70's has been in a caravan.

Hair was big, permed, huge.
Shoulder pads.
White stilettos
Lycra was invented and put into jeans 😁

No internet, computers were in their infancy. Think super typewriters.
Amstrad introduced an accessible word processor in mid 80's this was a revolution.

House prices were crazy in that decade, rising so fast. People that jumped in in the late 1980's suffered due to the recession that followed.

1980's was the emergence of DIY. More choice, companies springing up to supply the everyday man with paint and tools for a job.

Woman were expected to not only run the house and raise the children without the man being expected to lift a finger, but work full time with full recognition they were inferior to men. The division of the sexes was very evident.

Also there were large cuts to the NHS, like now. I can remember waiting for hours with a friend in A and E. She got seen eventually though.
Got invited to go hop picking with a friend. My parents strongly advised me against it as they said it was full of very very rough people and heavy drinking.
I went a few holidays abroad as an adult in Europe. My budget would be £500. This would pay for a plane ticket, very basic and cheap accommodation, and food, etc. So more expensive than today. Also knew quite a few people who went to stay in a kibbutz in Israel as a holiday. You worked in the farm and they gave you accommodation and food.

Oh, and heroin was just starting to make its way into our communities. AIDS was a huge worry. There was a lot of education and publicity around it, so that made it even harder to be gay.
The Falklands war meant that, when I was 16, all my male friends were worried about being called up. It was something else I protested about.
I remember my mother and my next door neighbour watching the royal weddings, drinking fizzy wine and eating strawberries. That was really decadent and really pushing the boat out. I was republican, so I was outraged!
I also remember going on sn SYS french trip to see Therese Desqueroux at the cinema in Glasgow and smoking in the back of the teacher's car on the way home. Can you imagine kids doing that now?