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?

Some things were better. Music for sure. No internet and twitter etc to spread fads. I don't remember there being obesity issues back then, though the meals were awful by today's standards. Crispy pancakes and oven chips, fish fingers and chips, frozen lasagne and chips. No microwave meals though, all done in the oven.
Money was always tight but things were also cheaper. Petrol and fags were pennies.

Some things were much worse. Unemoyment, lack of money, lots of people in the dole. But it seems communities are much tighter back then too. Sounds daft but I never felt looked down on for being broke, these days it's all about the size of the house, the car, the money.

People on benefits in the 80s weren't as demonised as they are now. There was no poverty porn twisting people's view of the claimants.

Game shows were better back then. TV in general was cheaper, cheesier and better in some cases. Classic sitcoms, Blackadder, Fawlty Towers, Only Fools, young ones, Last of the Summer wine etc etc etc.

Was a great decade in a lot of ways really, better than the current one at least.

I must have lived in a different 1980's to @GreenTulips & a few other posters.

I left school in 1983 as a 16 yr old & started work 3 days after my final I level exam. First pay packet I took home £280 & gave my parents £100 pm keep.

Music was the best......Madness, Duran Duran, Simple Minds....you name it. All went downhill when Stock Aitken & Waterman got involved.

No one spending all day looking at their phone - only had the landline & you sat on the stairs talking to your mates or gf/bf with your parents telling you it was costing them the earth. Buses & trains stopped before midnight but it was safe to walk home after then anyway.

Lots of people smoked.....even in pubs & on public transport. No need to huddle in the cold to have a cheeky fag. No internet so most people bought a paper- some even had them delivered before they set off for work.

Early 80's there were only THREE TV channels....C4 was a revelation. So was breakfast TV. Programmes would end around midnight - so lots more sex at bedtime as you had nothing else to do....lol

For me it was bloody awesome!

I was born in 1975,so I was 5 years old when 1980 came around.

The great things I remember,
I was allowed out on my own from 7 years old and as long as I was back in time for dinner no one cared or worried,I wish my 5DC could have had the same freedom that I had.
Childhood seemed to last longer,we'd go fly kites,go swimming,go on bike rides,walk for miles,go to different parks,play in each other's gardens and climb trees,play football.Hardly any children stayed in back then even if the weather was bad most of us would go out to play with our friends.

Halloween wasn't such a big deal back then but I did get to go a couple of Halloween partys which was really exciting because it was so out of the ordinary.

Bonfire night was a much bigger deal and me and my BF would make a Guy every year and do Penny for the Guy,every year we'd make enough money to get lots of sweets and my parents would always take me to an organized display(you'd be frozen waiting for it to start but it was always worth it in the end)and my Dad would treat us to food and drinks,one year they had a van selling pancakes and me and my Mum got to try some with bananas,maple syrup and ice cream one and they became a firm favourtie in our house after that.

The music and fashion was amazing and so different from what had came in the past,in 1988 I was 13 and I was a punk,my poor Dad despared but my Mum loved it,I had bright red hair,wore Doc Martins,thick ripped tights and short skirts and wore bright blue lipstick.My Mum tried to get my Dad on my side by saying"at least she won't have lots of boys knocking the door anymore to ask her out"but that bloody backfired,if anything even more boys knocked the door,much to my poor Father's horror.

Every year we'd go to Weymouth for a week(I still love it now that I'm 44)in the summer holidays and my parents would book us into a B&B so my Mum got a well deserved break from cooking and cleaning.

I always loved those holidays,we'd come downstairs every morning to a room of happy people to chat to whilst we sat and had our breakfast,cereal(always cornflakes for me)and orange juice followed by a lovely full english and lots of tea and toast and then we'd go off for the day exploring the rock pools,going to the beach,looking round the shops,having lunch and my Dad would usually book us all onto a coach mystery tour,those were amazing and every day we'd go back to the B&B so my Mum and Dad could have a bit of a rest(they were older when they had me)and then we'd all get showered and dressed up and go out for a nice evening meal in a restaurant.

Take aways were more of a rare treat back then,the only one's we really had were fish and chip shops or a Chinese,that was until we had a Snappy pizza place open(somewhere you could order pizza from to be delivered which seemed impossible back then)I can remember playing about 10 minutes walk from home and me and my friends were playing on the Action bus that used to come round(it was a massive double decker buss that had had the seats removed and was filled with toys,arts and craft stuff and games and there would be helpers that would set it all up for us to play with)and one of my friends came running around and said I had to go home now because my Dad wanted me!

I was terrified I thought I'd done something wrong(thought couldn't think what)so I raced home and my Dad and Mum were waiting for me,I asked what was wrong and my Dad said"just wait a minute"and then there was a knock at the door and my Dad made me answer it,he'd only gone and ordered me a pizza meal from Snappy pizza(I didn't even know it was a thing at the time)I was so happy I could have cried.

I'm still friends and in constant contact with nearly everyone that I was friends with back in the 80's so despite the lack of phone's,social media and computers I think maybe friendships were more solid back then for us when we were growing up than they are for some children now.

I often wish I could take my 5DC back to that time so I could show them what it was like.

For me the 80's will always be very fond memories.

God Sundays were awful! Everything was closed and there were very few buses. People visited family, mums cooked Sunday dinners, dads and single people went to the pub after lunch while mums did the ironing and kids read or played games or watched tv (whatever was on, we had no choice). It was massively different when the 90s rolled around and we had a car, that’s when we started going to National Trust properties or museums or local events on a Sunday afternoon.

God Sundays were shit!

People on benefits in the 80s weren't as demonised as they are now
Because back then if you were on benefits you were POOR. Like you couldn’t afford enough food or heating kind of poor. Nowadays you can be on benefits and still have holidays and new TVs and takeaways.

I tbink.it depends on where you lived I grew up.in greater Manchester and both my parents were employed in fairly good jobs so we were quite affluent I suppose we went abroad most years ,Neighbours and Home and away were huge in the 80,s ,if you arranged to meet someone you had to meet them at the designated time as there was no mobiles, face book, messenger etc

Also there was very little kids Tv and often whole families would watch TV together which lead to some quite inappropriate viewing ,Tenko, Thornbirds Howard's way etc I watched them all and I can't have been more than 9 or 10.

Loving the trip down memory lane.

I think the best bit about growing up in the 80s was probably just being able to play out all the time. I’m sure my children would love to have half the freedom I had.

My abiding food memory is the cheesy Findus crispy pancake.

Nowadays you can be on benefits and still have holidays and new TVs and takeaways

I think it’s more the other way round these days. We had family members who got money for fuck all in the 80s and had better lifestyles than my parents who slogged their guts out. We’re NC now but I doubt they’d get away with it these days!

People on benefits in the 80s weren’t as demonised as they are now

Ahem, Norman Tebbitt and the get on your bike thing? 1981.

The Tories were fucking vicious to the unemployed until the recession started affecting white collar workers.

My kids play out. I think it’s safer now as they have phones. Why do people think it’s more dangerous now? I remember sad cases like Susan Maxwell, Sarah Hogg etc. They are no more prevalent now than then.

The main additional physical danger in letting kids play out is IMO increased traffic

We had fewer television channels but better eyebrows

We had hovercrafts and Concorde but no sushi

Yes Hover crafts I forgot all about them whatever happened to them?

I got married in '81 couldnt wait to see Princess Dianas dress which was a big disappointment to me. It was the era of Thatchers Britain, miners strike, the mortgage rate went through the roof I think it went to 15%. School leavers could choose to go on YOPs (youth opportunity programme) to try and get employment got the same rate as you would on unemployment benefit I think.
The pubs closed at 11pm then it was onto the dancing which closed about 2am.
If anyone had a mobile they were rich, and the mobiles were like bricks.
VCRs were introduced to .
The games consoles were comodores or spectrums.
In Glasgow the big concert venue was still the Apollo, still miss it. The concerts were a lot cheaper to get into relatively speaking.
The music was good, Eurythmics,Enya, Yazoo, the Smiths, R E M, U2.
Glasgow was city of culture and we had the Garden Festival.

I was a child.

We did play out until it was dark, ride our bikes all over.

Takeaway was a chippy tea from the van very, very occasionally.

Nothing was pre-chopped or prepared in the supermarket.

I wore odd florescent socks, had jelly bags and shoes.

Wasn't allowed a perm.

City of Culture was 1990 I think!

I got my first mortgage in about 1983. Interest rate was about 9%. By the end of the decade it was nearer 15%.

I owned my own flat but couldn’t afford a landline or furniture. Mum and dad gave me an old couch and bed. I used boxes for bedside tables. Couldn’t afford a washing machine, wardrobe or cooker. On the plus side it doubled in value in 6 years.

I was 12 in 84 and stranger things makes me nostalgic for the 80's. The music was really good but I was into rock/70's progressive rock so I didn't appreciate it at the time.

Clothes were fab, nothing you could wear today. Same with make up/hair. We used to back comb our hair until it was massive, sometimes I'd just backcomb the fringe

I think it's realistic in terms of the kids heading out on their bikes for the day. We used to leave the house early and not get back til teatime - We could've been in the upside down for all our parents knew.

Pretty much the same as it is now just with massive hair, puff sleeves rah rah Skirts and better music.

Grim.

ITV had to stop their nightly tally of jobs lost vs jobs created, as there were always more job losses than jobs created.

Santa Claus is on the Dole was one of the highlights.

Growing up in a political family in the 80s in a coal mining area meant life was grim for many people. My dad wasn't a miner like his father had been so luckily not directly affected but it was all around.

The miners strike, some relatives with literally nothing, protests against Thatcher, my parents distributing EEC surplus cheese and butter, free school meals in the school holiday for kids of miners.

Scottish Nationalism was seen as a fringe movement, look how that has changed.

Tucka boots, jelly shoes, reversible jumpers, jeans, crimped hair, bad perms, ski pants, drawing a beauty spot on with eyeliner to be like Madonna. Appearance was just as important as now and you were bullied if you didn't fit in.

Society wasn't 24 hours, shops closed early, no 24 hour Mcdonalds or supermarkets, the TV went off at 11pm to midnight with the National Anthem being played.

Mums mostly stayed at home, when my parents divorced when I was 12 it was unheard of in my friendship group and I got bullied. The few kids of single mothers were really stigmatised.

If anyone is near Basingstoke, the Willis Museum currently has a small exhibition in ^I grew up 80s". It's all very familiar... (I was 8 in 1980.)

Tv shows were massive. Like Dallas and the who shot JR storyline. Also loved prisoner cell block h.

@AriadneesWeb

Is that not down to TVs and take aways being relatively cheaper than the 80s rather than people on benefits being wealthy?

As an average family we would have a take away maybe once or twice a year and eating out was very rare.

Look at the drop in electrical prices. I bought my first washing machine for £300 around 20 years ago, you can buy a basic machine for half that these days. I've just looked and you can get a smart TV from Currys for £120, when in the 80s a lot of people still rented their TV.

If you look at this link you can see an average family TV would be £300+, no idea what that would be in today's money.

People on benefits still struggle.