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?

My favourite outfit was bright green leggings with stirrups paired with a batwing jumper. The leggings were eventually transformed into a Kermit costume. 🤣 I really wanted deely boppers but wasn't allowed them. A lot of my friends collected " Love Is" stickers or scratch and sniff stickers. I was in the stamp collectors' club!

Reading this thread I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that the 1980s wasn't the problem, it was my parents.

No floral - my experiences tally with yours.

To a large extent it’s pot luck isn’t it - I see every summer on mn people complaining their kids aren’t out from dawn to dusk as THEY were - but the truth behind that is actually a lot darker.

If you weren’t personally impacted though, you might not know.

I was 13 in 1980.

I look back at the 80s with fondness, I had a bloody brilliant time. Of course, I know that wasn't the same for everyone, but for us it was a good time.

School was fine - no issues, had good friends, some of whom are still my good (and oldest) friends. Home life was happy and stable for my sister and I. Mum worked part time and was home by 4 when we got home from school. I have a picture in my mind of opening the front door and mum would be in the kitchen making toast for us. First thing I would do is phone my friends that I'd just left at school about half an hour earlier. Mum would tell me off for not waiting until after 6pm because it was cheaper then. Dad was made redundant a couple of times and walked straight into another job both times.

Later, I got my first job which was in an office where you could barely see anyone through the fag smoke. Everyone went to the pub at 3pm on Friday and didn't go back to work. The bosses never said a thing. It was a good fun place to work, too sexist (there were absolutely no female civil engineers at that time at my place) but for every arsehole you came across with wandering hands and a filthy mouth, you had another 5 telling them to piss off. It could be tricky but I learned to handle myself in these situations and I look back now and hate that I even had to. It was as seen as 'just the way it is'. Thank god we have a different view now.

I had huge hair, huge shoulder pads and make up that you could see from space. Music was fantastic and my friends and I went to lots of gigs.

Moved to London in the late ish 80s and was paid a ridiculous amount of money for a very average job. Bought my first flat when I was 20 as did most of my friends.

The 80s were a happy time for me. The 90s? Not so much.

Oh, forgot. The joy of discovering Marks and Spencer's sandwiches. An average bought sandwich was 2 slices of white Wondabread, smeared with marge, slice of square jam or cheese, maybe a slice of tomato or cucumber. Those were the good ones. Without sell by dates I think.

continually I was often out from dawn to dusk and I did have great fun at times but the truth is that life was better outside the house as my mother had never wanted children. My brother and I are all too aware of that.

We had a video man who used to come round with loads of the latest releases in the boot of his car to rent. Like a mobile blockbusters.

I rented Labyrinth every single time!

I had a joe bloggs jumper, cycling shorts with fluorescent stripes, a side pony tail, my dad used to come home from work with a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken, you would eat in at Pizza Hut, we would ride our bikes everywhere, along the river to the marshes, we had a CB radio, a large bag of chips was 40p, watching You Bet! on a Saturday night, then AIDS and the recession happened and it all got a bit dark.

My parents were fairly well off in the eighties, we lived in London and my mother was the child of immigrant parents. Food wasn't vastly different to what we eat now. We ate fairly cosmopolitan foods for the time. Although, we always had a proper Sunday roast.

Tv was so limited. Four channels...weekends were awful as you'd have the choice of a black and white film, horse racing, snooker, etc. Because of this we watched quite adult stuff...I was obsessed with the soaps even as a young primary aged child. My own dc now have never seen Eastenders or Corrie, there's no need as there are children's channels.

As a treat, we'd go to the video shop.

Our parents could leave us in the car whilst they shopped and no one called social services!

A lot of teachers were horrible...one vile teacher pulled my hair hard when telling me off. I told my parents but no one gave a shit really. Imagine if that happened now?!

Oh and Sundays were crap because everything was shut. We always went to my grans who would make terrible cakes which we had to eat.

I don't remember there being obesity issues back then

Didn't think of this, but neither do I. As kids and teenagers we spent a lot of time outside. My friends and I all lived a couple of miles apart so there was lot of walking to and from theirs.

Oh and LA Gear trainers, we used to buy them from a local man with a large garage full of “goods”

I had an Atari with a console made of WOOD my friend had a Commodore 64 and we’d have to put a tape on to load, go out and come back 3 hours later to play!

Film age ratings didn’t matter to anyone either, we used to watch everything.

I was born in 84 so my memories are hazy...
Going to Granny and Grandad's house every Sunday, walking the dogs then tea and cake at their house as nothing was open.
We didn't have much new stuff--wore awful hand me downs, went to the library every week, rented videos. I still buy a lot of second hand now!
Shell suits 😂
We never had meals out and had cheap camping holidays but enjoyed them.
Weird memory--awful scratchy toilet paper like tracing paper in public toilets!
My dad had a handlebar moustache and wore short shorts 🙄😁

That's not true about reception classes at least in my school and other local schools to me @Elmau, I started school.in 1978 and started in reception I was four nearly five when I started school , my sister started in 1976 and was also four ,I think what did happen though was depending on when your birthday was you could start after Xmas or after Easter ( in my school anyway) I don't know when schools having nursery classes became the norm though? I went to a play school a few mornings a week ,I don't think there were nursery teachers though ,and they were normally in church hall type places .

Department store cafes with those sunlamp things to keep the big dishes of crap food warm. Woolworths was the benchmark.

McVities Guest bakeries that served as a pre Starbucks option for our generation.

Mid decade, cappuccinos became a thing and the nation completely lost its mind.

Raymond Briggs - The Snowman and Fungus the Bogeyman.

The more I read, the most I remember!

Anyone remember Cremola foam? I got told off on a school trip once for taking a tin of it with me! I hate to think what that did to your insides - makes aspartame look like a health food.

The Alpine lorry - fluorescent fizzy stuff that you'd take the bottles back to every Wednesday when they came round.

Soda stream - tasted shit but we drank it anyway.

I don't remember anyone actually drinking water. 😁

left school in 86 , the 80s were a fab time halcyon days in the summer riding bikes everywhere in a pair of old knackered dunlop trainers

Duran Duran , Bronski Beat and Toyah were all some of my faves

Tv limited but we knew no different , loved Kenny Everett

Money was tight but M n D would save and let us go on school ski trip

Lots of village hall discos mid 80s

I was born in 1980, I went to a play school in a hall but our school did have a nursery with nursery teachers. All the local schools did (I still live in the area). My DB went to one.

I grew up on a new council estate in the south east. Most people worked and gradually people started buying their houses, then doing them up. There was a lot of social one-uping as the diy exploaded and it became very obvious who were still council tenants. Having said that aspirations were only really driven by consumerism, my mum divorcing my dad and getting a degree on the Open University was considered a bit weird by our neighbours.
There was a lot of playing out on the street until it was getting dark, which was always as good as the kids you were playing with, if you had friends who were neighbours great, but if you lived near the local junior psychopath not so much. A lot of the time you’d go “knocking” for friends, or kids would knock on your door and ask if you wanted to come out to play. We’d cycle or roller skate down back alleys avoiding white dog poo and neon pink hubba bubba welded to the tarmac. Or sneak off into local woods and fields. There were less cars and vague warnings not to accept sweets from strangers in cars. Government information films regularly terrified us to keeping relatively safe. But cold rainy days could be very boring, watching tv or drawing or playing with toys alone, my mum was very hands on but I don’t remember her actually playing with me.
The music was great, very varied. The alternative music scene was also brilliant, my uncles used to be constantly out at gigs or playing in bands themselves. Top of the Pops was talked about at school on a Friday, on Sunday I used to tape my favourite songs off the chart show and end up with half jingles stuck on the end of the songs. But at the time all our parents said music was much better in the 60’s/70’s.
Fashions were bright, lots of neon and denim. White jackets with the sleeves rolled up. Electric blue eyeshadow. Not everyone followed fashion but it was becoming more accessible.
There was a lot of anxiety about nuclear war and aids. The political landscape was dominated by the Tories and it gave us a lot to rebel against, a bit like now except in the 80’s we were riled against the stuffy old guard rather than the blatant nutters of today. People were still openly racist but society started to move ahead of them. The same with homophobia, I think music and the media made people start to see things in a different light.
I think there was a lot of change in the 80’s, 1989 was a very different world from 1980. I sometimes feel nostalgic but I know I love too many things about the modern world to ever really want to go back.
Now, let me tell how much more fun the 90’s were....

Photos! No digital photos then. Some people had expensive kit, but most had a simple point-and-shoot. Film came in cartridges which you put in the back of the camera, with 12 or 24 exposures usually on each film - think the max was 48? Then you had to get the pics printed out at Boots or a specialist photo shop, which cost much more than the film, and you still had to pay for wasted exposures etc. So you had to be much more choosy with what you took. There was one sort of camera new in the early 80s which produced an on the spot print, small and square, but not great quality and they';ve faded badly since.

You had to have a separate flash function for indoor shots - a cube you stuck on top. Later in the decade more expensive cameras had the flash included.

Then you stuck your photos in an album to keep - either a scrapbook type album or one with plastic sleeves.

No selfies except in photo booths for passport photos - these still exist. You had to get someone else to take a photo of you.

I’ve only watched the first episode of season 3 and the most accurate bit of that is Nancy’s experiences at the newspaper 🙄

No nurseries at primary schools

I started nursery in 1976 and it was attached to my primary school! 🤣

I was late teens by the end of the 80s, I don't remember feeling under the same kind of exam/school pressure that teens do now. Even at a grammar school, no one really mentioned exams until you got under the 4th year (yr 10 now) and there was certainly no constant tracking of grades, pressure to improve. You just got what grade you got according to how hard you worked and that was it! No OFSTED or league tables either so I'm sure that had something to do with it. And no-one seems to blame the teachers if you didn't do well either.

When I look back at photos we all looked so...natural compared to many teen girls now. There were some that wore a lot of make up, spent hours on hair but nothing compared to the level of perfection many teen girls expect of themselves now!

On the whole I loved being a teen then but sexism and racism was rife and everywhere was smoky. I remember watching films at the cinema in a haze

Oh god yeah photos. Pre digital photos were all posed and stilted and you got into trouble if you “wasted” one of the photos by carrying on! Sending off the film or spending ruinous amounts to get the 1 hour service in Boots!

Renting videos for a day or 2 instead of buying them. Getting fined if you hadn’t rewound the tape

Ford Escorts

Betamax VCR

Magazines - Jackie, Patches, Blue Jeans. Then Just 17 and More! “Position of the Fortnight” in the latter.

Spending your pocket money on scented rubbers and pencils and then as you got older on Dewberry stuff from the body shop

Wimpy

Library cards were not plastic, but actual cardboard. Children had a different type to adults and you weren't supposed to borrow adult books until you were 12. You could only have three books out at a time unless you borrowed someone else's ticket.

The library catalogue was not on computer, but on a load of index cards in wooden drawers. You could request anything not in your library via inter-library loan.

Books were sold at the RRP only, no discounts allowed. But I think paperbacks were cheaper compared to income at full price; I would never have considered buying a hardback, but my pocket money nd Christmas money allowed me to get several pbs a month. Actual prices obv rose over the decade.

There were a fair number of second hand bookshops, not charity shops but run as a business. Or shops which sold new books on the ground floor but had a used section upstairs. Bookshops were mainly independent apart from WH Smiths; Waterstones didn't exist (maybe it opened towards the end of the 80s?)

I found quite a bit of exam pressure but then I was a straight A student in a high performing state school. I’m not sure it was across the board though. My son is in s2 and he’s already talking about his highers I don’t think that had even crossed my mind in s2.

Also I left school after 5th year once I’d done my first sitting of 5 highers. It seems much more unlikely to do that these days.

I'm 50 years old and the 80s to me don't feel different from now, except that everything seems more 'luxurious'.
Cars are nicer, buses are like coaches and coaches are like luxury airlines!
I remember sitting on horrible faux leather seats on a double decker, upstairs with my mum and everyone was smoking.
Couldn't see out it was that bad!
My first job in an office was being surrounded by smokers.
So in essence, the 80s were dirty, rough, smoky, smelly and the fashion was awful, but the music tolerable.
The one thing I miss about that era was that you had more freedom, no mobile phones and no internet.

But in the long run, things seem better now, but we have lost a lot of nature and freedom along the way.