Things 90s Kids did that would Baffle Today's Children

Things 90s Kids Did That Would Completely Baffle Today's Children

If your feed looks anything like mine lately, it has been full of parents reminiscing about what life was like growing up in the 90s. The "what were you like as a kid in the 90s" trend is everywhere, and it is funny, a little smug, and weirdly comforting all at once.

It is also a good reminder of how much childhood has changed in a single generation. No smartphones. No group chats. No streaming. And absolutely no way for a parent to know where you were at any given second of the day. You headed out the door, you came home when you got hungry, and somehow everyone made it to adulthood.

Here are the things that were completely normal back then and would leave most kids today genuinely baffled.

Leaving the house with zero way to be contacted

This is the one that breaks young brains. You told your mum roughly where you were going, you gave a vague time you would be back, and that was the entire arrangement. No "share my location." No quick text to check in. If your parents wanted you home, they either waited or yelled your name down the street along with everyone else's.

And the phone was bolted to the wall. If you wanted to ring a mate, you dialled their home number from memory, then made polite small talk with their dad before anyone passed the receiver across. Need a number you had not memorised? You flipped through the phone book the size of a brick.

Entertainment took actual effort

Today a kid says they are bored and the answer is a screen with infinite options. In the 90s, entertainment was a project.

If your favourite song came on the radio, you had about three seconds to slam record on the tape deck and pray the announcer did not talk over the ending. If you missed an episode of your show, that was simply that. No catching up later. You waited a full week, and if you were out that night, tough luck.

Friday nights meant a pilgrimage to the video store, where choosing a film was a serious family negotiation and the good releases were always already gone. Photos were a gamble too. You finished the whole roll, dropped the film off at the chemist, waited days, and only then discovered that half the shots had someone's thumb over the lens or everyone caught mid-blink.

A few more that today's kids would struggle with:

• Waiting for the dial-up internet to screech its way online, then losing the connection the second someone picked up the phone
• Sharing one family computer parked in the lounge, with a strict roster nobody respected
• Doing homework with an actual encyclopaedia instead of a search bar
• Keeping a Tamagotchi alive, a tiny digital pet that somehow caused enormous stress
• Riding your bike for hours with a pack of mates and no particular destination

Knowing how to be bored

Here is the big one. When there were no screens to reach for, you had to invent your own fun. You built huts out of couch cushions. You made up games with rules only your street understood. You annoyed your siblings in the back of the car on long trips, counting paddocks out the window because there was genuinely nothing else to do.