Childhood before technology took over

Technology is certainly not all bad but I am so glad that I had my childhood before technology took over. .

 

Eh. Technology doesn't have to effect a childhood, the onus is on parents to do a better job.

When I was growing up gaming consoles were available, we had them, but we also had allotted time on them we weren't allowed to play them all night after school or whatever.

I also look at these photos on facebook sometimes and I'm like big deal, so you rode a bike with no helmet. Like give me some significant statistics that tell me that helped you grow up better. I'm all for playing out in the mud but sometimes, who cares?

 

Ehhh.... I dunno

 

I too feel blessed that I grew up before the use cell phones and the wide spread use of home computers.

During the summer if we weren't at camp, we spent the entire day outside at the park, or terrorizing the streets on our Choppers and BMX bicycles

Then quietly one day cablevision came to town, and home computers like the commodore 64 and Spectrum, and then I saw my first cell phone a Motorola, DynaTAC 8000X, then other advances soon followed,

But at least i caught the last remanence of a simpler time in America before the computer age

 

I had a stick...

 

What no hoop to go with it? ...lol...

 

Great childhood without modern tech but if Google was available I would not have been afraid and worried all my teens that my curved penis was not normal. My first gf at 18 lasted 4 years so I was still unsure after that.

 

no.

but i'm glad i didn't have to grow up in a city, and that people didn't yet have to be rich to not have to live in one.

not sure what the op means by "taking over" either. bullshit artists have always been "taking over", regardless of the sophistication of their tools.
and i don't think any of us were born before the invention of flint knapping, or the discovery of lever and fulcrum.

eff google, twit and face, they're not part of my life now. but being able to make pictures with a computer, and to modify photographs, both to express the concepts in my head,
less ambiguously then could ever be done with words, that i dreamed of and missed, long before even big computers had the capacity to do so,
from i think the first time i remember edwin r murrow talking about the sperry univac, sometime arround or before the international geophysical year, sometime around the mid 1950s.

and i would have loved for the narrow gauge and the interurban to still have been running and providing frequent passenger service too.
computers AND public transit AND the population levels back then AND not having to live in a city to enjoy all of it,
and we could have had all of that too if idiots hadn't hated logic and taught each other to do so.

and we still could, if people would ever quite whinning about and blaming technology for their own misuse of it, and hatred of applying logic and imagination to doing so instead.

before the automobile became the god of transportation policy, that yes, and when most of electricity was generated by turbines at dams, instead of burning anything, that too.

but politics fucked up the environment with the car, and population overload, screwed up energy being cleanly sourced, until now we have a chance for it to be again but the politics of greed still screwing that up too.

and none of that, none of thoughtlessness screwing up everything has to be, and its not technology that has a damd thing itself to do with why it is.

 

We were to busy doing stuff to entertain ourselves. We were outside from morning until night. and heaven forbid we didn't wear helmets when we were on our bikes.

 

I played the piano and violin, while the girl across the road played the violin, flute and trumpet.
You can only imagine the afternoon when we opened the windows wide and attempted Tchaikovsky's B'flat minor piano concerto. The start of the second movement at 22:22 on this video was particular fun, with her leaning out of her bedroom window, flute in hand, so that I could hear it.
Our poor neighbors.

 

That reminded me of my late mothers story about her childhood in 1911.
As was the custom in those days, before school, she had to walk with her father to work (and get back) in time for school, a total of 14 miles. In the summer, she took her iron hoop and stick to relieve the boredom. You can only imagine how the neighbors must have felt, hearing an iron hoop on the cobbled streets at 5'am in the morning.

Whatever people may think today, she still walked the 3 miles from the station to our home to visit us when she was 97 and could still work out compound interest in her head before Jane could find a calculator.

 

Swimming in the cut making rafts exploring tunnels and old mines , rigging up bikes out of bits ,Penknives, ratting with shotguns and air rifles ,climbing up on top of Haystacks, having a gang of mates ! And then Kissing girls wouldn't change that for all the minecraft and call of duty games in the world !!

 

Those weren't invented yet...

 

It's more than just cell phones and computers. It's helicopter parenting. When I was four I was all over the place, by myself. And there were other kids around, too, just wandering around in their underwear.

 

It's kind of a privilege to be poor and from a broken home. I feel deep pride for my fellow trailer trash of the 80s.

 

Gee, my dad's idea of a good time was for me to sleep out in the rain in a "tent" which was a piece of blue plastic slung over a clothesline. He said that's how they used to do it.

I woke up alone in the yard at four years old in a puddle of water, and it's a great memory. Parents wouldn't let that shit fly today. Here's to all the alcoholic dads for the memories. The 80s ruled.

 

yeah, old people love to say "thank god i didn't have the things that younger people have" because it makes them feel better about being old. but what's wrong with having options? for me, i grew up in the middle of fucking nowhere. all these nostalgia pictures people post of a group of suburban kids playing in the street, that seems like fiction to me. i used to spend a lot of time playing outside, but after a long day of going down the the river and fishing by myself, and walking through the woods by myself, and climbing trees by myself, i'm glad i was able to go in the house for a little while and play mario by myself for a change.

i wouldn't be so sure about that. look at how many people have decided that they're at death's door after reading webmd.