People who remember life before the Internet have witnessed firsthand how modern technology has changed our daily lives, for better and for worse. The world kids are growing up in today is vastly different, which has also changed what childhood looks like. Every generation sees differences between their own formative years and their kids' or grandkids', of course, but the rate of change in the digital age makes the differences between the older and younger generations today feel particularly stark.
That contrast has also led to a great deal of nostalgia for the folks who remember a simpler, slower time on a visceral level. So when someone on Reddit asked Gen Xers and Boomers, "What will kids today never get to experience?" the responses prompted a wave of memories. They're not necessarily good or bad experiences, but they do take us right back to a specific era that some of us remember with fondness.
Here are childhood experiences from Gen Xers and Boomers that today's kids likely won't experience:
Encyclopedias
Having a set of encyclopedias was almost a given before the Internet, as was a parent telling you to "Look it up in the encyclopedia" when you asked a question. There was no Google, no place to enter a search term and get information. You had to figure out the keyword for what you wanted to learn about and find it alphabetically in a huge set of books.
"Having to look up information in an encyclopedia."
"GETTING to look up information in an encyclopedia. I loved reading about random topics in my encyclopedia. That has translated into reading about random topics online."
- YouTube www.youtube.com
"I said I needed something to read at summer camp, in a letter home once. Mom sent the E volume of the 1976 World Book encyclopedia."
"Oh dear I asked the 15 year old about something and after he answered I said 'you're such an encyclopedia!' He looked me and said "Whats and esyklopedia what?" I've never felt more old...and I said it was what we used before Google, that it was a series of big books we had to open and read the letter "B" if we were looking for information on something starting with a B....he was dumbfounded."
"We watched a movie recently where a kid won an encyclopedia set and I told my six year old, 'That's how Daddy and I used to look things up when we were your age. The Internet wasn't really a thing then.' She said, 'You couldn't even enjoy things?'"
"Or the reference room at the library and need the reference librarian to dig out archives of newspapers, phonebooks. Microfiche."
Freedom to roam and be bored
Kids today can roam outside, but they often don't. Digital devices, streaming shows and movies, and parental anxieties have greatly diminished kids' abilities to explore the world around them. Parents used to send their kids out on their bikes for hours with no cell phones and no idea where they were, which sounds downright irresponsible to modern-day sensibilities.
"Riding your bike all day and exploring. Being free…just be home by dinner time."
"Street lights were our timers."
"Getting lost and then figuring out on their own how to find the way back. It’s a skill that the cavemen probably relied on."
"Just running around rolling on the grass and playing in the dirt. Laying on their backs and seeing pictures in the clouds."
"That loss is truly underrated. To be able to draw on those childhood experiences of unstructured time and wonder has been a guide to calm and center me throughout my life."
Collect calls (and knowing how to avoid them)
Pre-cell-phone, we had a use public pay phones to call home. But if you forgot to bring change for the phone booth, you had to call collect (meaning the receiver of the call would have a charge put on their phone bill for accepting the call, and it usually wasn't cheap). The operator would ask the call receiver if they wanted to accept the call, with a question like, "You have a collect call from [insert name]. Would you like to accept? You only got charged if you accepted the call, so people would get around it by giving a name that meant something specific, like a family code system.
"Making a collect call from a payphone."
"Yes, and calling home and letting it ring once to let Mom and Dad know I’d arrived safely!"
- YouTube www.youtube.com
"My Mom had a whole list of coded last names she'd use with her sisters. IIR, Mrs. McBride meant she'd be late, Mrs. Wagner meant she'd arrived and needed a ride, and so on. They kept using it well into the 80's for flights."
"Mom done (wherever we were) was mine, because i would spend the 25 cents she gave me for the payphone on candy lol."
Internet-free TV
Ah, the joy of walking across the room to change the channel and only having five channels to choose from. Or having to adjust the antenna for picture clarity. Or the sound of TV static. Or racing to the bathroom during a commercial break.
"Missing an episode of a show knowing you will never be able to see it again."
"I was talking to a Millennial the other day and she was like "Wait, so the TV just stopped broadcasting at night?" Yep. It played the national anthem and there were usually some fighter jets...Then nothing but the test pattern. Blew her mind."
TV before the Internet was a whole different experience. Photo credit: Canva
"Arguing over the single TV because someone can’t miss 'their' programme. Learning random facts about antiques or wildlife because there’s nothing else on. Having to concentrate whilst listening to dialogue because there’s no rewind. Watching something special but having no way to show it to others. Having no problem with black and white films because you just imagine all the colours. Waiting to 'find out next week' after a cliffhanger."
"School closures scrolling across the bottom of the screen at 6 am. It was like waiting for your lottery numbers announced."
Boxes of notes and letters
We had so many handwritten notes, letters, and cards before texting. College friends would write and send snail mail letters to one another during summer break. You'd write to your friends when you were on vacation. Getting the mail was actually exciting because there was a good chance you'd have something personal.
"Having a random box of old letters and postcards to sort through now and then."
"fr fr those old letters were like little time capsules, now it's just endless scrolling through email or texts."
"I’ve noticed that a lot of people these days don’t do cards or notes anymore. I’ve collected every card I’ve got since i was in middle school! I love handwritten notes."
Passing notes to your friends, folded up in that certain way that turned the note itself into sort of an envelope. I still have a box of them from high school and they are hilarious."
The joys and woes of landline phones
So many telephone memories: Rotary dialing. Stretching the phone cord as far as it would go. Waiting by the phone. Not knowing who was on the other end when you answered it.
"Slamming the phone down in anger."
"Rotary dial: Oh the glorious feeling of slamming the phone down mid conversation during an argument and unplugging the phone from the wall :D"
"The terror of having to talk to a girl’s parents on the phone before you talked to the girl."
Phone calls were an entirely different ballgame before cell phones.Photo credit: Canva
"As a girl, standing by the phone in the kitchen for 5 hours waiting for the boy to call because all your 6th grade friends said he would call you and you CANNOT have your mom answering. Spoiler alert: He never called. I picture him sitting terrified by his phone and then just abandoning the idea to go outside and ride a bike or something."
"Stretching the cord around the corner of the kitchen, in a desperate bid for a bit of privacy!"
"Getting to the 7th number and realizing you made a mistake, then having to hang it up and start dialing over again lol. Ain't no backspace button on a rotary phone!"
"Prank phone calls. IDK why but sitting with my GFs, dropping open a phone book, randomly picking a number and then calling someone with some stupid voice and stupider question ('is your refrigerator running?') was the epitome of funny to my 11 year old self."
Vaccine-preventable diseases
On the positive side, communicable childhood diseases have greatly diminished thanks to vaccines. Older generations experienced the realities of polio, the mumps, and other diseases that children are now widely immunized against.
"Hopefully polio."
"A childhood without measles, polio, mumps, rubella."
Vaccines have helped reduce or eliminate childhood diseases that affected generations past. Photo credit: Canva
"I was just talking to one of my kids about polio! I told them that most people my age (50ish) knew at least one adult who had it as a child (my great uncle, for me) but that now it was super rare to know anyone because the disease has been eradicated by the vaccine."
"I lost 3/4ths of my hearing from the mumps. I hope that won’t happen again to anyone."
Nostalgia can be fun to revel in, but it's also easy to look at the past only through rose-colored glasses. Though some people might lament the loss of many of these experiences, some of them are better off being left in the rearview mirror. The diseases, of course, but even the pre-tech simple life wasn't always so simple. Would we really want to give up Google or GPS for encyclopedias and road atlases? Unlikely. Perhaps we can bring some of what was great about childhood experiences of the past while celebrating the genuinely helpful technology that has made our lives better in the present.
Many people make bucket lists of things they want in life. 
sipping modern family GIF 
TV before the Internet was a whole different experience. 
Phone calls were an entirely different ballgame before cell phones.
Vaccines have helped reduce or eliminate childhood diseases that affected generations past. 
It's hard to date when you're fat, but not for the reasons you might think.
"You know what I like about you? You’ve got fat pride. I felt that way, too, until I realized I wanted anyone to fuck me ever."
We’d been talking online for weeks — he was funny, erudite, nerdy, kind. He’d told me he’d lost weight in the past. I’d done my due diligence of telling him how fat I was, working hard to avoid repeats of past hurt and disappointment. I’d weeded through dozens of profiles about wanting to meet "healthy," "active" women and several that pointedly instructed that fat women weren’t welcome. Many men had sent graphic, sexual messages, and when I politely declined or didn’t respond, they issued lengthy screeds. "U SHOULD BE GRATEFUL." "I wouldn’t even rape you."
In amongst all of that, I’d found someone who seemed like a gem. And then, on our first real date, this. It was frustrating, isolating, and made me feel so big and so small, all at the same time.
I gently pushed back. "You know you’re saying that about me, too, right?"
"What?"
"When you talk about no one wanting to fuck fat people, you’re talking about me, too."
He shook his head. "Don’t take it personally. It’s not personal."
I got quiet then asked for the check. He said he’d walk me out. When we got outside, he tried to kiss me then asked if I wanted to go back to his place.
Years later, I was falling for a new partner.
We’d been dating for several months, and she was extraordinary: full of life, wildly intelligent, absurdly beautiful. I’d tell her often — maybe too often — how stunning I thought she was. With equal frequency, she’d talk about my body. "You’re so brave to dress the way you do." "I want you to feel empowered."
At first, her responses sounded like reciprocity, but they always seemed to sting. I felt deflated every time she said it. Like that first date, she couldn’t see past my body. She valued me, but she didn’t desire me. When she spoke, she never spoke about my body — only about my relationship to it. She was amazed that I wasn’t sucked into the undertow of self-loathing and isolation that she expected from fat women. Those comments were a reminder of how frequently she thought of my body, not as an object of desire, but as an obstacle to overcome. She was impressed that I could. She could not.
When you and I talk about dating, dear friend, we have a lot of overlapping experiences because dating can be difficult and awkward for anyone.
It’s a strange auditioning process: all artifice to find someone who can respect your uncrossable lines, and failed auditions usually mean those lines get crossed. It’s easy to feel judged, stalled, alone in the process. It can get exhausting, exciting, frustrating, exhilarating.
But dating as a fat person means contending with so many added layers of challenge.
You told me once you imagined it was impossible to date as a fat person. It’s not; it’s just a lot of work. Lots of people are willing to sleep with fat people. Many are willing to date a fat person.
Few are willing to truly embrace a fat person. Almost no one, it seems, really knows what that means.
That first date, dear friend, is such a frequent moment.
My sweet, funny date was abruptly overthrown, overtaken by years of the same anti-fat messages all of us hear. He couldn’t reconcile being fat and being loved. All of that, suddenly, was visited upon me, as it so often is.
I only bring up my feelings about being a fat person after knowing someone for some time. But, with startling regularity, new acquaintances, dates, and strangers offer diet advice, trial gym memberships, and, even once, a recommendation for a surgeon. My life as a fat person is a barrage of weekly, daily, and hourly offers of unsolicited advice. At first, the detailed answers, the constant defense, the explanation of my daily diet and medical history are ineffective — no answer is sufficient. Over time, it becomes burdensome, then exhausting, then frustrating. And it doesn’t seem to cross the minds of most people I meet that I’ve heard what they’ve said before — not just once, but over and over again, in great detail. I have a forced expertise in diets, exercise regimens, miracle pills, and the science of weight loss.
That may not be your experience, dear friend, because people may approach you differently.
You might not know what it’s like to feel your face flush or your heart race when your body so reliably becomes a topic of conversation during dinner parties, work events, first dates. There’s a familiar wave of frustration, hurt, and exhaustion. It’s all the visceral, invisible consequence of unintended harm because few of us — even you, my darling — have unlearned the scripts we’re expected to recite when we see a body like mine.
As a fat woman, I just want what anyone else wants: to be seen, to be loved, to be supported for who I am. To be challenged and adored. To be worth the effort for who I am.
When I meet people whose first response to me is about my fat body, I learn something important about that person. Whether their opening salvo is "Fat bitch" or "I’m concerned about your health" or "Have you tried this diet?" or "I think you’re beautiful," they all send the same message: that I am invisible. Rather than seeing me or getting to know who I am, they can only see my fat body.
It’s true of so many people I meet. They’ve got this deep-seated block: They can’t see fat people as individual people with individual stories because no one expects them to. Nothing in our culture indicates that fat people might have individual experiences, different stories, life experiences as rich and varied as anyone else. Instead, we’re met with diagnosis, prognosis, quarantine: an anthropological impulse to demand to know why we are the way we are and to figure out how to stop us from having the bodies we have. We’re reduced to figures in an equation, a puzzle to solve. But truthfully, we’re so much messier than that. We’re just as contradictory, real, and human as anyone else you know, and loving us is just as complicated.
When we have conversations like this, you often say, "I had no idea."
It’s heartening, dear friend, and it’s also hard to hear. It’s a harsh reminder that even those closest to me are subject to all those same influences and impulses.
There’s so much work in just working up the mettle to date at all. Building your own confidence and battling your own doubt enough to date at all can be difficult, in part because there’s no template. Media representation is seriously lacking for many communities; seeing thriving fat people in media is nearly nonexistent. Being fat means not seeing yourself reflected anywhere as being happy, healthy, or affirmed.
Being fat means taking on the Sisyphean task of creating your own world, one in which you can declare a truce with yourself and learn to feel OK or feel nothing at all about yourself when the entire world seems to be telling you that is not possible.
It means finding whatever you can scavenge to build yourself some makeshift shelter of thatch and driftwood. It’s brittle and dry, and it’s something. You try to build something that can withstand the gale-force winds of seeing an episode of "The Biggest Loser" or hearing a stranger offer unsolicited diet advice that you’re already taking. You build it slowly, painstakingly — testing methods and gathering rare, essential materials over time. It’s precious and fragile, a labor of love and a means of survival.
And finding a partner means opening that hard-fought home to someone else, over and over again, knowing that person might destroy it.
Usually, they do.
You’ve mourned it a hundred times. Your skin has thickened. Sometimes that person burns it to the ground, setting a fire to watch it burn. But more often, they just forget to extinguish their cigarette. Yes, when we look for love, some of us are hurt intentionally, cruelly, because of our bodies and because of overt fatphobia. But usually, we’re hurt without malice, through rote scripts about who we’re allowed to be and an expectation that we’ll devote our lives to meeting those expectations.
Often, when looking for friends and partners, I search for those who will be gentle with the home I’ve built, ramshackle though it is.
What made such an impression on my partner from years ago was that I didn’t stop there: I wanted someone who would help build that home, someone who would protect it, someone who would call it their home, too. Because a lack of harm isn’t love.
I want love. And as a fat person, there’s audacity in that.