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Parents who grew up in the '70s and '80s share the experiences that modern kids can't believe

People weren't very healthy back then, but they were free.

via Wikimedia Commons

Island School Class, circa 1970s.

Parents, do you think your child would be able to survive if they were transported back to the '70s or '80s? Could they live at a time before the digital revolution put a huge chunk of our lives online? These days, everyone has a phone in their pocket, but before then, if you were in public and needed to call someone, you used a pay phone. Can you remember the last time you stuck 50 cents into one and grabbed the grubby handset?

According to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, roughly 100,000 pay phones remain in the U.S., down from 2 million in 1999. Do you think a 10-year-old kid would have any idea how to use a payphone in 2022? Would they be able to use a Thomas Guide map to find out how to get somewhere? If they stepped into a time warp and wound up in 1975, could they throw a Led Zeppelin album on the record player at a party? Another big difference between now and life in the '70s and '80s has been public attitudes toward smoking cigarettes.

cigarettes, smoking, hand smoking, smoke, ash, smoking habit, health, '70s, '80sA hand holding a lit cigarette.via Canva/Photos

In 1965, 42.4% of Americans smoked and now, it’s just 12.5%. This sea change in public opinion about smoking means there are fewer places where smoking is deemed acceptable.

But in the early '80s, you could smoke on a bus, on a plane, in a movie theater, in restaurants, in the classroom and even in hospitals. How would a child of today react if their third-grade teacher lit up a heater in the middle of math class?

Dan Wuori, senior director of early learning at the Hunt Institute, tweeted that his high school had a smoking area “for the kids.” He then asked his followers to share “something you experienced as a kid that would blow your children’s minds. ”A lot of folks responded with stories of how ubiquitous smoking was when they were in school. While others explained that life was perilous for a kid, whether it was the school playground equipment or questionable car seats.

Here are a few responses that’ll show today’s kids just how crazy life used to be in the '70s and '80s.

First of all, let’s talk about smoking.



Want to call someone? Need to get picked up from baseball practice? You can’t text mom or dad, you’ll have to grab a quarter and use a pay phone.



People had little regard for their kids’ safety or health.








You could buy a soda in school.

Things were a lot different before the internet.


While it was fun to call into a radio station and wait with your ear by the radio to hear "Careless Whisper" by Wham! in 1984, you have to admit that kids have it a lot easier these days. All they have to do is jump on YouTube or Spotify, and they can hear it instantly. But that begs a big question: With music being so easy to access these days, does it become more disposable than it was when you had to wait all day to hear a song or drive downtown to the record store and pay $6.99 for an album (in 1982 money)?


Remember pen pals?


Many people bemoan the fact that today's children aren’t as tough as they were a few decades ago. But that’s probably because today's parents are better attuned to their kids’ needs, so they don't have to cheat death to make it through the day. But just imagine how easy parenting would be if all you had to do was throw your kids a bag of Doritos and a Coke for lunch, and you never worried about strapping them into a car seat?

This article originally appeared three years ago.

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Education

Americans are known for being great salespeople. People have some theories about why.

What is it about American culture?

via LinkedIn Sales Solutions/Unsplash and Kindel Media/Pexels

American sales people making deals happen.

Americans are known as some of the best salespeople in the world. The country has been the home of some of the most influential business communicators of all time, like Steve Jobs of Apple or filmmaker Walt Disney. America is also the birthplace of people who became legends for their ability to excite people with their incredible, audacious promotional skills, such as P.T. Barnum or Muhammad Ali.

There’s also a dark side to the uniquely American gift of gab. Americans have the reputation of being masters of BS. Hunter S. Thompson, a writer with a fondness for exaggeration, once referred to America as a “nation of 220 million used car salesmen.”

An X user named Alz, born in Hong Kong, was curious about why Americans are so great at sales, presenting ideas, and (less favorably) BS-ing than people in other countries. The tweet went viral, receiving over 1.4 million views. Nearly everyone agreed that Americans are the world's best salespeople, but there were many different answers to why.

“Why are Americans, on average, so incredibly good at presenting/selling/ (you could uncharitably call it) BS-ing? Is it something about early/middle/high school education? Culture? Parents teaching their kids?” Alz asked.

“I troll, but this is an incredibly important skill, and for some reason observationally, America, which has an early education system few are generally jealous of, seems to systematically produce ppl with a much higher distribution of presentation ability than anywhere else,” Alz continued.

Some respondents believe Americans are great at sales because so many work in the service sector. Over the past 50 years, globalization has altered the labor landscape, with many jobs moving from manufacturing to the service sector. Thus, Americans have learned to place a significant value on those who can communicate one-on-one, such as people who work in hospitality, retail, or personal training.

Others believe Americans have the gift of gab because its education system highly values communication skills, which are favorable in the business world. However, some believe this emphasis comes at the expense of STEM skills, which are seen as more important in other countries.

Many people think Americans are great communicators because it's crucial to be able to sell and persuade in a competitive, free-market capitalist system. If you aren’t able to sell the goods and services you provide and produce, then it doesn’t matter if you’re in business at all. Further, American business culture is also seen as more relationship-based than in other countries, where buying and selling is merely transactional.

It could be that it’s all part of a culture that values openness and confidence which bleeds over into other aspects of American life. Persuasion and sales come a lot more naturally to people who've been raised with zero fear of calling attention to themselves. Outside the business world, Americans are also seen as friendly in social situations and have no problem engaging in small talk with strangers. Americans’ extroverted nature can sometimes shock people who travel to the U.S. on vacation.

Or, it could be that Americans just have a ‘rizz that’s the envy of the world.

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People think something really important is missing from William and Kate's Christmas card

Can you see it?

via The Prince and Princess of Wales

The Prince and Princess of Wales' 2023 Christmas card.

The British royal family is used to being under intense scrutiny, whether it’s the relationship between King Charles III and Queen Camilla. The rocky relationship that Prince Harry and Megan Markle have with the rest of their family or the numerous scandals involving Prince Andrew.

For a family forced to take public perception very seriously, it’s interesting to note that there is something rather strange about this year's Christmas card from the Prince and Princess of Wales and that it wasn't flagged before the photo was relased.

At first glance, the family appears in good spirits, with big smiles in matching white button-downs, denim pants and black slacks. However, there seems to be something seriously wrong with Prince Louis' left hand.

Royal watchers on social media say that the photo makes it look like the 5-year-old is missing his middle finger.

A lot of folks sounded off on the mysteriously missing appendage on X.

X user Yellow Rose of Texas highlighted the hand to give people a more precise look at what was going on with Prince Louis.

There are various reasons why Louis' finger appears to be missing in the photograph. His middle and ring fingers are spread far apart, exposing the skin between them. If this is the case, Louis must have some rather flexible appendages.

Others believe his thumb is tucked on the underside of the chair. This makes sense, but Louis has to have some pretty flexible fingers for this scenario to be correct.

As we saw above, others believe that the missing finger is a Photoshop failure or a mistake created by artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is known for having a hard time creating images of fingers. If it was a Photoshop fail, it’s not the first time the royal family has been accused of using digital photo editing software on its family photos.

Last April, numerous people accused the Prince and Princess of Wales of sharing a Photoshopped image of Queen Elizabeth and her grandchildren on what would have been her 97th birthday. Many suggested that Prince Louis was digitally altered in the shot.

It’s fitting that Prince Louis would be the subject of such goofy or, as the English would call it, barmy, speculation. Louis is known for having a mischievous side. The young prince showed off his personality during King Charles and Queen Camilla’s coronation celebrations earlier this year, where he was caught making funny faces and yawning at inappropriate times during the ceremonies.

"He's a cheeky monkey — a typical third child," a source close to People told the magazine recently. "It's nice that the world got to see him enjoying himself."

Regardless of whether the photo results from a Photoshop failure or a member of the royal family having very nimble fingers, what’s interesting is that nobody on the Prince of Wales’ team noticed Louis’ hand and retook the photo or fixed it with digital editing. Or, it could be a great example of the royal family beginning to lighten up after all these years of public scrutiny.

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Pop Culture

Merriam-Webster announced the 2023 'Word of the Year,’ and it says a lot about today’s world

Plus, some other terms that made 2023 a historic year.

via TIFF 2022/Wikimedia Commons

Taylor Swift at 2022 Toronto International Film Festival Red Carpet Day 2.

The wordsmiths over at Merriam-Webster have announced their official “Word of the Year for 2023,” they say it’s something we are “thinking about, writing about, aspiring to, and judging more” than ever.

The word is authentic.

According to the dictionary, the most common definitions of authentic are “not false or imitation,” “being true to one's own personality, spirit, or character,” and “worthy of acceptance or belief as conforming to or based on fact.”

Merriam-Webster says the word saw a “substantial increase” in lookups this year. That’s probably because we now live in a world where artificial intelligence, deepfake technology and questionable memes challenge our basic notions of reality.

Authenticity is also seen as a commodity at a time when influencers build their brands on social media while attempting to seamlessly pitch their "favorite" products. These days, the average person scrolls through over 43 feet of content every day on social media. After being exposed to countless images of people, it becomes easier to spot the phonies from those who are being their authentic selves.

“When we look at common threads across the thousands of influencer marketing campaigns we’ve run at The Outloud Group over the last 15 years, the similarity between all of our best-performing brand creator partnerships is pretty simple: true authenticity,” Bradley Hoos, CEO of The Outland Group, a full-service influencer marketing agency, writes in Forbes.

Merriam-Webster adds that authenticity is a trait people strove to find for themselves in 2023.

“Celebrities like singers Lainey Wilson, Sam Smith, and especially Taylor Swift all made headlines in 2023 with statements about seeking their ‘authentic voice’ and ‘authentic self,” Merriam-Webster writes. “Headlines like Three Ways To Tap Into Taylor Swift’s Authenticity And Build An Eras-Like Workplace associate this quality with pop-culture superpower.”

The dictionary also highlighted more words that trended in 2023, including:

“Rizz” — Internet slang for "romantic appeal or charm" (noun) or "to charm, seduce" (verb), popularized by YouTuber Kai Cenat, was added to the dictionary.

“Deepfake” — Altered images or recordings that convincingly misrepresent someone's actions or words, making it hard to distinguish between real and fake.

“Coronation” — The crowning of a new British monarch, King Charles III, sent people to the dictionary’s website to learn the term's meaning.

“Dystopian” — In 2023, “dystopian” was a verb applied to many frightening real-world issues and was used to describe the trend in video games, books and movies depicting a dark future.

“EGOT” — Lookups for “EGOT” spiked in February when Viola Davis won a Grammy for the audiobook version of her memoir. That made her one of the 18 people to become an EGOT, or winner of an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards.

“X” — When Twitter was rebranded as X on July 23, searches for the term spiked at Merriam-Webster.com, where curious people went to discover more about the mysterious letter.

“Implode” — When a submersible that went to visit the remains of the Titanic in June imploded, the term had a considerable spike as people attempted to learn more about the passengers’ fate.

“Doppelgänger” — This term got hot multiple times in 2023. It trended twice due to stories out of Germany and New York involving the attempted murder or suicide of someone’s lookalike. Further, September saw the release of Naomi Klein’s book, “Doppelgänger: A Trip Into the Mirror World.”

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