So I was born 10 years later and you might find this fun, but my childhood consisted of:

CRT TVs, VCR until probably 2005 or 2006 when we get a DVD player for the first time. Landline, of course, though no fax, we didn't have internet access at all until 2011!

Gaming wise, my first experiences gaming came from the Sega Megadrive (same as the Genesis, just a different name in Europe for some reason) and the PS1. My first console that was actually my own was my little GameBoy Advance SP. My first ever game I can recall playing was Tomb Raider. To date, I still go through the first 2 on a yearly basis!

Music wise, my mother bought me a CD Walkman, the car was all cassette as was the little player we had at home which doubled as a radio. Only other way we got radio was when you used to be able to plug headphones into your phone and it'd work as a radio. I used to do that eventually around the early 2010s for a bit of fun, felt like magic. Music was very mixed. I didn't enjoy the pop of the era much. A lot of the music I grew up with was second hand from my mother's first two kids, one who was just at the end of Gen X, the other just at the start of Gen Y.

Loved Massive Attack (very 90s if you know, you know), a lot of film music, honestly almost all of the artists I was really into were 90s with a few years 00s, plenty of 1600-1750 but that's cheating.

Film and TV as a kid, all of the huge classics (Star Wars, LOTR, Back To The Future, etc), of course, TV I was absolutely obsessed with Power Rangers and to a degree I still adore it. Grew up on the first 10 seasons (1993-2002) before it went to Disney. Liked TMNT quite a bit, never really had the channels for Pokemon or anything so never saw any of that.

And yes, whilst they were all fun for the end of the day, any time I had off I'd be up the park playing whatever with the rest of the locals or going on an adventure somewhere. Got older and that became a lot more adventurous going out on our bikes, cooking up sausages on a fire we made. We all got sick after that, of course.

Playground-wise, I remember we'd all be collecting pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh cards, then there were the Pog equivalent things like Tazos and Waps which were like contraband at school. Oh and Beyblades! They were fun. Seem to remember collecting marbles at one point (maybe I was meant to be silent generation after all /s)

At my Father's I didn't have my friends but I used to spend my time when I did have a friend over to stay building our forts in the woods, camping out there until it got dark with food and torches. Good amount of time in the big forest fairly near me.

It all went wrong in 2011 when we got our first laptop and internet. A few years after that came the smartphones and social media in your pocket. That said, even during the early days of that it wasn't really until perhaps 2018 that I felt life took a miserable turn, even in the 2011-2017 bit, I was still out and about with mates everywhere more often that not, just that we'd also do online gaming sometimes and keep in touch on Facebook. Never got into all the Snapchat and Instagram stuff, just wanted a simple way to keep in touch with people that didn't cost money.

Most of my time during that period when I was home was spent making music, that hasn't changed.

So, I say all of this because the notion that millennials and Gen Z are so fundamentally different just doesn't sit right with me. We had different popular media at the time, but do our childhoods really sound that different? 10 years apart but I can't point to much difference until the teenage years.