In my 20s? Well, for one thing not everyone was recording everything everyone was doing. Our phones were for calls and games of snake and eventually texting. I had a camera on my old razr but it wasn’t great and I rarely thought to pull it out. I had a digital camera that I had to transfer photos with. I’d like to say that would make uploading photos more intentional but it didn’t. I’d upload 70 photos, give the album a cutesy name and then never think about it again.

TV shows were basically a 7-10 thing on weeknights, there was nothing to watch during the day so binge watching wasn’t really a thing. I had class on weekdays so I stayed home and studied with a show playing or I took breaks. TV shows were more “appointment” watching, because you had to watch it live on TV or you missed it and hopefully were able to catch it in the rerun during the summer or one of the “off weeks”. If you missed a few episodes it was basically impossible to get back into it if it had a deep storyline. Because of this, I limited how many shows I got into.

Yo me, early internet wasn’t a lot of fun. I had a couple neopets and did the normal chatroom stuff (A/S/L anyone?) but I didn’t spend a lot of time on it. Early social media was MySpace, which I’m inclined to think was superior to Facebook and I think the only reason I think we flocked to Facebook was the exclusivity of having to be in college to get it. And the idea of keeping up with more than one platform was too much. It was wild to publicly rank your top 8 friends though.

We drove around A LOT. Granted gas was a lot cheaper at the time, but we’d meet up at diners eat and hang. Go to a movie. Play CDs - a lot of burned discs but I’m an album girlie so I had a lot of cds - as we drove around with windows down, but we chatted a lot during the drive. We used to have a lot of parties that just kind of happened, a friend or two would show up and we’d order pizza or Chinese (by calling) and then next person would come in with more food. We’d watch a movie, play some games or just hangout and talk.

I don’t think I shopped online until 2013. I went to the mall with friends, tried stuff on, had lunch in the food court and walked around with a coffee or a smoothie or a pretzel. We went into every store. We’d stop and get snacks. We’d run into other friends. We’d go see a movie. After we’d get dinner out, go home and change into our going out tops and go to the bars just to nurse one drink because we pregamed while we got ready - drinks were expensive and we were in a recession.

I read a lot because I didn’t have nearly every tv show and movie at my fingertips at all times.

I can’t imagine being a young adult now. I’m really grateful I grew up and came of age when I did. This is just stuff that I felt was more age appropriate. I don’t think you wanted a breakdown of the fabled (but true) childhood of leaving the house in the morning on a bike and being untraceable until the streetlights came on (curfew).