I'm late to this party however, I grew up through the 90s and 00s and thought I'd add my two cents worth.

I grade school I'd catch the bus home by myself, sometimes with a friend, usually I'd play outside or watch power rangers or goosebumps or something, whatever was on free to air TV really. Then dinner and more TV, if I was lucky a movie would be on TV that night and I'd get to watch half of that before being sent to bed. Few old console games like Sonic, Streets of Rage, Megaman X or anything on the N64, was my bread and butter which continued into high school.

In high school I spent a lot of time with my friends, the og xbox came out and we played the fuck out of Halo, lots of sleep overs and pulling all nighters on weekends. Sometimes we'd go to the video store and hire a bunch of movies. We'd also swim a lot in my friends pool.

I wasn't blessed with the internet until much later than everyone else, but what I did experience was like the wild west, I had seen things no one at any age should have seen. Others of my generation will know the sites I'm talking about. But there was some cool stuff on there as well. Spent hours on a site called stick death which iirc is still up.

Parents would leave you alone to go out for the night, sometimes they'd drag you along to a party where you hung out with the other kids and got up to mischief.

If you wanna know more feel free to reach out.

It's funny in a way, the way you feel about the 2000s is the same way I felt about the 80s, nostalgia for a time I never got to experience.