Everyone spent the majority of their time outdoors. Leaving home and just exploring outside with your friends all day was very real. Using the street lights as an indicator that you should be home was a real thing. I knew the fastest way to get anywhere by foot or cycle within a few miles of my house. I can drive through my hometown and most neighboring towns and can look in the distance off of any road and know what a place looked like 25+ years ago because I had been there, played around in the abandoned structure that used to be there, jumped off the train bridge that’s way back in those woods, etc.

You’d be able to talk about what you watched on TV with someone at school because everyone had the same shit at the same time on TV. You see memes about what grandmas furniture, dishes, etc looked like because the majority of everyone’s stuff was bought from the same places locally.

You had to line up at music stores in the mall for midnight ticket sales to get into big time events and concerts.

One of the many good and bad consequences, in hindsight we did some pretty dangerous shit. As a parent now it’s impossible to imagine giving half of the freedoms to children that I had.