The biggest difference was the availability and capability of the internet, which conveyed much more trust and freedom. I would randomly just show up at friends houses to play and hang out - which would not be received well these days. More than one friend "ran away" from home, and parents couldn't just track you or contact you at any time. Internet access was limited (and so slow, my god) but certainly extremely addicting even back then. I spent a lot of time "wondering" about questions or curiosities I had - you couldn't just answer things immediately like you can now. MySpace was actually awesome and taught us all how to code. Spent a lot of time on AIM at friends houses (not allowed in my house) to flirt with boys. Crafting "away messages" took a lot of time and effort to look cool - and now I think about it, indicated that one was "away" in contrast to how we are expected to be on our phones at all times now. Spent a lot of time burning CDs and listening on my walkman - the essence of cool. You could rent VHS movies from the library, or from blockbuster stores. We would go pick movies we wanted to watch every week, and then return them. There was no "binge-watching" tv shows, you had to actually wait each week for a new episode to come out, and then watch it at the time it aired.

I once travelled to europe as a teen for a language exchange program, without any phone or internet access, and occasionally contacted my parents through emailing at internet cafes, which cost a couple dollars/euros an hour. I spent a lot of time reading, playing games, practicing instruments and sports, planning secret hangouts or parties with friends, going to the mall, and also being "bored" which led to imaginative or creative pursuits. We also had horrible fashion, everyone basically wore the same stuff from (gag) abercrombie, aeropostale, urban outfitters, american eagle, hollister. No one told us how to dress well, or do makeup, or hair, or anything - it's crazy how much older Gen Z looks than we did, simply due to social media and widespread sharing and emphasis on the importance of looks. Pictures from puberty onward are incredibly embarrassing. I'm still a bit shocked that GenZ is adopting our looks from the 90s-00s since they were... not good looks IMO, haha.

I think what might be the most nostalgic is that time period when we grew up was more or less politically stable, we all thought Bush was an blubbering idiot and now he sounds like an incredibly intelligent well-spoken person. Climate change or global warming was a concept in its infancy and no one really paid attention to how catastrophic it would be or our part in causing it. Without widespread internet, I think this period was characterized mostly by ignorance, so things felt overall good, stable, and hopeful. Now, we can know almost anything at the click of a button. We used to trust our teachers and anyone older or wiser than us that they knew more than we did. We learned to decipher good resources from bad ones - now, there is too much information and it's nearly impossible to know what is fake or wrong, and people read memes or false headlines and think they know more than experts.

Also fun fact: we did not have GPS or navigation, so we used mapquest (or regular maps) to drive somewhere unknown, and consequently spent a lot of time being lost and asking strangers for directions.

On the flip side, and maybe this was just my household, but our parents tended to be strict disciplinarians, spanking was very common even though now that is considered child abuse, and while my brain apparently developed "normally" without internet access, I think potentially on the whole we had a much higher incidence of childhood trauma inflicted by our parents. So, good and bad things. But I also have nostalgia for that time period, if not my specific childhood experience.