I had a really strange conversation with my younger cousin the other day. He was born in 1998, so he doesn't have any firsthand memories of the '90s(obviously), but I was still surprised about what he said.

I was talking with my parents about the first computer we got back in the late '90s, and he was there with us. I made a remark about my first time online back when I was 11 in 1998, and he was really surprised. He asked me how long the net had been around, and I told him that it had only been in general use for about 11 or 12 years. He thought that was a long time ago, but assumed that people had been using the net alot longer than that.

On top of that, he thought the Nintendo 64 was Nintendo's first video game console, and has no idea what Y2K was. He even says that some things from the late '90s/early '00s(i.e. Clinton's presidency, Iraq disarmament crisis, Sept. 11) are being taught as history in his 4th grade class.

I'm only 20, so it takes alot to make me feel old, but this did the trick. The '90s have suddenly started to become old, and I can't say I like it :(

I did my college papers on a typewriter.  I am amazed at this.

I did my college papers on a typewriter.  I am amazed at this.



Yeah, when I was going to school we had to do all our projects by hand, even though our school did have some computers.

On top of that, we had to go to library to research for projects, papers, and things like that since our school didn't have internet access. Most kids today probably get to do all that online.

I had a really strange conversation with my younger cousin the other day. He was born in 1998, so he doesn't have any firsthand memories of the '90s(obviously), but I was still surprised about what he said.

I was talking with my parents about the first computer we got back in the late '90s, and he was there with us. I made a remark about my first time online back when I was 11 in 1998, and he was really surprised. He asked me how long the net had been around, and I told him that it had only been in general use for about 11 or 12 years. He thought that was a long time ago, but assumed that people had been using the net alot longer than that.

On top of that, he thought the Nintendo 64 was Nintendo's first video game console, and has no idea what Y2K was. He even says that some things from the late '90s/early '00s(i.e. Clinton's presidency, Iraq disarmament crisis, Sept. 11) are being taught as history in his 4th grade class.

I'm only 20, so it takes alot to make me feel old, but this did the trick. The '90s have suddenly started to become old, and I can't say I like it :(


I have a 9 year old neice, it's so cute all the things she talks about.

I tried to explain cassettes to her but she just didn't get it.  ;D

I'm only 20, so it takes alot to make me feel old, but this did the trick. The '90s have suddenly started to become old, and I can't say I like it :(


LOL, I don't blame you--something like that would make me feel quite old too. ;D

The internet has actually been around in some form as far back as perhaps the 1960s, but the World Wide Web as we now know it has only been in existance since around 1994 (i believe)

Yeah I consider the beginning of the modern Internet to be sometime around the second half of 1995.

My daughter is 9 years old, but she knows a lot about history because Im a history teacher and she asks a lot of questions. Its funny, these days, to think that when I was a kid it was a big deal to bring a walkman or a portable cassette player to school. Today you'd be laughed at for taking them instead of some kind of mp3 player.

The only thing my daughter didnt understand were vinyl records. She got cassettes because I told her they were like video tapes, only smaller and you could only play music or recorded voices on them. Records were harder to explain, so I showed her one from my collection. The first thing that struck her was the largness of the cover. She actually said that she would love to have covers that big...As for playing the record, I had to explain that to her because we no longer have a record player.

I also have an original Pong gaming consol and 1970's portable black and white TV to play it on. She was amazed that something so simple couldve been such a massively huge innovation. I guess compared to games these days Pong leaves a lot to be desired...Though I still get it out from time to time...Just for old times sake. Even my old Atari games and consol didnt impress. I guess when you have Grand Theft Auto (or whatever it is that gets played these days) games like the hand held double screen Donkey Kong (which I have), Bank Vault, Wonder Boy, Moon Buggy, Buzzard, and more modern games like the old Sonic The Hedgehog just dont cut it. Though, theyre good for a walk down memory lane from time to time.






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LOL, I don't blame you--something like that would make me feel quite old too. ;D



Yeah, thinking the internet had been around forever made me feel old, not remembering Y2K made me feel ancient ;D



My daughter is 9 years old, but she knows a lot about history because Im a history teacher and she asks a lot of questions. Its funny, these days, to think that when I was a kid it was a big deal to bring a walkman or a portable cassette player to school. Today you'd be laughed at for taking them instead of some kind of mp3 player.

The only thing my daughter didnt understand were vinyl records. She got cassettes because I told her they were like video tapes, only smaller and you could only play music or recorded voices on them. Records were harder to explain, so I showed her one from my collection. The first thing that struck her was the largness of the cover. She actually said that she would love to have covers that big...As for playing the record, I had to explain that to her because we no longer have a record player.

I also have an original Pong gaming consol and 1970's portable black and white TV to play it on. She was amazed that something so simple couldve been such a massively huge innovation. I guess compared to games these days Pong leaves a lot to be desired...Though I still get it out from time to time...Just for old times sake. Even my old Atari games and consol didnt impress. I guess when you have Grand Theft Auto (or whatever it is that gets played these days) games like the hand held double screen Donkey Kong (which I have), Bank Vault, Wonder Boy, Moon Buggy, Buzzard, and more modern games like the old Sonic The Hedgehog just dont cut it. Though, theyre good for a walk down memory lane from time to time.






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Yeah, even though I'm fairly young, I still "get" alot of that stuff.

In alot of ways, I think my childhood was only a slightly updated version of an '80s kids' childhood. Like, even though CD's came out a few years before I was born, I still grew up using cassette's, and didn't get my first CD player until I was about 10. I still played 2D consoles up until 1998, when I finally got a Nintendo 64, and I've always know and used record player's since my parents still had there old one, and they listened to it all the time. I didn't even have internet access at my house until I was a teenager, or get a DVD player until I was 14.

I sort of realized yesterday that kids a few years younger than me are really growing up in different world than I did. Most of them never knew a time before, DVD's, the internet, or iPod's.

^ I think that's very accurate. I always noticed a similar thing with people about your age too. Even though in the past I may have thought of you guys as super young kids (i.e. when I was 14 and you were 8 ), people like you, Machine Head and Audkal who were born in the late '80s seem like just a younger version of my peers. Like I could always pretty much relate to you guys, even if I might've grown up with a few different things.

You were saying you've always been familar with using stuff like cassettes, and were able to appreciate the Internet and digital technology explosion since you knew the world before it, and didn't take those things for granted. Even if some '80s and early '90s things were in somewhat of a secondhand way, the pop culture and feel of the time was still new enough in your childhood to feel like it was "your time". Like we've discussed, things also held on longer back then. People who still had their original Nintendo systems hooked up, or '80s videos still regularly airing on MTV and VH1 as late as 1997ish.

You don't really see this now, so I can see how kids today (don't we sound like grandparents just using that phrase? ;D ) might be kinda clueless on the pre-digital world. At least some of them.

When you get to people born after the early 1990s, I think that's when you really do start dipping into a different generation, and not just an age difference. I think roughly 1975-1992ers are almost like one big era...like the "suburban childhood generation". ;)

i used to think that all dogs were boys, and all cats were girls.....

Wait to you start to hear new music you listened to in high school being played on "oldies" stations!  :o  I grew up knowing that oldies stations played 50-70's music. Then I started to hear music from the early 90's. :D Then when Transformers the movie came out (childhood memories), I read editorials refering the 80's as a simplier, innocent time! It's weird to read my childhood described as the Boomers described growing up in the 50s.



I know how you feel man. I was a kid in the late '80s/and '90s, but I grew up listening to alot of that music, so it's very odd to even think about it being on an oldies station.



^ I think that's very accurate. I always noticed a similar thing with people about your age too. Even though in the past I may have thought of you guys as super young kids (i.e. when I was 14 and you were 8 ), people like you, Machine Head and Audkal who were born in the late '80s seem like just a younger version of my peers. Like I could always pretty much relate to you guys, even if I might've grown up with a few different things.

You were saying you've always been familar with using stuff like cassettes, and were able to appreciate the Internet and digital technology explosion since you knew the world before it, and didn't take those things for granted. Even if some '80s and early '90s things were in somewhat of a secondhand way, the pop culture and feel of the time was still new enough in your childhood to feel like it was "your time". Like we've discussed, things also held on longer back then. People who still had their original Nintendo systems hooked up, or '80s videos still regularly airing on MTV and VH1 as late as 1997ish.

You don't really see this now, so I can see how kids today (don't we sound like grandparents just using that phrase? ;D ) might be kinda clueless on the pre-digital world. At least some of them.

When you get to people born after the early 1990s, I think that's when you really do start dipping into a different generation, and not just an age difference. I think roughly 1975-1992ers are almost like one big era...like the "suburban childhood generation". ;)



That's very true. In alot of ways, I think the '90s were kind of like the perfect transition between the '80s and '00s. In the '90s, even though most of today's current tech was around in a primitive form, it wasn't something that was really avalible to everyone. Like, a large number of people may have had internet access in 1994, but alot of people didn't, and probably alot of people(like me,lol) didn't even know what it was at that time. It's the same with cell phone's/DVD players/etc.

It seems like alot of people assume that the everyone had the latest tech in the '90s just because it existed, but that's not really true. How many people actually had cell phone's, internet access, and Mp3 players in like 1997. I don't think I knew anybody that had any of that stuff at the time. That's why I think it the start of a new sort of generation after 1992. Even my younger brother(born in 1991), has an appreciation for pre-digital stuff, since he spent a good portion of his childhood in the pre-digital era. A '98er like my cousin couldn't possibly know pre-digital times since the internet/cell phones/etc. has pretty much been ubiquitous since he was about 2 or 3 years old.

As weird as it seems, I probably do have more in common with somebody born in 1976 than I do 1996. We both played 2D video games growing up, we both used VHS as our main entertainment medium, and we both grew up without cell phones, internet access, or Mp3 players. Heck, I can even remember a time in the early '90s before we had cable here. There's a good change a less perceptive 1996er would know none of this stuff.

^ Yeah, I've actually noticed that myself. What we have now existed then, it was just in a very developmental sense, so most people didn't have it yet. Most technologies associated with a certain decade are actually "products" of some time before. It was just that an average street or someone's suburban home would've looked more like an advanced form of the '80s during most of the '90s. You might've seen a Sega Genesis or a Super NES is someone's bedroom, even a couple computers...but on the other hand lots of tape boomboxes, VHS tapes and NES games. I think that's why I liked it so much. It was very very familar territory to what I'd known before, but was kinda new and advanced, just not in an obnoxious, ubiquitous way that it's been since 2002+ or so.

I think reason younger kids are misinformed about the Internet is because it settled into place as a standard SO FAST, so they don't know it hasn't been around that long. Whereas stuff like television took alot more time in the past. Would you agree, all that suburban entertainment stuff ties the '70s, '80s and early '90s babies together? I bet to a 10 year old of 1999, it wasn't that different of an experience than, say the Goonies kids or Kevin from Home Alone would've had.

^ I think that's very accurate. I always noticed a similar thing with people about your age too. Even though in the past I may have thought of you guys as super young kids (i.e. when I was 14 and you were 8 ), people like you, Machine Head and Audkal who were born in the late '80s seem like just a younger version of my peers. Like I could always pretty much relate to you guys, even if I might've grown up with a few different things.


Makes sense.  I have a 2nd cousin (born in '97) who I've viewed as a "little kid" up until like last year--he seems a lot more like a peer to me now--based on his now-emerged personality.  Though I'm not sure if I'd exactly have much in common with him as I would with you, or a lot of other people born in the '80s or early '90s. :)


As weird as it seems, I probably do have more in common with somebody born in 1976 than I do 1996. We both played 2D video games growing up, we both used VHS as our main entertainment medium, and we both grew up without cell phones, internet access, or Mp3 players. Heck, I can even remember a time in the early '90s before we had cable here. There's a good change a less perceptive 1996er would know none of this stuff.


That sounds about right.  I can at least remember an 8-year period without internet access (my memory started in '93, and we didn't have the internet till '01).  I also have an appreciation for "fun" activities that don't involve new-age tech (roller-skating, playing music, riding a swing, etc.)  I actually didn't have any kind of cable/satellite till about 3 or 4 weeks ago (otherwise I've only had 5 network channels my whole life up until then).

I still think there are probably a lot of young kids out there though (ones who's parents aren't as wealthy as others), that probably still use 80s or 90s tech.  Because whenever we walk through a mall and see these kids all having cell-phones and whatnot--I mean I'm sure there are a bunch of other kids who stay at home because they simply don't have money to shop at all.  So we are by-chance only seeing the side who can actually afford all the current tech.  Did that make sense?  LOL.

I think reason younger kids are misinformed about the Internet is because it settled into place as a standard SO FAST, so they don't know it hasn't been around that long. Whereas stuff like television took alot more time in the past. Would you agree, all that suburban entertainment stuff ties the '70s, '80s and early '90s babies together? I bet to a 10 year old of 1999, it wasn't that different of an experience than, say the Goonies kids or Kevin from Home Alone would've had.



Yeah, I was 10 in 1997, and my childhood experiences would've been roughly the same as a 10 year old of 1987. We didn't have a computer at that time, and even though I had a SNES, NES, and Sega Genesis, I still spent most of my time outside playing. The only real difference between '80s and '90s kids that I can think of is, alot of '70s babies(peak '80s kids) could probably remember a time before VHS, we got our first VCR in 1989 when I was 2, so obviously I can't remember that.

I do agree that the internet became a standard very fast. Even VHS, and DVD took a couple of years to really take off. The 'net went from being almost unknown in the mid '90s to ubiquitous by the early '00s. Even a kid born in 1995 would have a hard time remembering a time before the internet, since by the time they were 5 or 6 it was already everywhere. But, since it was about 2004 or so before everybody had the internet, I would say anybody born before 1998 could possibly remember a time without it.



I still think there are probably a lot of young kids out there though (ones who's parents aren't as wealthy as others), that probably still use 80s or 90s tech.  Because whenever we walk through a mall and see these kids all having cell-phones and whatnot--I mean I'm sure there are a bunch of other kids who stay at home because they simply don't have money to shop at all.  So we are by-chance only seeing the side who can actually afford all the current tech.  Did that make sense?  LOL.



I see what your saying, and you do have a good point. Today's little kids may not remember a time without all of that, but it of course doesn't mean that they have all the latest stuff. I would hope there would still be some parents out there that would see that a 6 year old doesn't need a cell phone ;D

I remember we got the internet at my dads when I was in 7th grade 98 or so and my mom didnt even get it til 00-01 after y2k for sure...back then the internet seemed to be more full of jokes and humor than porn. I always think back to the 90s how much I miss being a kid rap music was alot better then. I remember when I got my first Sega Genesis with Sonic the Hedgehog( one of the best games ever made) for christmas played it for liek 3 days before I started playing in the snow
if you have myspace I am sure u have probably seen the remember the 90s bulletins that go around I am so happy to find this forum...remember when celebrity gossip WASN'T the only thing on the news

I remember playing the text based games like the ferret race on telnet that my mom had to search the universities library.

I think now that us 20 somethings from the '80s are coming up against kids who were born in the late 90's who we can actually have conversations with now is what makes us feel older. I am friends with a girl my mom teaches piano to and she was born in 1995, I believe. She didn't know a lot of movie stars that were from the late '80s/early '90s or even late '90s. It was rather fascinating to think of these things she hadn't heard of. Yet, I guess maybe my generation was one of the last to be exposed to more "ancient" forms of media. Heck, I remember my Dad pulling out a Dracula Halloween record for halloween to scare off the kids when they'd come to our house. I still remember how that record sounded and the cover of it. And our old record player speakers. My parents still had their 8-tracks and 8-track players, too, so these were leftovers I was still being exposed to, so these things were never too foriegn to me.

And oh yes, typewriters. Typewriters were SO frustrating! I hated making mistakes and doing misalginments. And I felt sure proud to roll up the paper and see my finished results. Yet, they;re nostalgic and sometimes I miss tapping on one every once in awhile.

We also did all our studying and research in gradeschool at the library or reading our World Book encyclopedias. I don't think I started using the Internet for research until I entered college in 2001.

I think now that us 20 somethings from the '80s are coming up against kids who were born in the late 90's who we can actually have conversations with now is what makes us feel older. I am friends with a girl my mom teaches piano to and she was born in 1995, I believe. She didn't know a lot of movie stars that were from the late '80s/early '90s or even late '90s. It was rather fascinating to think of these things she hadn't heard of. Yet, I guess maybe my generation was one of the last to be exposed to more "ancient" forms of media. Heck, I remember my Dad pulling out a Dracula Halloween record for halloween to scare off the kids when they'd come to our house. I still remember how that record sounded and the cover of it. And our old record player speakers. My parents still had their 8-tracks and 8-track players, too, so these were leftovers I was still being exposed to, so these things were never too foriegn to me.

And oh yes, typewriters. Typewriters were SO frustrating! I hated making mistakes and doing misalginments. And I felt sure proud to roll up the paper and see my finished results. Yet, they;re nostalgic and sometimes I miss tapping on one every once in awhile.

We also did all our studying and research in gradeschool at the library or reading our World Book encyclopedias. I don't think I started using the Internet for research until I entered college in 2001.



I know what you mean. The late '90s still seem so recent, but to somebody born in like 1998 or 1999 they would actually seem pretty ancient. As hard as it is for me to imagine, they would probably see groups like The Backstreet Boys or Limp Bizkit as old since they were at the peak of popularity around the time they were like 2 or 3. I was starting high school at that time :o

Its sort of strange how right around the time you reach 19 or 20, you start to see that you've got a few years on you. Before I started college, I still sort of felt like I was still really young. Like even when I was 15 or 16, I thought that say an 8 year old was alot younger than me, but that we had basically grown up in the same world. Now that a modern 8 year old is 11 years younger than me, most of them grew up very differently than the way I did

^^ I agree with both of the above points. Maybe the key thing is when you're talking to people who don't have any firsthand experience of your childhood (i.e. up to 12) years. Some people might disagree, but in certain respects I think that's your most formative time in terms of developing your personality/tastes/worldview. It was for me.

Like I've said, despite the fact that I used to view, say 1989ers as super young (quite earlier actually, even just a couple years younger than me was huge at one point), they were still 4 when I was 12 during 1993/'94, so even if I remembered more in detail, that was "their time" enough for me to relate to them on pretty much the same level.

I did get alot of experience with talking to kids about stuff (I've worked a few retail jobs and have done babysitting for people I know, etc). When someone born 1993ish+ or so was totally clueless on the fact that MTV/VH1 used to play music all the time, or having to explain a reference from Full House or something, this used to really shock me into feeling old. I've kinda become used to it now, but when I was, say 17-22 I was really unprepared for it, lol. ;)