‘What’s your ‘If you told kids about it today they wouldn’t believe you’ thing?’ – 23 unbelievable blasts from the recent past

Times change with dizzying speed, especially with the advent of the digital age, and there are things that were completely usual just 20 years ago that seem bizarre and quaint already.

They’ve been chatting about this on the AskUK subreddit after user BaldyBaldyBouncer posted this:

What’s your ‘If you told kids about it today they wouldn’t believe you’ thing?

Mine is those videos you used to get around Christmas time, they were basically YouTube videos on VHS, Jeremy Clarkson always used to do one which was just a lower quality version of Top Gear. Then you’d have crazy stuff like 101 rally car crashes or England’s greatest goals. As a teenager I would love these videos and I’d go around my mate’s houses to watch the videos they’d been given too.

And lots of people chipped in with the stuff their kids think is from the dark ages, like this…

1.

‘That if you wanted to watch a show there was a designated time and channel to watch it otherwise you missed it.’
–Quirky_Zombie_5368

2.

‘And having the ability to organise making tea and having a pee in the ad breaks.’
–seadoubleyou73

3.

‘And because of this they built a special power station in a mountain to be ready for the surge of usage.’
–LuinAelin

4.

‘Buying ringtones always baffles them, especially as no one rings anymore its all text.’
–JackHardy182

5.

‘Deciding what view was worth being one of your 24 shots on your holiday.’
–noddyneddy

6.

‘Page 3 of The Sun and all the awful suggestive comments they made in children that had just turned 16 (like Charlotte Church) is mind-blowing to me.’
–Burnsy2023

7.

”Allow 28 days for delivery’. Ordering something, forgetting about it and it arriving a month later was a whole weird thing.’
–ElectricalCupcake644

8.

‘Tried explaining teletext to my kids and they couldn’t comprehend having to wait until the page came round again.’
–flyingmooset

9.

‘We moved house recently and there’s a boy on our road whose parents just kick him out in the morning and leave him to amuse himself scooting up and down the road. He calls for my kids regularly, and I always feel like he’s a little 80s time traveller.’
–Locktopii

10.

‘That you could type in a whole message on your phone under the school desk without having to look at your screen. I just thought about it, analysed it and I think I could still do it.’
–HikingOtter

11.

‘That you had to look up the card catalogue at the university library to find out which microfiche the information you needed was on and then book a few hours on the machine to look at it, handwriting the pertinent facts in your notebook because there was no other way to copy them.’
–AuroraDF

12.

‘Anyone on the estate (in my area at least) could pull you up for being an arse/ not behaving (you could very well get an accompanying slap depending on severity), then walk you home, dob you in to your parents and watch your parent’s give you an earful whist simultaneously thanking the adult and invite them in for a cuppa.’
–heelee92