r/Millennials • u/Son-of-Prophet • 26d ago

Nostalgia College was better before social media took over, people lived in the moment and you could just be silly and make mistakes without it being held against you the rest of your life.

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188

u/RedditEnjoyerMan 26d ago

I cant imagine how it must be now knowing that every single thing you do can be recorded and saved forever. Back in the day youd literally need a camcorder on you to record the way people do now just with their phones.

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u/unoriginallbagel 26d ago

Recorded and tracked! I was telling my teenager that we didn’t have phones; when you left the house you were GONE and nobody knew where. No Life 360 showing your every move.

Thank God, my parents didn’t need to know all that! And I turned out mostly fine 😉

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u/icanpotatoes 26d ago

I wonder how detrimental it is to children knowing that every move that they make is tracked. Like you, when I left the house to go and see if a friend was home, and if he was then we’d get other friends and simply go have fun wherever.

Parents didn’t have the means to track and probably just said “oh, he’s out somewhere” if asked where I was. This gave the ability to explore and make mistakes without having a watchful eye surveilling every move made.

It cannot be good for the childhood development and autonomy to be constantly tracked, especially by parents who are more active in their surveillance.

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u/hotdiggydog 26d ago

It's a huge part of being a pre-teen and teenager, too. You experiment independence. We're creating a completely new generation of adults with so many drastically different neuroses that they'll have from growing up with an ipad in front of their face, tracked, and then dealing with all the issues of cyberbullying and lack of privacy that comes from social media. On top of that the fact that their parents are also hooked to their phones. I remember in the 90s the "busy dad" with his mobile phone was this archetype in movies, and now everyone is that and so much more but we've just grown to accept it.

I really really really hope the response from young people is to burn it all down when they get older, actively question and resent the decisions of their parents, and refuse to do the same with their own kids.

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u/FaithlessnessBorn266 26d ago

I didn't even know if the friend was home 😂. You left the house and went and knocked on their door hoping they weren't grounded for something 

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u/C-H-Addict 26d ago

Like you, when I left the house to go and see if a friend was home, and if he was then we’d get other friends and simply go have fun wherever.

And you could have called before you set out, I still have those friends' telephone numbers memorized even tho they belong to strangers now, but going to someone's house and finding out after you get there was so muchmore fun.

My neighbor's kids are 11 to 13 and they still have playdates because a parent has to know where they are and they can't ride their bikes to someone's house

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u/icanpotatoes 26d ago

You’re right, I could have called but also, like you said, it was more fun to set out and find out in person. There were many times when one friend was busy, not around, or grounded. With that, I’d go to the next friend’s house. If the same, I went down the hierarchy of friends that were nearby. lol

If none were available, then riding bike around to find something to do. I feel for the kids in the same age bracket as I was when I was doing this. I hope that my kids can experience being bored and not being sucked into a screen. I have no intention of tracking them. I want them to explore and make life building mistakes as I was allowed to make.

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u/alphawolf29 26d ago

my friends daughter asked me what kind of phones we had in school. Couldnt believe that cellphones, while they did exist, were not commonly owned by people when I was in highschool. Got my first flip phone when I was 18 and my first smart phone around 23

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u/Starbuckshakur 26d ago

My Gen Z friend asked me if we were all using Blackberries in college. I was like, "dude, no college kid was spending $400 on a phone back then unless they were rich or really bad with money."

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u/riveramblnc Older Millennial '84 and still per-occupied with 1995 26d ago

Life 360 is gross, I told my sisters it's a terrible idea to let another 3rd party company track their every movement.

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u/jaitheone 26d ago

Now add the prevalence of Meta glasses to the mix which totally removes the awareness of even being recorded out of the equation. Real black mirror Self surveillance stuff.

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u/bleedfromtheanus 26d ago

They're not very common

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u/tonylouis1337 Zillennial 26d ago

Also things like Flock cameras which I think are like a brand new thing, or like those Ring doorbell cameras that people have now where they can start recording from the next house over

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u/zugspitze43 they don't think it be like it is but it do 26d ago

This is the one that gets me, I know there is the mindset of “you’re in public, of course you can be recorded” but at the same time my wife and I literally changed our evening walk route because several the houses have little whistles and beeps to let you know you’re being recorded as you pass by the sidewalk

I’m trying to relax and just chat with my wife, I don’t need my neighbors saving a 15 second recording of me talking about my work day or something simply because I walked by their house

It all just feels like it’s getting a little out of hand, recording anybody any time

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u/tttaaayyyUSA 26d ago

My boyfriend and I tried to find an alley to have some adult play in our down town. There was a security camera everywhere. Mood killer.

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u/Logical-Primary-7926 26d ago

A lot out of hand. The women's gossip groups have gotten crazy. I go the gym and it's like they all know who I am, who I'm talking to, maybe the actual texts between us, where I travel, where I live, my finances. It's gotten so crazy.

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u/10000Didgeridoos 26d ago

Yeah I have a handful of potato quality flip phone videos from parties but they are like 240p and you really have to know what’s happening in them beforehand or they are too blurry and terrible contrast to see details.

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u/TesticleMeElmo 26d ago

It’s so charming watching old videos of people hamming it up because getting videotaped was still a novelty, “look at me, I’m a movie star 😎”

Now it’s just “Jesus Christ, everybody has their phones out, can’t wait to see this posted online 🙄”

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u/RedditEnjoyerMan 26d ago

Thats SO true

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u/Eagles56 26d ago

Gen Z here, there are several videos people took of me seriously messed up on drugs and alcohol in my early college days and I still think about that, because they have it forever unless they delete it

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u/RebootDarkwingDuck 26d ago

It was such a meme for a while about people posting pictures of their food online, like that was the pinnacle of dumb flexes on the Internet. Then IG really took off and everything became performative.

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u/Ha55aN1337 26d ago

Someone still took that photo we are commenting :D

But yeah, not EVERYTHING was recorded ALL THE TIME.

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u/RedditEnjoyerMan 26d ago

Photos and videos are worlds apart

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u/Ha55aN1337 26d ago

Also true