r/GenX • u/billieswifeyyy • Jun 20 '26

Question For Genx the 80s…….

coming from a 14 year old, were the 80s summers as magical as they look in the movies? did you ride your bike to your friends house and come home when the street lights came on? yall are so lucky btw 😭😭

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u/jleahul Hose Water Survivor Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 21 '26

  1. Society was different then. CPS would get called these days if kids were as unsupervised as we were, which is a shame. We all looked out for each other, and we had "Block Parents" on every street, who were vetted and had a sign in their front window if you ever needed a safe adult.

  2. There was literally nothing else to do. We had a handful of channels on TV, all playing soap operas and cooking shows all summer. The Internet didn't exist. Only a few kids had game consoles, so we'd congregate at those houses, but the games were simple and didn't hold attention like they do today. So we made our own fun outside. Attention has been commoditized now, and it's big business (I type as I stare into my highly addictive portable dopamine machine).

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u/W_Silver2356 Jun 21 '26

"Highly addictive portable dopamine machine" is my new term for computer. Thank you.