5 Things We Used To Do That Aren’t Necessary Anymore

Back in the 1980s and ’90s, life seemed so much simpler, didn’t it? When it comes to learning and gathering information, things have sure changed a lot!

It’s largely due to the invention of the internet. The World Wide Web went public in 1993, and although it took several years to be widely available, it radically changed the way we all access information.

Today, pretty much anything you’d want to know is just a tap or click away – thanks to our smartphones, apps, and social media.

We got to thinking – and there are some pretty big changes in the way we do things now, vs. how we did things back in the ’80s and early ’90s. Take a look!

1. You had a question about something – you picked up the nearest Encyclopedia Britannica and looked it up! From learning what a capybara is to what year Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, encyclopedias had all kinds of information right at your fingertips. Of course, today, most of us just Google it!
2. Let’s say you wanted to call your friend and ask them to the movies. You had to look up their parents in the phone book in order to find their phone number! Today, of course, you might get those ‘digits’ from a friend or someone else and then the number is simply stored in your cell phone. Or, you don’t even use a phone number to contact someone, instead, you go through social media channels like Snapchat, Instagram, or Facebook.
3. So after you called your friend and asked them to the movies, you would call the movie line to find out the times of the showings. You had to sit through the entire list to listen for your movie and the times it was going to show. Today, of course, we just Google it, or look on the theater’s smartphone app to find the times.
4. Speaking of finding out what’s on and when, we didn’t have a live TV menu on the TV. We had to wait for the TV Guide to come in the mail each week. It was a small magazine that listed all the shows by channel and time every single day. How exciting it was when that new TV Guide arrived with articles on your favorite TV stars!
5. Oh, and lastly, we can’t forget about picking up the phone to call for time & temperature. Yes, it was actually a thing. You would call a number and a voice on the other end would say the current time and the current temperature. That’s it. Of course, we could have looked at a clock and a thermometer, but we still called that line hundreds of times over the years!