Which was the best decade to have grown up in? (1 Viewer)

[Chris B.]

IMO, 2000's or later. Life gets easier with better tech and medicine as long as you're lucky enough to be born in the right place to the right family.

This Era has cyberbulling, plus so much helicopter parenting. Constant checking in, not to mention cell phone location tracking. And large amounts of time spent in front of screens, leading to poor physical fitness.

I'll take the 1980s childhood over this

And the 80's had a ton of cigarette smoking and 2nd hand smoke. Tons of in person bullying, hazing, sexism, racism and molestation that wasn't reported. White males, however, were exempt for much of this. I'll take 2023 over that.

 

[ghostguy123]

IMO, 2000's or later. Life gets easier with better tech and medicine as long as you're lucky enough to be born in the right place to the right family.

This Era has cyberbulling, plus so much helicopter parenting. Constant checking in, not to mention cell phone location tracking. And large amounts of time spent in front of screens, leading to poor physical fitness.

I'll take the 1980s childhood over this

And the 80's had a ton of cigarette smoking and 2nd hand smoke. Tons of in person bullying, hazing, sexism, racism and molestation that wasn't reported. White males, however, were exempt for much of this. I'll take 2023 over that.

Lol

 

[otb_lifer]

welp, it's been a hoot, folks!

plz shut the lights if yer last out

 

[brun]

I picked the 50s. Partly because of Lea Thompson.

 

[Dan Lambskin]

Born in 79, id say being a kid in the 80s was the best but I’d say there were probably better teen / college years than the 90s

 

[Cowboysfan8]

I chose the 80s but to be fair to the 90s….I don’t really remember most of them

 

[shuke]

The downside was hitting college in 1990. Not that I didn't have fun (I was there for 6 years after all), but at least here in the PNW it went right from girls all wearing giant sweatshirts and shoulder pads to girls all wearing baggy flannels. Not a bit of skin, ever. It was like unwrapping a present, you only had an educated guess on what might be inside.

I don't know, man, this was part of the fun.

 

[shuke]

The 80's for me. I was the age of 7 to 17.

 

[Todem]

Born in 70.

75-89 is my sweet spot. I have zero complaints about my childhood.

Just awesome times.

 

[ChiefD]

IMO, 2000's or later. Life gets easier with better tech and medicine as long as you're lucky enough to be born in the right place to the right family.

This Era has cyberbulling, plus so much helicopter parenting. Constant checking in, not to mention cell phone location tracking. And large amounts of time spent in front of screens, leading to poor physical fitness.

I'll take the 1980s childhood over this

And the 80's had a ton of cigarette smoking and 2nd hand smoke. Tons of in person bullying, hazing, sexism, racism and molestation that wasn't reported. White males, however, were exempt for much of this. I'll take 2023 over that.

Thanks Jimmy Buzzkill.

 

[PIK95]

2005-2015 was pretty great for my kids and their friends. As good as it gets really. My guys hit Disney a few times in it's prime! The world was a completely different place from where we are today. I don't expect to see that again for another twenty years unfortunately.
Hopefully I'm still here to see it.

I was an 80's kid myself, it was cool in some ways and horrific in others. Some kids had it REALLY bad. My friends parents both died from aids. Another buddies dad drowned, another had a tree fall on his brother and kill him. Kids hanging themselves was a thing. Half the priests around here were nightmares. I was very hungry for the entire decade for starters. Cold showers and no heat more times than I can remember. Powers out, hurricane? Nope. It was especially hard being a poor kids in middle class area. Friends parents were awful to us. Playing wiffle ball to pass the times and forget our problems was cool though. Highlights were getting an Atari and a black and white for my room. And getting MTV was a big highlight. My aunt would get us to the movies occasionally which was epic of course. Arcades were so cool, but we never had quarters so we would just watch.

 

[PIK95]

IMO, 2000's or later. Life gets easier with better tech and medicine as long as you're lucky enough to be born in the right place to the right family.

This Era has cyberbulling, plus so much helicopter parenting. Constant checking in, not to mention cell phone location tracking. And large amounts of time spent in front of screens, leading to poor physical fitness.

I'll take the 1980s childhood over this

And the 80's had a ton of cigarette smoking and 2nd hand smoke. Tons of in person bullying, hazing, sexism, racism and molestation that wasn't reported. White males, however, were exempt for much of this. I'll take 2023 over that.

This times one hundred. All of it. I forgot about the smoke too. We all have brown lung!

 

[PIK95]

The downside was hitting college in 1990. Not that I didn't have fun (I was there for 6 years after all), but at least here in the PNW it went right from girls all wearing giant sweatshirts and shoulder pads to girls all wearing baggy flannels. Not a bit of skin, ever. It was like unwrapping a present, you only had an educated guess on what might be inside.

I don't know, man, this was part of the fun.

Nah son, it was as bad as it sounded. Those flannels were BRUTAL, lol.

Probably why I am so bitter over losing the yoga pants thread. Seriously.

 

[New Binky the Doormat]

60s for me as a kid, 70s for ages 13 to 22, and 80s 23 - 33.

lot of similarities to the 70s kids - free range roaming, dad's loud whistles to call for dinnertime and coming back home when the streetlights came on

we had a lot of neighborhood baseball (including wiffle ball and home run derby with tennis balls) and football games - in a larger yard, lots of times in the street, and plenty of time we would ride our bikes a couple miles away at the Little League ballpark and play there, football season we played mostly full tackle and if we only had 3 of us - we played pass-interceptor and rotated QB-WR-DB and kept score that way

baseball cards, 7-11 Slurpees with the 25 cent all-star collector cups, electric car race tracks, Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars, GI Joe (full size), BB gun fights, jarts, baseball cards in our bike wheels, bikes were almost exclusively "stingray types with the high handlebars and banana seats (10 speeds were for serious bicyclists at that point)

no electronics to speak of (Atari 2600 was still 7-8 years away), I mean sure if you want to call Lite Bright "electronics"

 

[shuke]

I was an 80's kid myself, it was cool in some ways and horrific in others. Some kids had it REALLY bad. My friends parents both died from aids. Another buddies dad drowned, another had a tree fall on his brother and kill him. Kids hanging themselves was a thing. Half the priests around here were nightmares. I was very hungry for the entire decade for starters. Cold showers and no heat more times than I can remember. Powers out, hurricane? Nope. It was especially hard being a poor kids in middle class area. Friends parents were awful to us. Playing wiffle ball to pass the times and forget our problems was cool though. Highlights were getting an Atari and a black and white for my room. And getting MTV was a big highlight. My aunt would get us to the movies occasionally which was epic of course. Arcades were so cool, but we never had quarters so we would just watch.

Damn, this was difficult to read. Sorry.

 

[shuke]

Nah son, it was as bad as it sounded. Those flannels were BRUTAL, lol.

Dude, I was there.

 

[massraider]

Nah son, it was as bad as it sounded. Those flannels were BRUTAL, lol.

Probably why I am so bitter over losing the yoga pants thread. Seriously.

Loved all the grunge music, but all of my favorite female memories was the clubby candy raver girls in the 90's.

Schoolgirl uniforms, lollipops and E. Significantly better for a horny young man.

But that scene wasn't everywhere, sure lots of people didn't see that.

 

[PIK95]

Nah son, it was as bad as it sounded. Those flannels were BRUTAL, lol.

Dude, I was there.

I Know!

 

[PIK95]

I was an 80's kid myself, it was cool in some ways and horrific in others. Some kids had it REALLY bad. My friends parents both died from aids. Another buddies dad drowned, another had a tree fall on his brother and kill him. Kids hanging themselves was a thing. Half the priests around here were nightmares. I was very hungry for the entire decade for starters. Cold showers and no heat more times than I can remember. Powers out, hurricane? Nope. It was especially hard being a poor kids in middle class area. Friends parents were awful to us. Playing wiffle ball to pass the times and forget our problems was cool though. Highlights were getting an Atari and a black and white for my room. And getting MTV was a big highlight. My aunt would get us to the movies occasionally which was epic of course. Arcades were so cool, but we never had quarters so we would just watch.

Damn, this was difficult to read. Sorry.

Nah, it was my path. We made the best out of things. Once I was sixteen and I was on my own things got alot better REALLY fast. Met my wife, lived at college, joined my fraternity (best thing ever), bought a sweet house, marriage, and kids. Unfortunately from 2004 until 2007 pretty much my wife's whole family passed away. That was worse than everything I posted earlier. Then my mom passed in 2019. We still haven't overcome all that emotionally. But life goes on.

 

[rockaction]

Even though IK makes outstanding points about the general time period that was the best time to grow up free from external troubles and wars, I'd say the self-inflicted restrictions placed upon collegiate kids in the early nineties -- namely, the sort of political and social correctness Chris B. extols -- made it a total drag to go to college then. For anybody who missed the predominantly white, upper-middle class liberal arts thing at a Northeastern school, I'll just say you're miles ahead of the game and probably unaware of what a stultifying anti-intellectual and anti-biological environment it was. What a drag.

I got in so much trouble trying to liven things up and I didn't even drink then. Truly, that was an era and a place best left in dustbin of American history. I remember the Molotov cocktails being thrown into an academic building at Wesleyan over faculty diversity and hiring practices. Yes, those fiery things that explode and kill people. Over the composition of the faculty's color and ethnicity. With that spirit in mind, you've got the general idea of the academic and intellectual (not to mention social) tone and tenor of my school, which was actually considered a conservative one (because the other private schools were throwing freaking Molotovs into academic buildings). It was, in the words of Iggy Pop, who would have been the coolest alien at my school though he would have been ****ing miserable, no fun.

Sorry to threadcrap, but what a drag that place was. Dustbin, meet that garbage.

Molotovs. And they run the intellectual discourse now. That's why the past two decades have been so miserable and not unifying. Shame.

 

[Encyclopedia Brown]

Born in August of '70

Along with Debbie Gibson and Malcolm Jamal Warner.

 

[AAABatteries]

What year did internet porn start?

 

[Leroy Hoard]

One day when talking to our grandkids we are going to sound just like this guy:

"You see, back in those days, rich men would ride around in zeppelins, dropping coins on people. And one day, I seen J. D. Rockefeller flyin' by– so I run out of the house with a big washtub, and—Anyway, about my washtub. I just used it that morning to wash my turkey which in those days was known as a 'walking bird."

 

[ChiefD]

What year did internet porn start?

The best combo of items invented ever is not peanut butter and jelly. It's not Captain and Tennille. It's not bacon and eggs.

It's internet porn and the ipad.

 

[massraider]

I'm 17 years older than my youngest brother. So I'm back half Gen X, he's front half Millennial. When he was 10, 11 or so, he got into skateboarding. There was a skate park about 3 blocks from the house in our sleepy little lower middle class town. Mum wouldn't let him go down there by himself to skate. Terrified of the sex offenders snatching him off the street. Meantime, 17 years earlier, I disappeared for hours, buying more hours with a phone call from someone's house.

Gen X was the last generation to be kicked out of the house, to roam the streets. Just based on freedom, we are the last real contender. In my opinion.

 

[New Binky the Doormat]

buying more hours with a phone call from someone's house.

reaction.

 

[Brunell4MVP]

having grown up in the 80s, people are forgetting the AIDS scare. My opinion is it made it a far less open sexual environment than say the 60s or 2000s. Chicks were pretty locked up.

I liked not having phones, thinking the Commodore 64 was cool, and the late 80s music. But it was an overly conservative time when it came to the ladies.

 

[rockaction]

But it was an overly conservative time when it came to the ladies.

Aided by the cocktail of a still-religious public and second-wave feminism. Made for many a cold night and frigid breeze.

 

[John123]

having grown up in the 80s, people are forgetting the AIDS scare. My opinion is it made it a far less open sexual environment than say the 60s or 2000s. Chicks were pretty locked up.

I liked not having phones, thinking the Commodore 64 was cool, and the late 80s music. But it was an overly conservative time when it came to the ladies.

Born in 1966 so the 80's was my wheel house. And this was not my experience. Or else I had the master key.

 

[MAC_32]

I was born in 83 and think I'd have liked to have been born about 5-7 years sooner. Not much to add to what IK wrote... I got through college just before they put phones in cameras, but there were more regulations on us than those a half decade or so older than I. Woulda rode the 2nd peak of music in the early-mid 90's too instead of sliding in at the end. That may also have allowed me enough time to get rolling in a career before the first recession instead of graduating amidst it.