Being a child in the 80’s vs being a child today ·

I was sat the other day thinking about how different it is being a child in the 80’s compared to being a child today and it’s actually quite a difference

TV

When I was smaller TV wasn’t something we watched all day. children’s programmes would on for an hour before school and would usually be a couple of cartoons, then after school we would have TV from about 3:30 until 5 after that the channels would turn back to normal TV. We only had 4 channels!

That would be the extent of what we could watch during the week. On a weekend we would get until 12pm before normal TV resumed. There were programmes such as going live or SM.TV live and Phillip Schofield in his broom cupboard.

Nowadays there are plenty of children’s TV channels that are on all day long. If they wanted to children could literally sit in front of the TV from the second they wake up until the minute they go to bed. Gone are all of the lovely interactive Saturday morning programmes and in their place are people dressed up in huge puppet style costumes. Everything seems to be American teen style programmes based in a High School.

Or kids sat watching other kids opening toys , opening kinder eggs or playing games. Ellie quite often sits and watches people playing UNO … what happened to using a deck of cards and playing it yourself?

The Internet

It didn’t even exist when I was a child. It came when I was a teen and even then there was no such thing as broadband , we had good old dial-up. You could literally hear the internet connecting and if anyone picked up the house phone it was game over and you had to start again!

These days they just switch on their devices and it’s all connected. They don’t even use house phones let alone have them interrupting their internet connection. If you are stuck for an answer on homework or just want to know something with a few clicks and a tiny bit of typing you can find pretty much anything.

We had to use text books, can you imagine having to sit and flick through the pages to find what you want or visit a library to find the right book?

Playing outside

I have fond memories of playing outside as a child. We would take pogo sticks, roller skates , a football. Building dens on the mount near our house was always fun. I spent hours and hours outside only coming in when it was time for food. Knocking on someones door to ask if they were playing out was a normal thing to do.

Now when you look outside the kids are usually on their phones, recording YouTube videos , applying make up whilst following a tutorial. Knocking on the door to see if someone is coming out is rare. They just message each other instead and then you’re lucky if they even want to go out because they’re so consumed in their devices.

Which is better?

I can honestly say I feel like children don’t actually know how to be children anymore. Annabelle is 9 and never really plays. She doesn’t have a clue what she wants for Christmas. My Christmas lists were always huge, full of toys and things to do outside.

As much as I love the internet and I’m constantly on it ( I have to be with a blog) I do think maybe the world was better without it and a little less scary.