What were times like when you were 18?

[TheArkansasRoadgeek]

This is just another thread for the good ol' times. For generations before me and those before them.

[Max Rockatansky]

The internet was an unnecessary luxury...really a lot of things still were because the technology was coming out an infancy period.  Some other things like cell phones and DVD format were just becoming practical.  I had a large collection of VHS tapes at the time and had to use about 20 or so of them daily at work while operating a security system.  Really for directions you had to get a general idea from someone over the phone, specifically the "turn here, turn there, etc" crap of old.  The world didn't seem like a smaller place because I traveled with my Dad a lot as a kid and I moved from Michigan to Arizona a week after graduating high school.  Phoenix was a much different place with the 101, 202, and 51 still only partially completed.  Scottsdale Boulevard was only four lanes at the time and it was pretty miserable commuting on daily before it was blown out to 6 lanes and the 101 was finished. 

Edit:  One thing I'll throw in for Michigan, to me it seemed like the state was a lost cause because the domestic auto industry was failing.  Pretty much all the adults drank, smoked, and complained about the automakers at the time...it was really a caustic atmosphere that wasn't exactly "healthy."  Imagine my surprise visiting back in 2015 and this year only to find that pretty much it has become Washington State Junior.  I've never would have thought so many people in Michigan would have been into outdoors and health oriented activities.  I honestly don't think that I saw anyone under the age of 30 smoking a cigarette which was kind of shocking to me.  Hell, when I was graduating high school in Michigan it was still common to smoke while you ate or indoors at home.  The only thing that had become taboo by the time was smoking in the office at your desk.

[kkt]

The Internet was the Arpanet, academic only.  Some people made social use of it for games, email, and chatting, on text-based systems.  A megabyte was a lot of storage, and only supercomputers had that much memory.  However, most programs stood alone and didn't fail mysteriously due to external reasons... you didn't have the gigantic programs that cost a mint and never worked right, as is the rule now.

Lots of people, not just military and civil servants, had jobs with pensions and the likelihood of lifelong employment, at least if the company didn't fold and you didn't screw up too badly.  It seems like that made a lot of people more secure and happy and comfortable participating in their communities.

The ice age was coming.

Music was distributed on LPs, and lots of people copied it onto cassettes to listen to in their cars or Sony Walkmen.

It was the depth of the automotive malaise, lousy cars that rarely made it to 100,000 miles (except Volvos).  The Japanese cars didn't last especially long either, but at least they got decent mileage until they rusted out.

[Brandon]

It was the beginning.  The World Wide Web as we now know it had just started.  Eternal September was two years prior.

[Takumi]

MySpace and Facebook were in their infancy. Instant messaging (AIM, MSN, Yahoo) was the main way to talk to people. Forums were big. LiveJournal was too.

[TheArkansasRoadgeek]

Believe it or not my parents were hippies and I was all about VHS movies as a child, as well as DVDs. I was not able to experieence not having Wi-Fi, but I am glad I was able to grow up watching reruns of older shows, movies, and good cartoons.

[hbelkins]

I turned 18 in December 1979, two weeks before the end of my first semester in college.

Jimmy Carter was president and the economy was awful. Thankfully he'd be on his way out the door as a lame duck a year later. It was morning in America again as the sun set on my 18th year. I voted for Ronald Reagan in my first general election, in the fall of 1980.

I listened to music on 8-track tapes and the occasional LP. My Christmas present that year was a small portable electric typewriter on which I could type college term papers.

Popular albums that came out in my 18th year included Led Zeppelin's "In Through The Out Door," Rush's "Permanent Waves," and Foreigner's "Head Games."

I didn't have a girlfriend.

Our cable TV system at home carried three network affiliates from Lexington, Kentucky Educational TV and WTBS (Channel 17 from Atlanta). The cable system at college carried 13 channels including the Lexington network affiliates, a couple from Huntington and I think at least one from Cincinnati.

If anyone had a VCR back then, I was unaware of it.

There are some things I look back upon with nostalgia (mostly the music of that era) but in general, high school and college weren't overly joyous times for me (and I think we have had several threads on that where many others say they don't look back on those days too terribly fondly.)

[kphoger]

1999—2000

External, magnet-mounted cell phone antennas for when you were driving out in the boonies.
Mix tapes in the car.
Kids riding bikes by themselves.
Driving around for fun without thinking about how much gas would cost later.
No one talking about Muslims.
Phones for talking, computers for the internet, cameras for photography.
Tracking your time while surfing the net.

[bugo]

There were still a few cutouts left here and there. There were more truss bridges and concrete pavement. Button copy was common. Clearview was non-existent. The internet as we know it today simply didn't exist. It was very difficult to find information on roads. The only ways to find out about roads were maps or roadtrips. My dreams were still alive.

[PHLBOS]

1983-1984

The break-up of the original AT&T (aka the Bell System/Ma-Bell) company.  The Baby Bells handled local (inter-LATA*) calls (such would change circa 1996) while AT&T, MCI & Sprint would compete for long distance service.  *Local Access & Transport Area

Sudden Impact, A Christmas Story & Gremlins were three popular movies that debuted on the big screen during that period.

The Olympics were in Sarajevo (winter) & Los Angeles (summer); the summer games experienced a retaliatory (from 4 years earlier) boycott from the Soviet Union and several other Communist countries.

1984, for the most part, did not turn out the gloom & doom as George Orwell predicted in his novel.

After several years of economic doldrums; the economy was recovering/rebounding.

Hit TV shows such as Cheers & Family Ties were in their second seasons on NBC.

For the first time in 11 years, CBS did not have M*A*S*H in its prime time line-up; it did have its eventually-short-lived spin-off After-M*A*S*H though.

VHS vs. Beta was the video cassette battle of the year; with VHS ultimately winning.

8-tracks had just gone by the wayside; cassettes were still king but CDs were starting to invade the portable music medium.

1984 was a Presidential election year (President Reagan vs. Former-Vice-President Walter Mondale).

Pontiac had just launched its 2-seater, mid-engined Fiero.

Police cars & taxis were typically Chevy Impalas (B-body), Ford LTD Crown Victorias (Panther platform), Dodge Diplomats & Plymouth Gran Furys (both M-bodies).

Dodge & Plymouth had just launched their first minivans; the Caravan & Voyager.  Both of which only had a grossly underpowered 4-cylinder engine.  Extended-length models and an available V6 would roll out 2 years later.

Despite the rollout of the minivan; the car-based station wagons were still king of the family haulers.  Such was offered on all size classes & several brands (domestic & import).

Jeep would rollout its first downsized SUVs, the Cherokee & Wagoneer.

The Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme was the best-selling new car on the market.

[cjk374]

No internet. Activities were still outdoors. Graduated high school 5 months I turned 18. My 1st car was purchased that following September ('81 Chevy Citation).

Life was good. 

[nexus73]

September 1973.  The last month of cheap plentiful gas.  In October the Yom Kippur War took place and nearly set off WW3.  As it was, our frenemies in OPEC embargoed oil shipments to us.  Gas lines were everywhere.  Inflation was already spiraling up and only got worse.  Unemployment took a big jump.  It wasn't long after all this happened that I joined the USAF, which set my adult life into motion. 

Glad I am not 18 in the present time.  You have a long road ahead with even more change coming than I saw!

Rick

[Roadgeekteen]

The world was pretty bad. Privacy had been removed and Facebook was spying on you. Thankfully it got better when humans hired robots to protect privacy from the government.

[bandit957]

High schools around here practically encouraged kids to smoke, but I don't know if that's ever changed.

[bandit957]

I turned 18 in 1991.

George H.W. Bush was President and the economy was awful. Thankfully he'd be on his way out the door as a lame duck a year later. It was morning in America again as the sun set on my 18th year. I voted for Bill Clinton in my first general election, in the fall of 1992.

Most music was on vinyl. I still buyed 45 RPM single records.

People chewed bubble gum a lot more back then.

[formulanone]

1992.

Not everyone had a home computer in a middle-class household. So I'd have friends and acquaintances type stuff up on my PC and use the dot-matrix printer to print out a copy.

"Internet" was starting to get whispered about as "interactive TV" (which I don't think ever happened in its planned form), which morphed into the annoying phrase "information superhighway".

Unless you were involved with some sort of firm that dealt specifically with computers (some exceptions, but thinking back as an 18-year-old...) very few people had any sort of Internet connection or ISP. Our high schools each had one connection in the library, I knew one kid who had Prodigy, my uncle worked for IBM, so he showed me a few text-based things (work-related email and some discussion) and that was about it.

I had a 300 baud modem and had no idea how to use it until I was in college. Email that I rarely used.

You probably had one phone line. Some kids had beepers.

So you called someone, some people had answering machines, and some did not. Knowing that nobody really hung around their phone for very long, you went about your business...or drove / biked / walked over to someone's place.

If someone had a camera, you took a photo. But not of food, or waste much time on selfies, because film was time-consuming and cost money.

Usually, we subscribed to magazines and stuff. Or picked up books in the library if you wanted to know more about something. It sounds obvious, but you had to take that a bit for granted. Now you can say "I need to know about this now...and go do it." Back then, you physically searched for it, and sometimes you still had to do more research.

You paid for all this stuff with a near-minimum-wage job (see...not much has changed) but that was about $4-5/hour.

There also stupid stuff on TV and you weren't reminded every second that something else was on, except during the actual commercial breaks. It's weird to think of an advertisement now that doesn't mention their website either verbally or in small text on the screen. You might see a 1-800 number on the screen; there weren't 888/877/866/855-numbers back then.

Music was on CDs, tapes, and vinyl. I didn't know many kids that used vinyl much by that point, and tapes were cheaper than CDs. Besides, if you wanted to copy something, you used a cassette tape.

If you wanted to know the ongoing score of a game on TV, you had to sit patiently until some team/player scored, or a team took a time out, or the inning/quarter/half/period ended and then you knew who was winning.

If someone had a Giant VHS Tape Recording Camera you would be really sure you were being recorded...and it would be tougher to share it with the world.

18-year-olds did stupid things back then as they did before and as they do now. And we all thought we knew it all, even if only for a moment or two.

[Roadgeekteen]

1992

Not everyone had a home computer in a middle-class household. So I'd have friends and acquaintances type stuff up on my PC and use the dot-matrix printer to print out a copy.

"Internet" was starting to get whispered about as "interactive TV" (which I don't think ever happened in its planned form), which morphed into the annoying phrase "information superhighway".

Unless you were involved with some sort of firm that dealt specifically with computers (some exceptions, but thinking back as an 18-year-old...) very few people had any sort of Internet connection or ISP. Our high schools each had one connection in the library, I knew one kid who had Prodigy, my uncle worked for IBM, so he showed me a few text-based things (work-related email and some discussion) and that was about it.

I had a 300 baud modem and had no idea how to use it until I was in college. Email that I rarely used.

You probably had one phone line. Some kids had beepers.

So you called someone, some people had answering machines, and some did not. Knowing that nobody really hung around their phone for very long, you went about your business...or drove / biked / walked over to someone's place.

If someone had a camera, you took a photo. But not of food, or waste much time on selfies, because film was time-consuming and cost money.

Usually, we subscribed to magazines and stuff. Or picked up books in the library if you wanted to know more about something. It sounds obvious, but you had to take that a bit for granted. Now you can say "I need to know about this now...and go do it." Back then, you physically searched for it, and sometimes you still had to do more research.

You paid for all this stuff with a near-minimum-wage job (see...not much has changed) but that was about $4-5/hour.

There also stupid stuff on TV and you weren't reminded every second that something else was on, except during the actual commercial breaks. It's weird to think of an advertisement now that doesn't mention their website either verbally or in small text on the screen. You might see a 1-800 number on the screen; there weren't 888/877/866/855-numbers back then.

Music was on CDs, tapes, and vinyl. I didn't know many kids that used vinyl much by that point, and tapes were cheaper than CDs. Besides, if you wanted to copy something, you used a cassette tape.

If you wanted to know the ongoing score of a game on TV, you had to sit patiently until some team/player scored, or a team took a time out, or the inning/quarter/half/period ended and then you knew who was winning...

They didn't show the score at the bottom of the screen?

[Max Rockatansky]

^^^^

Sometimes it wouldn't be displayed or your screen ratio wouldn't be right and you couldn't see it at the bottom anyways.  Even something like a 27 inch TV was a big deal still at the time for a lot of folks.  We got by with a 19 inch in the family room until the late 1990s. 

[formulanone]

If you wanted to know the ongoing score of a game on TV, you had to sit patiently until some team/player scored, or a team took a time out, or the inning/quarter/half/period ended and then you knew who was winning...

They didn't show the score at the bottom of the screen?

Look at an old game on YouTube from the early-1990s or before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhFLC0bZni4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXIzLi8p_d8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oxs8nl6i3o

I could be wrong about this, but it didn't seem commonplace until 1995 or so. Certainly no superimposed first down line across the field!

[Roadgeekteen]

If you wanted to know the ongoing score of a game on TV, you had to sit patiently until some team/player scored, or a team took a time out, or the inning/quarter/half/period ended and then you knew who was winning...

They didn't show the score at the bottom of the screen?

Look at and old game on YouTube from the early-1990s or before.

I could be wrong about this, but it didn't seem commonplace until 1995 or so. Certainly no superimposed first down line across the field!

Was the tech not advanced enough?

[kkt]

If you wanted to know the ongoing score of a game on TV, you had to sit patiently until some team/player scored, or a team took a time out, or the inning/quarter/half/period ended and then you knew who was winning...

They didn't show the score at the bottom of the screen?

Look at and old game on YouTube from the early-1990s or before.

I could be wrong about this, but it didn't seem commonplace until 1995 or so. Certainly no superimposed first down line across the field!

Was the tech not advanced enough?

Lots of people were still watching broadcast.  Broadcast was full of static and ghosts and cut off the top and bottom scan lines all the time.  If they used enough of the screen for the score to be legible, there wouldn't be enough picture left to see the game.

[7/8]

I was 18 in 2013-14, so not long ago!

I just did a quick search of 2013 movies and saw Man of Steel and Star Trek: Into Darkness. Those are already 4 years old? (Damn...)

That was the year I graduated high school and started university. Technology wise, it was pretty much the same as now, but I think I was still using a flip phone (I got a Blackberry sometime early in university, and now I'm using a Galaxy S4). I didn't use it much, and to be honest, I kind of liked that. Nowadays, people get mad if you take a day to respond to a text.

I got my iPad mini in the fall through a contest, and that increased my internet usage (for better or for worse).

It's hard to believe I graduate in April (my program with co-op is 5 years). Time goes by quickly.

[Big John]

If you wanted to know the ongoing score of a game on TV, you had to sit patiently until some team/player scored, or a team took a time out, or the inning/quarter/half/period ended and then you knew who was winning...

They didn't show the score at the bottom of the screen?

Look at and old game on YouTube from the early-1990s or before.

I could be wrong about this, but it didn't seem commonplace until 1995 or so. Certainly no superimposed first down line across the field!

Was the tech not advanced enough?

The "Fox Box" was introduced to the US in 1994 when they first won the broadcast rights to NFC games.

[formulanone]

The "Fox Box" was introduced to the US in 1994 when they first won the broadcast rights to NFC games.

Ah, that was it!

The only place you saw something like it was on the Financial News Network, which featured one or two "crawls" (at different paces) of the stock ticker.

I don't remember when news channels featured the news crawl...maybe the end of the 1990s. I remember the Bloomberg Channel was one of the first to pioneer this distracting technology (I think 33-40% of the screen remained for actual programming) at around that point...maybe someone knows this better.

ESPN would feature their ":28/:58" update which spent a minute or two to show scores at the bottom on the screen every half hour.

[Otto Yamamoto]

I was 18 in 1978. It was the year I joined the Navy and putzed around in Basic Electricity and Electronics before I found out wasn't interested in It, and went to Hospital Corps school, instead. Almost 40 years on, I'm still in nursing.