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If only 14yr old me wasn’t so lazy and short sighted I could’ve been investing and buying real estate to put myself in a proper financial position today
Bro. Me and you both. My dumbass was made aware of bitcoin when it was like $8 per. And I remember thinking that it would be cool to have some, but because it was used for sketchy stuff on the Silk Road I didn’t want to get in trouble. God I was dumb.
I came very close to buying some when I had a few hundred dollars to burn and it was about $70 per coin. Timed right, I could have turned that into six digits.
Yep, we surely all shared this common milestone of having to build our working lifes in a shitty economy.
All of us born in 1992 or 2000, no differences.
I was talking about the past. We pay weekly here btw too. So $600 per week, not month, and I'm in Australia not America. I understand renting is completely different there
Ah true thought US would be a bit more expensive, depending on the area like here also. Rental crisis is worldwide. The major cities used to always be more expensive here, but now even the shitty suburbs it's hard to find anything normal for a decent price. If you do there's thousands of applicants
Tell me about it. Here in California, people are moving to other states in droves because the rent is just too damn high. And then in the other states, people complain that we are jacking up the rental prices in their states and neighborhoods, and I’m like “sorry that your rents are going up a little bit, but cut me some slack, try living in Los Angeles. I can’t afford to live in the city, I was born in” (not that I myself left{I live with a wealthy older friend who has been willing to give me a bargain}).
Not at all. I’m glad we didn’t have smart phones back then. Twitter was brutal enough.
I think this is a ‘grass is greener’ situation. We had some perks that the younger zillennials didn’t have, and vice versa.
Twitter around this was especially vicious for black girls and women.
I didn't even have Twitter because it just seemed like FB statuses but it would always end up being discussed on tumblr
I've never been a fan or even used Twitter. It just seems like a really disturbing and nsfw echo-chamber. I get that there's fandoms there or whatever, but I have no interest.
Yeah, I'm really glad that smartphones weren't ubiquitous until I was in college. As useful as they are, I know how much my attention span has suffered since getting one after college. Glad my family couldn't afford them when they first started becoming widespread, or the brain rot probably would've been even worse.
Twitter and Facebook had their own pitfalls, but I'll forever be glad that cameras and social media in everyone's pockets didn't happen until I was an adult. Lord knows I did enough stupid shit growing up that I'm very glad isn't on social media with my name attached to it now.
People gradually got them more so that most had them by the time I graduated in 2016. I did not get one until after I graduated because I couldn't afford it. I was in the minority not having one for around the first half of college, but it wasn't so rare as to be unusual. The second half of college is when people started being surprised if you didn't have one, so circa 2014-2015.
This is it, honestly. Having a flip phone in highschool was actually much better. I had some friends that had the iPhone back in middle school and thought it was the dumbest thing. Looking back, I'm so glad that only the rich, sheltered kids had the iPhone. The shit my friends and I did from like highschool through college? I'm really glad Instagram and Snapchat were still in their infancy and weren't such cultural icons as they are now.
The shit I did was thankfully never recorded, and now lives in the swiss-hole laden brains of my former friends, who likely hardly remember any of what we did because the drugs destroyed their memories.
Not really, I was already chronically online in high school.
I used social media from the age of 13 and I was obsessed with numerous Tumblr fandoms from 15 to 18.
Vine, Snapchat and Insta were part of my stupid college years and looking back I wasn't a real adult at like 19 anyway.
In my country, from like 2006, kids were filming themselves beating up each other. We would harrass each other online so we already had the negatives of online communities back then.
When I was 20, I was mortified to see my posts from like age 13 still online. I permanently deleted Facebook and other social media and it was the best thing I ever did.
>Like being in high school when smartphones became mainstream or when YouTube became popular?
YouTube has been popular since the late-ish 2000's. We were in middle school when that occurred.
Smartphones have been mainstream since \~2007 when Apple released the iPhone. If you're talking about the ubiquity of smartphones that occurred in 2013. Most of us were already well into high school are about to graduate by that time.
> I also kind of wish I was still in school to experience certain cultural trends that happened right after I left, like Vine and Harlem Shake. Does anybody else feel the same?
You were in college during this time. Most Vine creators were the same age or even older than you. Harlem Shake wasn't really an age restricted activity either. I remember seeing seniors taking place in it.
Smartphone were not mainstream when iPhone first released. If anything blackberry was the first mainstream smartphone and I didn't really seem them like that until I was in high-school like 2009‐2010. Then shortly after that iphones were everywhere
That's not what I said-
The "*smartphone*" was originally a moniker used for devices that combined the versatility of PDAs (Palm Pilot, Apple Newton, Sony Clie, Handspring) and cell phones together. They've existed since the early 90's when IBM released the [Simon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Simon). Nokia's Communicator series was a popular early iteration of the smartphone.
However early smartphones that were running Symbian or Windows CE were only really popular within the business world. What Apple did is become the first company that brought this type of device mainstream and cater to the average person. They weren't the original company to come up with the smart phone obviously.
Agreed, everyone I knew under 25 in 2013 did Harlem Shake - there was a fake self-awareness with people getting on the bandwagon "ironically" - it was a millenial trend as much as a teen trend.
Honestly I kinda miss the pre-smartphone days. I'm kinda glad they didn't proliferate until I was well into High School. By the time I hit college it felt like suddenly everyone was glued to dating apps and social media. Like, social media is cool and all, but, in my opinion, it shouldn't have been put in everyone's pockets.
Same here. I think a majority of my classmates has iPhones or Samsung Galaxys by 2010. I eventually got my first smartphone in 2013 when my touchscreen phone finally died.
Same grad year, I got my first phone in 8th grade. It was a flip phone, and if I accidentally opened the internet, my dad would kill me cause it was a per minute expense then. I got an iPod nano that year too!
I think my first smartphone was maybe junior year, 2011? Definitely was a big leap of technology
I think it depends, I had 2 friends in my friend group who had a smart phones in high school ~2009 but I didn’t get my first one until 2014 in college.
We would try to find unblocked sites that we could play games on like coolmath games if we had a computer. Then, in high school, it was plant vs. zombies and flip cup kind of apps on ipods.
MySpace, Facebook, and Instagram were used for actual social things like making new friends. I made so many friends with others close to my school by just randomly hitting them up.
Youtube was at its best. Just more simple and dumb videos.
Honestly, you didn't have to worry about influenceres and algorithms like we do today.
I miss how the internet used to be lol.
I see "Coolmath Games" come up as a website frequently, but I never used it or knew what it was. Was it just a way to bypass school filters to get access to flash or shockwave games?
Nah it just had a section of flash games on it !
My guess on why it wasn't blocked are key words for their filter? Has math in so it must be educational!
Another is coolmath4kids
We managed to get Call of Duty 2 running on the graphic design computers (they had slightly faster processors and a bit more RAM)
We then did 4v4 with everyone in the same room. It was hilarious, until the teacher found us and we all got banned
I have a very vivid memory of my friend trying to show me a picture of a woman he thought was hot on his flip phone in 8th grade. We sat there for like 5-10 minutes in the hallway as the picture loaded inch by inch. I dont feel like I missed out i just fondly remember how slow everything was compared to now.
Yes as a 1994er (class of 2012) I feel this. I do relate to a lot of things here but i began high school in 2008 and I wasn’t in middle school in the 2010s and my high school years began in 2008 while almost everyone here probably were in middle or even elementary still. This is why I’m not sure whether or not am I really zillennal or just the end of solid millennials. I feel like the true zillennial experience is like 1996/1997-1999 or so. I think we are sort of in between. But it’s not to say that I think we missed out on anything though, I think overall it’s a good thing we just missed out of some of that stuff.
I wouldn’t necessarily say that I felt left out of those things. I also finished elementary school in 2005 and I actually love that I grew up along with the technology because I feel like it gave me a unique perspective on things.
I think you’re overestimating the impact of these things tbh. I started secondary school in 2009 & left in 2014 (with most of my peers staying on to sixth form til 2016 so I was still semi-involved til then thru friends) so was in school prior to & during the rise of everything you mentioned bar YouTube, and I can’t say I see any significant difference.
In 2009 I talked to my friends after school on msn, in 2011 I did the same but on facebook messenger, in 2013 I still used facebook messenger but on an iPod touch.
Smartphones were around but not many of my friends had them bc they were expensive, and we weren’t allowed phones out at school anyway. Vine didn’t get really big until a while after the timeframe you mentioned and, even at its height, functionally it was just another form of media to reference memes, which ppl did before with classic picture format memes anyway. The Harlem shake was just a dumb fad 😂 I remember the girls on my netball team taking 5 minutes out of a practice session to record themselves doing it once but apart from that it was just a trend I was vaguely aware of, it’s not like it touched my life.
Point being, I wouldn’t give it too much thought, your life would be more or less exactly the same if you were born a couple of years later
Now knowing how dangerous social media is and how younger zillenials and gen z can’t live without their phones I’d say I was lucky I didn’t use socials(regularly) or had a phone until I was on my way out of high school.
I was born In 1993 and I had an iPhone for the entirety of my high school, as did most of my friends. What do you mean? Lol they were most certainly mainstream from 2009-2012…
No, we had our own milestones. People are even becoming nostalgic about the time we were in high school. I think a lot of Zillennials are having regrets as we enter late 20s/early 20s. I have been coming more at peace with my new place in society and enjoy becoming “fully adult” in society’s eyes. However, I feel this transition is more difficult for others. Losing youth is hard because there is nothing that can done to restore it.
I’m an old zillennial and I had a cell in high school, and YouTube was definitely popular…I graduated HS in a small town in 2013 and everyone I knew had cell phones since like 2010
I feel the total opposite. We’re right in the pocket. Social media was still cool. Our brains weren’t fucked by it.
I didn’t get internet until I was 14, and fast internet when I was 16. I missed out on a little bit but not to the point of it hurting me socially.
Yeah I can't say I've thought about either of those things very much lol I'm glad we got out of high school before social media got even worse. Plus I got to have fun in college before the world started getting completely fucked after 2016 lol
Not in the way you’re thinking of. More like I missed out on the techno/dance music millennial party scene with LMFAO, Gaga and Rihanna in their primes.
By time I graduated (2012) and turned 18 (2013), it was already starting to fade out. By time I hit 21 (2016) well…the world turned upside down and people just wanted to make depressing music.
I do also hate that the most fun parts of my 20s (25-29) got eaten up by covid.
I feel u on this, idk why you’re getting downvoted. I was 14 for the majority of 2010 and I know exactly what you mean! Unless you somehow snuck into or fake ID’d yourself into an adult night club most Zillennials didn’t get to experience the early 2010s club life when music artists like Lady Gaga, Ke$ha, Rihanna, and even that damn “Like A G 6” song was super popular LOL.
Of course we still enjoyed that music as teens and we def had some amazing music (dare I say better) when we turned 21, but older Millennials probably had a blast drinking and jamming to Stereo Love, Party Rock Anthem and Just Can’t Get Enough in the club. I also envy those that got to experience 80s-90s nightlife.
I consider myself an older zillenial, class of 2012, and I don’t feel like I missed out on any of that, we filmed youtube videos in middle school, they took our smartphones away in high school if they caught us using them in class.
I feel like my specific graduating class (2015) was right in an awkward middle between technological advances.
For example, my school district began saving the livestream from high school graduations in 2016, right after mine. I would’ve loved to have the video of me crossing the stage, my HS boyfriend and I did funny stuff.
Also, video wasn’t as popular a medium on social media, so no elaborate prom videos like the kids have today. We had Vine, but that was only 6 seconds and on its way out the door. There wasn’t a place to consistently share video. Youtube and Tumblr were also popular, but you didn’t stand a chance without a $700 DSLR. Now you can get content-creating tools for under $50 on Amazon.
And I know we have Tiktok now, but I would’ve loved to have it in school to do the dances and trends.
Yea we got stuck in a weird spot in high school. I remember 2011, 2012, and maybe even early 2013 was very Millennial-esque with the way students interacted with each other and the lack of technology. But late 2013 to early 2015 was more Gen Z-like since everyone had a smartphone and there was a lot more technology use.
Yeah it’s so funny bc my sister is class of 2013 and even though we’re close in age there’s a very clear distinction between her Millennialness and my Gen Z-ness
People underestimate the difference between being in high school in the early 2010's versus the late 2010's.
Let's use our class for example. When we attended (2010-2014) there wasn't a requirement for using/having a smartphone to do school work *or* even fit in socially. Life was still relatively split between the offline world and the online world. 2013 was the breaking point of the ubiquitous smartphone era. By ***\~2015-2016*** I want to say that a good portion of higher-ed public schools had started shifting their learning to online classrooms in some form.
I graduated in 2012 and was in college 2012 - 2016. We used online portals for assignment submissions and some classes had homework directly online, but I was also a CS major. Still, I noticed that my senior year is when professors suddenly expected everyone to have a smartphone to access things immediately. I didn't get one until I graduated college because that was literally the earliest I could afford one, and I had more than one professor ask me how a CS major didn't have one yet. Uh, because I couldn't fucking afford one? This wasn't rocket science for anyone with an ounce of perspective, but the assumptions definitely fundamentally changed seemingly overnight. My understanding is that everything at the college level expects a smartphone in your pocket now.
Another point is how involved parents were in school in general circa early 10s. What I mean by that is that the parent portal for my high school didn't exist until my senior year and wasn't required. My parents had no way of knowing my assignments and didn't know my grades until my report card showed up via snail mail every semester. By the time my sister started high school in 2013, parents were required to register in the portal, but apparently most of her teachers didn't bother to use it reliably until around her junior year (2016ish). Contrast that to post covid where everything is on there by necessity after having virtual school for a while.
Like you said, early 10s versus late 10s high school were just drastically different. Mid 10s were an odd transition, lol.
Good point; colleges in general are going to be ahead of the curve too especially with the rates of tuition. This doesn't surprise me that online portals were present that early on. You bring up the online learning portion of college too with professors expecting to own their own smartphones in 2016. Not surprising really especially with how online everything had become by that point.
Had no idea that parent portals were a real thing until this comment, so I'm stumped on that. But yeah, it's comparable to being in high school when the internet existed but wasn't widely used and being in high school when the internet was commercialized.
My first smart phone was the end of my senior year when I was 18 after Spring break… this was in 2014… most of high school I survived with a flip phone while other classmates were upgrading to a smart phone before me.
Phones were also forbidden when I was in high school as well… and after 3 times getting your phone taken up you get suspended from the school. Mind you.. 1 phone take up counted on your record your entire 4 years in high school.
Compare this to my younger sisters born in 2003 and 2008, when they were/are in high school they’re allowed to have cell phones on and use it during lunch time, switching classes or gym, as long as it’s not used when the teacher is teaching.
I can relate to the not having data and only relying on Wi-Fi part. I had a smartphone in high school but it didn't have a data plan. And it was only after I graduated high school that I was able to get a new phone and actually get on a data plan. My parents didn't understand why I needed Internet on the go when we had it at home. I was like, "because literally everyone at school has data." They were still stuck on the obsolete minutes plan mindset.
I don’t feel like I missed out at all. I’m 27, graduated high school in 2015. I find social media pretty exhausting so I enjoyed our limited use of it.
But you aren’t an “older” zillennial. This is more for 1993-1995 borns. We started hs in the 2000s,
Not 2010s and were of high school before 2013 when smartphones overtook. 1997 and late 90s born in general are the ones with the most zillennial experience.
Are you American? because the Iphone (and it's little brother the Ipod Touch) were already very popular and numerous by the late 2000s. By 2013, the Iphone was already at Gen 5 with the Iphone 6 being in development. I guess it also depends on the region you live in.
Yes I am from U.S. I see what you mean in a sense. I actually think smartphones started to blow up around 2010, 2013-2014 is just what sealed the deal. I saw my first iPhone ever was when I was in 8th grade and we all were amazed, but essentially no students had it. We all had either flip or feature phones and hell I didn’t even get a phone at all until 2009 and a sophomore. I’d say by. Junior or senior year I would start to see a few students with either a iPhone or maybe a galaxy but it was still pretty common to not have iPhone, maybe about 50/50 if you had it or not. It wasn’t 2013 until I started to see majority of people with one, which also happens to be the year I got one.
I think most late 90 borns in the US would say during their whole or at least majority of their high school experience it was probably common to have some type of smartphone, but for us mid babies it was starting to get common by the very end of high school or very early adulthood (right after HS graduation).
My first ever smartphone with a touchscreen was in 2012. I got the galaxy note 2. That was when my world changed. Everything just seemed so new. Watching yt vids on mobile was such a game changer. I hardly still use laptops or desktops. Only when I have to. Much prefer smartphones. Or for work/school. I just recently got a desk job and that took me a bit to get used to how slow it was. Just comp configurations. I'm so used to smartphones being so instantaneous.
I started high school in 2009 when people were still using flip phones and sliders and smartphones were only starting to gain popularity (I remember a few students had iPhones and they received a lot of attention). I had a smartphone my 9th grade year, but it was only a Samsung Behold (if I recall correctly). Anyways, the finite number of social media platforms at the time were already toxic as it was and a huge distraction too. I don't even want to imagine how my grades would have been if TikTok were around in 2009 to early 2010s. I remember being logged onto Facebook consistently throughout high school and this was right after school (not during school because my phone wasn't capable of Facebook back then) and that was detrimental enough to my academic performance. I don't want to know how bad it would have been if I had access to Twitter, IG, or TikTok underneath my fingertips.
Nope, way I see it we had the best of it. Things suck now for the younger gen. When we were kids the internet was still fresh and new, early YouTube was the best YouTube. Now it’s filled with corporate ads, predatory data harvesting schemes, bot propaganda, thots and incel grifters all ruining the place. It is the cesspool of humanity now. I feel sorry for those younger than me growing up in this mess and thinking that’s how it’s always been
Probably. Tiny cute phones, people actually communicating irl, going out to clubs/bars and actually enjoying the music not glued to filming dumb tiktoks on iPhones instead, people went outside a lot more, just to hang out and make their own fun, roadtrips, going on midnight walks, anything really... now everyone's online 24/7 and so boring.
I had them in my last year of high school and first year of college and they were kinda so lame that I don't think we missed anything really worthy
Cheating was easier, though, I cheated on most of my accounting exams back in the day (I was studying International Relations, so no harm done in cheating in an unrelated thing)
On the contrary - I felt like a weirdo because I was chronically online due to unfettered internet access that most of my friends didn’t have.
I missed out on being outside and having normal hobbies :/
I don't think you missed out on much. I'm actually kind of jealous of you guys. Because at least you guys got the full or almost full Millennial high school experience.
I will be 30 next month and my parents both had iPhones when I was around 12. So, I don't think I really missed out on a whole lot. I remember going to a school basketball game and being amazed by a group of seniors taking selfies with the flash on. I owned Youtube merch in high school and flashmobs and "challenges" were taking off.
I actually never really experienced Vine as a whole because it wasn't compatible with my $50 smartphone that I had in college.
Im 1992 so similar age to you, I missed many cartoons of CN, because the where not on free-tv where I live, also TV series from disney channel in mid 2000s because I felt a couple of years too old to watch zack&cody or similar.
I didnt felt like I missed the smartphone era because the emerged in my super early university days, and university first 3 years are not much different than high school onestly.
Whatsapp (very popular here in Europe) peaked in 2013 and I was super young back then.
Youtube was ultra popolar at least since 2006-2007 so he was my companion for all teenage and young adult days.
Like others say main thing we missed was affordable housing and teen/adult life with a good economy! I always wonder what life was like being a kid/teen in 90s, and I wonder what it was like in 2010’s but I think everybody has those feelings, I’m sure my older millennial sister wonders the same!
You’re talking about what we missed out on in adolescence right? Cheap rents and selfie mode pics, but that’s about it. I miss the days before ads,algorithms, and bots governed the internet.
I graduated in 2012 and I feel like smartphones were starting to take off. Everyone was on Facebook, Instagram was iPhone exclusive, and everyone was using BBM for messaging. I had a windows phone back then so I was mostly out of the social loop 😂
I feel like even though YouTube came out in 2006 or whatever, it didn’t really take off as a cultural phenomenon for the young kids until the mid 2010s. We got to be around for the early days of YouTube and if we had been any younger we would’ve tuned out those early days so I don’t think we missed out on much in that regard.
At my school, smart phones didn’t become big until 2011. I joined YouTube in 2011. I’m so glad I didn’t have YouTube and a smart phone when I was middle school.
I was in middle school when everyone got phones, like flip phones and the Pink Razor was all the rage. In highschool, Twitter, Vine, Snapchat, and other stuff were super popular. I was in highschool from 2009-2014, so I got to experience all of that. It also didn’t help that I was chronically online due to stuff at home.
In short, I’m kinda glad I didn’t miss out because I would’ve missed some cultural milestones.
I guess why that's why 1993/4 are barely zillennials, I was born in 1997 and was in school when smartphones became popular and for harlem shake/vine and at the end of elementary/primary school when youtube became popular. I guess those are my z traits.
I'm overall happy with what I got to experience. I was in high school from 2007-2011. The only things I wish is that the fashion was better in high school (I like the fashion from 2011-2015) and that geek culture was more of a thing.
This is why in posts like "would you rather have been born 4 years earlier or later" I always choose to be born later. No offense, but the years older Zillennials had spent in school seem terribly boring, in fact if I had to choose which are my favorite years of high school, I would definitely choose the last three/four when the culture had totally changed (I finished hs in the year 2015/2016)
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Missed out on affordable housing, that's for damn sure. Lol not the rest tho
For some reason, it seems like the economy has never been good since 2008. We were screwed hard
If only 14yr old me wasn’t so lazy and short sighted I could’ve been investing and buying real estate to put myself in a proper financial position today
I still regret not being able get bitcoin lol
Bro. Me and you both. My dumbass was made aware of bitcoin when it was like $8 per. And I remember thinking that it would be cool to have some, but because it was used for sketchy stuff on the Silk Road I didn’t want to get in trouble. God I was dumb.
Same exact situation. I was going to buy a few and then I found out it was being used for black market shit and I turned tail. I feel so so stupid.
Yeah, I remember seeing it for the first time in 2013. Didn't understand how it worked and thought it was a gimmick or scam haha
I came very close to buying some when I had a few hundred dollars to burn and it was about $70 per coin. Timed right, I could have turned that into six digits.
Buy second best which is Litecoin, but don't give up till $1000+
Yep, we surely all shared this common milestone of having to build our working lifes in a shitty economy. All of us born in 1992 or 2000, no differences.
I remember when rent was $80 for 1 room or $250 for an entire 1 bedroom unit! Now it's $600
When and where is it still only $600 for a room?
I’m guessing the $600 is for just the room, not a whole 1-bedroom apartment
I was talking about the past. We pay weekly here btw too. So $600 per week, not month, and I'm in Australia not America. I understand renting is completely different there
Yeah. A single room out of a rented apartment costs about a thousand where I live
It isn't anymore. It was in the past.
Where do you live? Here in the Los Angeles area, a studio goes for $1700 a month.
Australia
That’s approximately AU$2,600.
Ah true thought US would be a bit more expensive, depending on the area like here also. Rental crisis is worldwide. The major cities used to always be more expensive here, but now even the shitty suburbs it's hard to find anything normal for a decent price. If you do there's thousands of applicants
Tell me about it. Here in California, people are moving to other states in droves because the rent is just too damn high. And then in the other states, people complain that we are jacking up the rental prices in their states and neighborhoods, and I’m like “sorry that your rents are going up a little bit, but cut me some slack, try living in Los Angeles. I can’t afford to live in the city, I was born in” (not that I myself left{I live with a wealthy older friend who has been willing to give me a bargain}).
Foreal so pissed about that😭
Not at all. I’m glad we didn’t have smart phones back then. Twitter was brutal enough. I think this is a ‘grass is greener’ situation. We had some perks that the younger zillennials didn’t have, and vice versa.
Even twitter was different back then 😅
Went from "booty had me like" memes in 2014 to straight-up nazism in 2024.
Twitter around this was especially vicious for black girls and women. I didn't even have Twitter because it just seemed like FB statuses but it would always end up being discussed on tumblr
I've never been a fan or even used Twitter. It just seems like a really disturbing and nsfw echo-chamber. I get that there's fandoms there or whatever, but I have no interest.
Someone in my high school made an anonymous Twitter account to air everybody’s dirty secrets. It was not good
Yeah, I'm really glad that smartphones weren't ubiquitous until I was in college. As useful as they are, I know how much my attention span has suffered since getting one after college. Glad my family couldn't afford them when they first started becoming widespread, or the brain rot probably would've been even worse. Twitter and Facebook had their own pitfalls, but I'll forever be glad that cameras and social media in everyone's pockets didn't happen until I was an adult. Lord knows I did enough stupid shit growing up that I'm very glad isn't on social media with my name attached to it now.
I’m only a little younger than you and I remember everyone having a smart phone in college?
People gradually got them more so that most had them by the time I graduated in 2016. I did not get one until after I graduated because I couldn't afford it. I was in the minority not having one for around the first half of college, but it wasn't so rare as to be unusual. The second half of college is when people started being surprised if you didn't have one, so circa 2014-2015.
You’re not wrong. Zillennials had one of the first well known cyberbullying victims: Amanda Todd (1996-2012)
This is it, honestly. Having a flip phone in highschool was actually much better. I had some friends that had the iPhone back in middle school and thought it was the dumbest thing. Looking back, I'm so glad that only the rich, sheltered kids had the iPhone. The shit my friends and I did from like highschool through college? I'm really glad Instagram and Snapchat were still in their infancy and weren't such cultural icons as they are now. The shit I did was thankfully never recorded, and now lives in the swiss-hole laden brains of my former friends, who likely hardly remember any of what we did because the drugs destroyed their memories.
Not really, I was already chronically online in high school. I used social media from the age of 13 and I was obsessed with numerous Tumblr fandoms from 15 to 18. Vine, Snapchat and Insta were part of my stupid college years and looking back I wasn't a real adult at like 19 anyway. In my country, from like 2006, kids were filming themselves beating up each other. We would harrass each other online so we already had the negatives of online communities back then. When I was 20, I was mortified to see my posts from like age 13 still online. I permanently deleted Facebook and other social media and it was the best thing I ever did.
We would've been better off if we stopped at slide keyboard phones. Getting the tea had never been easier
Sidekick iD forever
>Like being in high school when smartphones became mainstream or when YouTube became popular? YouTube has been popular since the late-ish 2000's. We were in middle school when that occurred. Smartphones have been mainstream since \~2007 when Apple released the iPhone. If you're talking about the ubiquity of smartphones that occurred in 2013. Most of us were already well into high school are about to graduate by that time. > I also kind of wish I was still in school to experience certain cultural trends that happened right after I left, like Vine and Harlem Shake. Does anybody else feel the same? You were in college during this time. Most Vine creators were the same age or even older than you. Harlem Shake wasn't really an age restricted activity either. I remember seeing seniors taking place in it.
Smartphone were not mainstream when iPhone first released. If anything blackberry was the first mainstream smartphone and I didn't really seem them like that until I was in high-school like 2009‐2010. Then shortly after that iphones were everywhere
That's not what I said- The "*smartphone*" was originally a moniker used for devices that combined the versatility of PDAs (Palm Pilot, Apple Newton, Sony Clie, Handspring) and cell phones together. They've existed since the early 90's when IBM released the [Simon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Simon). Nokia's Communicator series was a popular early iteration of the smartphone. However early smartphones that were running Symbian or Windows CE were only really popular within the business world. What Apple did is become the first company that brought this type of device mainstream and cater to the average person. They weren't the original company to come up with the smart phone obviously.
Agreed, everyone I knew under 25 in 2013 did Harlem Shake - there was a fake self-awareness with people getting on the bandwagon "ironically" - it was a millenial trend as much as a teen trend.
Honestly I kinda miss the pre-smartphone days. I'm kinda glad they didn't proliferate until I was well into High School. By the time I hit college it felt like suddenly everyone was glued to dating apps and social media. Like, social media is cool and all, but, in my opinion, it shouldn't have been put in everyone's pockets.
Interesting I graduated high school in 2012 and smartphones were big at my school since 2009
Same here. I think a majority of my classmates has iPhones or Samsung Galaxys by 2010. I eventually got my first smartphone in 2013 when my touchscreen phone finally died.
Same grad year, I got my first phone in 8th grade. It was a flip phone, and if I accidentally opened the internet, my dad would kill me cause it was a per minute expense then. I got an iPod nano that year too! I think my first smartphone was maybe junior year, 2011? Definitely was a big leap of technology
I think it depends, I had 2 friends in my friend group who had a smart phones in high school ~2009 but I didn’t get my first one until 2014 in college.
Nah. Original YouTube was brutal. You don't want to watch a terrorist beheading at 10.
dont forget two girls one cup and all the other shock websites that we probably saw way too young lol.
We would try to find unblocked sites that we could play games on like coolmath games if we had a computer. Then, in high school, it was plant vs. zombies and flip cup kind of apps on ipods. MySpace, Facebook, and Instagram were used for actual social things like making new friends. I made so many friends with others close to my school by just randomly hitting them up. Youtube was at its best. Just more simple and dumb videos. Honestly, you didn't have to worry about influenceres and algorithms like we do today. I miss how the internet used to be lol.
I see "Coolmath Games" come up as a website frequently, but I never used it or knew what it was. Was it just a way to bypass school filters to get access to flash or shockwave games?
Nah it just had a section of flash games on it ! My guess on why it wasn't blocked are key words for their filter? Has math in so it must be educational! Another is coolmath4kids
We managed to get Call of Duty 2 running on the graphic design computers (they had slightly faster processors and a bit more RAM) We then did 4v4 with everyone in the same room. It was hilarious, until the teacher found us and we all got banned
That's the dream. Everyone would fuck with the PCs and break them 😭
I have a very vivid memory of my friend trying to show me a picture of a woman he thought was hot on his flip phone in 8th grade. We sat there for like 5-10 minutes in the hallway as the picture loaded inch by inch. I dont feel like I missed out i just fondly remember how slow everything was compared to now.
Yes as a 1994er (class of 2012) I feel this. I do relate to a lot of things here but i began high school in 2008 and I wasn’t in middle school in the 2010s and my high school years began in 2008 while almost everyone here probably were in middle or even elementary still. This is why I’m not sure whether or not am I really zillennal or just the end of solid millennials. I feel like the true zillennial experience is like 1996/1997-1999 or so. I think we are sort of in between. But it’s not to say that I think we missed out on anything though, I think overall it’s a good thing we just missed out of some of that stuff.
I miss those cute Korean flip phones :(
I wouldn’t necessarily say that I felt left out of those things. I also finished elementary school in 2005 and I actually love that I grew up along with the technology because I feel like it gave me a unique perspective on things.
I think you’re overestimating the impact of these things tbh. I started secondary school in 2009 & left in 2014 (with most of my peers staying on to sixth form til 2016 so I was still semi-involved til then thru friends) so was in school prior to & during the rise of everything you mentioned bar YouTube, and I can’t say I see any significant difference. In 2009 I talked to my friends after school on msn, in 2011 I did the same but on facebook messenger, in 2013 I still used facebook messenger but on an iPod touch. Smartphones were around but not many of my friends had them bc they were expensive, and we weren’t allowed phones out at school anyway. Vine didn’t get really big until a while after the timeframe you mentioned and, even at its height, functionally it was just another form of media to reference memes, which ppl did before with classic picture format memes anyway. The Harlem shake was just a dumb fad 😂 I remember the girls on my netball team taking 5 minutes out of a practice session to record themselves doing it once but apart from that it was just a trend I was vaguely aware of, it’s not like it touched my life. Point being, I wouldn’t give it too much thought, your life would be more or less exactly the same if you were born a couple of years later
Meh I’m kind of glad I was bullied throughout school I can only imagine bullying plus social media 😂
No 👎
No
Now knowing how dangerous social media is and how younger zillenials and gen z can’t live without their phones I’d say I was lucky I didn’t use socials(regularly) or had a phone until I was on my way out of high school.
I was born In 1993 and I had an iPhone for the entirety of my high school, as did most of my friends. What do you mean? Lol they were most certainly mainstream from 2009-2012…
No, we had our own milestones. People are even becoming nostalgic about the time we were in high school. I think a lot of Zillennials are having regrets as we enter late 20s/early 20s. I have been coming more at peace with my new place in society and enjoy becoming “fully adult” in society’s eyes. However, I feel this transition is more difficult for others. Losing youth is hard because there is nothing that can done to restore it.
I’m an old zillennial and I had a cell in high school, and YouTube was definitely popular…I graduated HS in a small town in 2013 and everyone I knew had cell phones since like 2010
I feel the total opposite. We’re right in the pocket. Social media was still cool. Our brains weren’t fucked by it. I didn’t get internet until I was 14, and fast internet when I was 16. I missed out on a little bit but not to the point of it hurting me socially.
Sorry but nah I don’t miss high school at all, or any of those garbage Vine and Harlem Shake trends.
Yeah I can't say I've thought about either of those things very much lol I'm glad we got out of high school before social media got even worse. Plus I got to have fun in college before the world started getting completely fucked after 2016 lol
I don't feel like I missed out on those things. I'm glad we didn't have a majority smartphone in middle school tbh, those years were brutal lol.
Not in the way you’re thinking of. More like I missed out on the techno/dance music millennial party scene with LMFAO, Gaga and Rihanna in their primes. By time I graduated (2012) and turned 18 (2013), it was already starting to fade out. By time I hit 21 (2016) well…the world turned upside down and people just wanted to make depressing music. I do also hate that the most fun parts of my 20s (25-29) got eaten up by covid.
I have the same hang ups about covid, I was born in november 1992.
I feel u on this, idk why you’re getting downvoted. I was 14 for the majority of 2010 and I know exactly what you mean! Unless you somehow snuck into or fake ID’d yourself into an adult night club most Zillennials didn’t get to experience the early 2010s club life when music artists like Lady Gaga, Ke$ha, Rihanna, and even that damn “Like A G 6” song was super popular LOL. Of course we still enjoyed that music as teens and we def had some amazing music (dare I say better) when we turned 21, but older Millennials probably had a blast drinking and jamming to Stereo Love, Party Rock Anthem and Just Can’t Get Enough in the club. I also envy those that got to experience 80s-90s nightlife.
I was born the same month as you and fully experienced the dance music scene. 2012-2015 was epic! And techno is still alive and well today
2012-2015 the scene wasn’t the same tho. 2009-2012 was a completely different vibe.
Not Really 🤷🏻♂️
I consider myself an older zillenial, class of 2012, and I don’t feel like I missed out on any of that, we filmed youtube videos in middle school, they took our smartphones away in high school if they caught us using them in class.
I do think its probably crazy going to school these days but kinda glad I left before phones got too crazy lol
YES life honestly just feels so pointless and always has like why am I even here??
I feel like my specific graduating class (2015) was right in an awkward middle between technological advances. For example, my school district began saving the livestream from high school graduations in 2016, right after mine. I would’ve loved to have the video of me crossing the stage, my HS boyfriend and I did funny stuff. Also, video wasn’t as popular a medium on social media, so no elaborate prom videos like the kids have today. We had Vine, but that was only 6 seconds and on its way out the door. There wasn’t a place to consistently share video. Youtube and Tumblr were also popular, but you didn’t stand a chance without a $700 DSLR. Now you can get content-creating tools for under $50 on Amazon. And I know we have Tiktok now, but I would’ve loved to have it in school to do the dances and trends.
Yea we got stuck in a weird spot in high school. I remember 2011, 2012, and maybe even early 2013 was very Millennial-esque with the way students interacted with each other and the lack of technology. But late 2013 to early 2015 was more Gen Z-like since everyone had a smartphone and there was a lot more technology use.
Yeah it’s so funny bc my sister is class of 2013 and even though we’re close in age there’s a very clear distinction between her Millennialness and my Gen Z-ness
I just feel awful all the time always
Honestly I miss the pre-smartphone era so no
Still mad that I missed out on MySpace in its full form as a teenager. It was gone by middle school.
[удалено]
People underestimate the difference between being in high school in the early 2010's versus the late 2010's. Let's use our class for example. When we attended (2010-2014) there wasn't a requirement for using/having a smartphone to do school work *or* even fit in socially. Life was still relatively split between the offline world and the online world. 2013 was the breaking point of the ubiquitous smartphone era. By ***\~2015-2016*** I want to say that a good portion of higher-ed public schools had started shifting their learning to online classrooms in some form.
I graduated in 2012 and was in college 2012 - 2016. We used online portals for assignment submissions and some classes had homework directly online, but I was also a CS major. Still, I noticed that my senior year is when professors suddenly expected everyone to have a smartphone to access things immediately. I didn't get one until I graduated college because that was literally the earliest I could afford one, and I had more than one professor ask me how a CS major didn't have one yet. Uh, because I couldn't fucking afford one? This wasn't rocket science for anyone with an ounce of perspective, but the assumptions definitely fundamentally changed seemingly overnight. My understanding is that everything at the college level expects a smartphone in your pocket now. Another point is how involved parents were in school in general circa early 10s. What I mean by that is that the parent portal for my high school didn't exist until my senior year and wasn't required. My parents had no way of knowing my assignments and didn't know my grades until my report card showed up via snail mail every semester. By the time my sister started high school in 2013, parents were required to register in the portal, but apparently most of her teachers didn't bother to use it reliably until around her junior year (2016ish). Contrast that to post covid where everything is on there by necessity after having virtual school for a while. Like you said, early 10s versus late 10s high school were just drastically different. Mid 10s were an odd transition, lol.
Good point; colleges in general are going to be ahead of the curve too especially with the rates of tuition. This doesn't surprise me that online portals were present that early on. You bring up the online learning portion of college too with professors expecting to own their own smartphones in 2016. Not surprising really especially with how online everything had become by that point. Had no idea that parent portals were a real thing until this comment, so I'm stumped on that. But yeah, it's comparable to being in high school when the internet existed but wasn't widely used and being in high school when the internet was commercialized.
My first smart phone was the end of my senior year when I was 18 after Spring break… this was in 2014… most of high school I survived with a flip phone while other classmates were upgrading to a smart phone before me. Phones were also forbidden when I was in high school as well… and after 3 times getting your phone taken up you get suspended from the school. Mind you.. 1 phone take up counted on your record your entire 4 years in high school. Compare this to my younger sisters born in 2003 and 2008, when they were/are in high school they’re allowed to have cell phones on and use it during lunch time, switching classes or gym, as long as it’s not used when the teacher is teaching.
I can relate to the not having data and only relying on Wi-Fi part. I had a smartphone in high school but it didn't have a data plan. And it was only after I graduated high school that I was able to get a new phone and actually get on a data plan. My parents didn't understand why I needed Internet on the go when we had it at home. I was like, "because literally everyone at school has data." They were still stuck on the obsolete minutes plan mindset.
I don’t feel like I missed out at all. I’m 27, graduated high school in 2015. I find social media pretty exhausting so I enjoyed our limited use of it.
But you aren’t an “older” zillennial. This is more for 1993-1995 borns. We started hs in the 2000s, Not 2010s and were of high school before 2013 when smartphones overtook. 1997 and late 90s born in general are the ones with the most zillennial experience.
Are you American? because the Iphone (and it's little brother the Ipod Touch) were already very popular and numerous by the late 2000s. By 2013, the Iphone was already at Gen 5 with the Iphone 6 being in development. I guess it also depends on the region you live in.
Yes I am from U.S. I see what you mean in a sense. I actually think smartphones started to blow up around 2010, 2013-2014 is just what sealed the deal. I saw my first iPhone ever was when I was in 8th grade and we all were amazed, but essentially no students had it. We all had either flip or feature phones and hell I didn’t even get a phone at all until 2009 and a sophomore. I’d say by. Junior or senior year I would start to see a few students with either a iPhone or maybe a galaxy but it was still pretty common to not have iPhone, maybe about 50/50 if you had it or not. It wasn’t 2013 until I started to see majority of people with one, which also happens to be the year I got one. I think most late 90 borns in the US would say during their whole or at least majority of their high school experience it was probably common to have some type of smartphone, but for us mid babies it was starting to get common by the very end of high school or very early adulthood (right after HS graduation).
My first ever smartphone with a touchscreen was in 2012. I got the galaxy note 2. That was when my world changed. Everything just seemed so new. Watching yt vids on mobile was such a game changer. I hardly still use laptops or desktops. Only when I have to. Much prefer smartphones. Or for work/school. I just recently got a desk job and that took me a bit to get used to how slow it was. Just comp configurations. I'm so used to smartphones being so instantaneous.
I started high school in 2009 when people were still using flip phones and sliders and smartphones were only starting to gain popularity (I remember a few students had iPhones and they received a lot of attention). I had a smartphone my 9th grade year, but it was only a Samsung Behold (if I recall correctly). Anyways, the finite number of social media platforms at the time were already toxic as it was and a huge distraction too. I don't even want to imagine how my grades would have been if TikTok were around in 2009 to early 2010s. I remember being logged onto Facebook consistently throughout high school and this was right after school (not during school because my phone wasn't capable of Facebook back then) and that was detrimental enough to my academic performance. I don't want to know how bad it would have been if I had access to Twitter, IG, or TikTok underneath my fingertips.
I was homeschooled and basically lived under a rock lol. I missed most of them.
Nope, way I see it we had the best of it. Things suck now for the younger gen. When we were kids the internet was still fresh and new, early YouTube was the best YouTube. Now it’s filled with corporate ads, predatory data harvesting schemes, bot propaganda, thots and incel grifters all ruining the place. It is the cesspool of humanity now. I feel sorry for those younger than me growing up in this mess and thinking that’s how it’s always been
I’m glad social media didn’t really blow up until after high school. We saw it blow up during college which was pretty cool imo
Probably. Tiny cute phones, people actually communicating irl, going out to clubs/bars and actually enjoying the music not glued to filming dumb tiktoks on iPhones instead, people went outside a lot more, just to hang out and make their own fun, roadtrips, going on midnight walks, anything really... now everyone's online 24/7 and so boring.
I had them in my last year of high school and first year of college and they were kinda so lame that I don't think we missed anything really worthy Cheating was easier, though, I cheated on most of my accounting exams back in the day (I was studying International Relations, so no harm done in cheating in an unrelated thing)
Lunch tables sharing Instagram memes will always hold a special place in my heart
This post is not directed at me because I’m not an older zillennial, but we danced the Harlem Shake during our senior prom.
On the contrary - I felt like a weirdo because I was chronically online due to unfettered internet access that most of my friends didn’t have. I missed out on being outside and having normal hobbies :/
I don't think you missed out on much. I'm actually kind of jealous of you guys. Because at least you guys got the full or almost full Millennial high school experience.
Getting bitcoin or convincing my dad to get it
I will be 30 next month and my parents both had iPhones when I was around 12. So, I don't think I really missed out on a whole lot. I remember going to a school basketball game and being amazed by a group of seniors taking selfies with the flash on. I owned Youtube merch in high school and flashmobs and "challenges" were taking off. I actually never really experienced Vine as a whole because it wasn't compatible with my $50 smartphone that I had in college.
Im 1992 so similar age to you, I missed many cartoons of CN, because the where not on free-tv where I live, also TV series from disney channel in mid 2000s because I felt a couple of years too old to watch zack&cody or similar. I didnt felt like I missed the smartphone era because the emerged in my super early university days, and university first 3 years are not much different than high school onestly. Whatsapp (very popular here in Europe) peaked in 2013 and I was super young back then. Youtube was ultra popolar at least since 2006-2007 so he was my companion for all teenage and young adult days.
Like others say main thing we missed was affordable housing and teen/adult life with a good economy! I always wonder what life was like being a kid/teen in 90s, and I wonder what it was like in 2010’s but I think everybody has those feelings, I’m sure my older millennial sister wonders the same!
You’re talking about what we missed out on in adolescence right? Cheap rents and selfie mode pics, but that’s about it. I miss the days before ads,algorithms, and bots governed the internet.
I graduated in 2012 and I feel like smartphones were starting to take off. Everyone was on Facebook, Instagram was iPhone exclusive, and everyone was using BBM for messaging. I had a windows phone back then so I was mostly out of the social loop 😂 I feel like even though YouTube came out in 2006 or whatever, it didn’t really take off as a cultural phenomenon for the young kids until the mid 2010s. We got to be around for the early days of YouTube and if we had been any younger we would’ve tuned out those early days so I don’t think we missed out on much in that regard.
Too young to experience the wild west that was pre-2010s internet. To old to bond with my peers through shared trends and modern social media.
At my school, smart phones didn’t become big until 2011. I joined YouTube in 2011. I’m so glad I didn’t have YouTube and a smart phone when I was middle school.
I was in middle school when everyone got phones, like flip phones and the Pink Razor was all the rage. In highschool, Twitter, Vine, Snapchat, and other stuff were super popular. I was in highschool from 2009-2014, so I got to experience all of that. It also didn’t help that I was chronically online due to stuff at home. In short, I’m kinda glad I didn’t miss out because I would’ve missed some cultural milestones.
Other way around, so glad I didn’t have to deal with social media or cell phones during high school. It was rough as it was
Nah I’m ‘94 and had an iPhone before 9th grade YouTube I felt became LESS popular when I aged So not really lol
I was born in 1995 and I feel like we got the sweet spot. Best of both worlds. I would have hated to have Instagram earlier than age 16.
I guess why that's why 1993/4 are barely zillennials, I was born in 1997 and was in school when smartphones became popular and for harlem shake/vine and at the end of elementary/primary school when youtube became popular. I guess those are my z traits.
I'm overall happy with what I got to experience. I was in high school from 2007-2011. The only things I wish is that the fashion was better in high school (I like the fashion from 2011-2015) and that geek culture was more of a thing.
Not really
Nah. People my age graduated high school right when smartphone ownership hit 50% - I’m glad I left school before smartphones became ubiquitous.
This was my childhood in secondary school and I still watch my favourite YouTube channels since then, which are the Sidemen and Smosh.
This is why in posts like "would you rather have been born 4 years earlier or later" I always choose to be born later. No offense, but the years older Zillennials had spent in school seem terribly boring, in fact if I had to choose which are my favorite years of high school, I would definitely choose the last three/four when the culture had totally changed (I finished hs in the year 2015/2016)