Technology has become such a big part of our lives that it’s easy to forget what life was like before tech. For the younger generations, all they’ve ever known is a plugged-in life. They have little to no idea what it was like living without tech. 

Baby boomers and Generation X remember life before technology took over. In some ways, tech has simplified our lives, and in other ways it has made life a little too easy. Take a nostalgic look at life before tech and see what’s changed. 

1. On and Off Switches 

Before the Internet of Things (IoT), if you needed to turn a switch, dial, or button on and off, you had to get up and manually do so. Light switches, television dials, air conditioners, and coffee makers required physical human contact to turn on and off. 

With many devices around the house connected to the Internet, all it takes is a voice command, remote control, or smartphone app to control these devices. You can be miles away from home and use an app to turn IoT devices on and off. 

2. Going to Libraries 

There was a time when you had to visit your local library if you wanted to borrow a book, do homework, or perform research for a school report or college paper. They had all the resources you needed, from books to newspapers to scholarly journals. 

Libraries still have all of these research tools for users, but they’re also available online. Electronic versions of books, newspapers, and journals mean you can perform library research in the comfort of your home. 

3. Sitting By the Phone

Before cell phones with voicemail became commonplace, most households had landlines without answering machines. If you weren’t home when someone called your house, there was no way to know if you missed a call.

If you were expecting a call and didn’t want to miss it, you had to sit at home by the phone, waiting for the call to come through. Answering machines and voicemail make it easy to avoid missing calls and screen unwanted ones. 

4. Arcades 

Going to the arcade with some quarters was great. Having a roll of quarters was even better. There was something magical about being in a room full of your peers, all trying to best each other at various electronic and pinball games. 

Freestanding arcades have mostly given way to in-home and online gaming platforms. Instead of being in a room with dozens of fellow gamers, you can play online and interact with a countless number of players at the same time.

5. Watching Scheduled TV shows

Before DVRs and streaming platforms, if you wanted to watch a show in its entirety, you had to be seated in front of the television at its scheduled start time, and you couldn’t put the program on pause to allow you to step away for a few moments.

Instead of waiting for the commercial breaks to step away from the screen, DVRs and streaming services allow you to pause your programs as you please. You can also watch them at your leisure in case their scheduled times aren’t convenient for you.

6. Developing Film

Except for instant cameras, anyone who owned a camera that used film had to take the completed roll to a Fotomat or other film developing company to get their pictures. Fotomat booths used to be so popular, there were almost 4,000 of them in the U.S. 

Today, many rely on their smartphones to take pictures, and they don’t necessarily feel the need to have all of those photos printed, and for good reason. My iPhone has more than 13,000 of my photos stored. It wouldn’t be practical to print them all. 

7. Using Encyclopedias

Remember the World Book Encyclopedias or Encyclopedia Brittanica? Your family or your neighborhood library may have had a full set of them. Those reference books were the go-to sources for students who had to write a research paper or needed to look up information. 

World Book Encyclopedias are still available in print and, like Encyclopedia Britannica, are available in digital format. But anyone who wants to perform online research has multiple tools available to them, like online scholarly databases. 

8. Going to Video Stores

The unofficial start of the weekend began when you visited Blockbuster or Hollywood Video and rented movies for the whole family. It was a mad dash to get a copy of the newest Hollywood releases, and you had to rewind the tapes before returning them or you were charged a fee. 

Netflix cut into this business model with their mail-to-home DVD service, but the real blow to video stores occurred when streaming services like Netflix and Hulu offered subscribers a wider selection of content on demand for a flat monthly rate.

9. Using Paper Maps

No family road trip was complete without the glove box full of paper maps that were used to navigate the way to unfamiliar places. Looking back, trying to drive while remembering what was on the map seems like an impossible task. 

GPS systems and built-in smartphone mapping apps have made driving so much easier. Not only does this technology offer turn-by-turn navigation, some of them are programmed to alert you to bad traffic on the way and give alternative routes.

10. Homemade Mixtapes

Before music streaming playlists were possible, you could record your favorite songs from the radio on a cassette to create homemade mixtapes. It was cheaper than buying a full album, especially when you only liked a few songs on it. 

There was an art to making the homemade mixtape. You had to carefully time the start and end of the songs you wanted to add without having the DJs voice on the tape or commercials, which interrupted the music. 

11. Buying Print Newspapers 

Newspapers are still being printed, but at rapidly declining rates. The advertisers that supported print newspapers in previous decades are moving their dollars to online media publishers, leading to the reduction in print newspapers.

Instead of getting the printed newspaper delivered at home for five, six, seven days a week, subscribers are opting for the convenience of reading digital versions of the news on their computers, tablets, and smartphones

12. Playing Outside 

KIds playing outside used to be a common occurrence, especially during the summers off from school. They would play outside from morning to dusk, going home every now and then to check in with their parents.

Concerns for their children’s safety, combined with in-home technologies, are keeping kids indoors more than ever. Unless they’re participating in organized sports activities, it’s quite a rarity to see kids playing outside. 

13. Movie Theaters

Movie theater attendance has gone down over the last several years, with a huge dip in audience attendance due to the global health crisis. Audiences are coming back to movie theaters, but they’re not breaking records unless it’s for blockbuster movies. 

High ticket and concession food prices are enough to scare movie patrons away, particularly when calculating the cost for two or more people to see a first run movie. It’s much cheaper to stream it at home. 

14. Using Phone Books 

One of the great American annual rituals was the arrival of the new phone book and yellow pages. It was cool to look up the names, phone numbers, and addresses of your friends and family in those big books, or to see your family’s information.

Phone books are still being printed, but just not at the rate they used to be published in the pre-Internet age. Today, if you need to look up someone’s phone number, you can perform an online search or use the digital versions of the white and yellow pages. 

15. Writing Letters and Thank You Notes

When was the last time you sat down with a pen and paper and wrote a letter to someone? If you can’t remember, you’re in good company. How about a thank you note? That one is enough to make MIss Manners cringe.

Handwritten letters and thank you notes have been replaced with emails and text messages. Sure, there are some people who don’t mind writing letters and notes by hand, but typing something out is much faster.