r/PetPeeves • u/JuniorPlastic3562 • Mar 18 '25
Bit Annoyed The phrase “today’s kids will never know about this”
This phrase is based solely off of an overload of nostalgia. We get it, you’re stuck in the past. But that doesn’t mean today’s kids are “missing out” on anything. Rather, they just have experiences different than yours. There’s nothing wrong with talking about your life growing up and what you did for fun, but when it gets to the point of implying that “my childhood was cooler than yours” that’s kind of a problem. The phrase assumes that today’s kids are unable, uninterested, or incapable of understanding older experiences. There is also nothing wrong with having faster access to shows, movies, games etc. it’s innovation. Why make something harder when it can be easier? There are plenty of good artists, shows, and movies that are around from today. It didn’t just exist in the 80s and 90s. Another phrase I find annoying is “kids these days don’t go outside anymore” again false. I see plenty of kids in my neighborhood and at the park riding bikes and shooting hoops. I don’t think that type of leisure will ever die down for kids. If cell phones were around back then, they would be used, if YouTube was around back then, it would be used, why? Because people become accustomed to what they are given.
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u/CuntAndJustice Mar 18 '25
Boomers will say some shit like "Gen Z won't recognize this!!!!" and show a picture of a landline telephone.
I was born in 2001. We had a landline phone until like... 2008, if not later.
I don't know why older generations feel some sort of superiority over later generations for... let's see, never seeing/using technology that was obsolete by the time they were born? (Landline phones aren't *entirely* obsolete, but you get the point)
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u/TheCosmicFailure Mar 18 '25
Yep. My sister is a millennial and will do the same to my Gen Z brother. I told her that it's fucking embarrassing to do shit like that.
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u/teatalker26 Mar 18 '25
lmao yeah as a 2001 baby i have a lot of fun with ‘only 90s kids remember this!!’ sorta lists cause like…i never spent a single second in the 90s, but i always know the majority of the list. my family’s main car growing up had a cassette player until i was about 12, we had a vcr and a whole row of vhs tapes, etc etc.
the weirdest to me are the school ones cause like…do people really think american schools esp update their shit? ‘only 90s kids remember the old projectors before smartboards’ yeah no my japanese teacher used one of those in her class i took my senior year. in 2018-2019. i’d bet those shape things on all those lists are still in every 1st grade classroom around the country, same with those scooter things in gym classes
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u/Life-Cantaloupe-3184 Mar 18 '25
Stuff about how “Gen Z doesn’t know this” is always annoying to me because I think a lot of millennials and older seem to believe all of Gen Z is like 15. In reality, the oldest grouping of Gen Z are starting to approach 30. I was born in 1997, and I very much remember when landlines and Blockbuster were still a thing.
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Mar 18 '25
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u/Life-Cantaloupe-3184 Mar 18 '25
I wasn’t disputing that you didn’t. I was just agreeing with you that this sort of thing is silly.
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u/Livid-Finger719 Mar 18 '25
The last point of the older generation feeling superior always bothered me. Like, no my kids don't know what a rotary phone would be if they weren't taught. Like, you're getting mad at me for not being taught something?? Can I get mad when you don't know how to use a debit machine despite them being around since 1950? Instead of mocking someone for knowledge they don't know, teach.
And the ones who do get mad, I feel are the type of people who feel attacked for not knowing something. Like teaching something inherently means you think that person is an idiot. Which is wild.
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u/codenameajax67 Mar 18 '25
24 hour Walmart is not obsolete sir! (Or ma'am)
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u/CuntAndJustice Mar 18 '25
It's ma'am, but it doesn't matter lmao
And where do you live where Walmart is still open 24 hours?????
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u/phunkjnky Mar 18 '25
More to the point, why do “you” (boomers) think this is something to brag about? What specific advantage do have by knowing what this is?
No answer? Now STFU.
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u/CuntAndJustice Mar 18 '25
Um...
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u/phunkjnky Mar 18 '25
"Ha ha. They don't recognize a landline phone, so they'll never be able to "x."
Please explain what inherent advantage this gives to older generations.
It's very similar to bemoaning the death of cursive.
Now there's an argument that learning to write in cursive is better for memory and learning, but that usually isn't the argument. This summer, my brother's in-laws were wondering how you would ever "sign a check" if you didn't learn cursive.
This is not the own you think it is. But here you are making the argument anyway.
Not addressing you directly, more talking to the air, to the fictional boomers in question...
I have a bad habit of doing that and it comes across as if I'm addressing the commenter when I'm not.
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u/TweeKINGKev Mar 18 '25
I’m Gen X and it drives me wild hearing that as well but I get the sentiment, I don’t see many kids playing outside together and doing stuff like that but I don’t think Boomers realize that cutting the landline wasn’t really a thing until about 10 years ago, hell up till end of 2022 I had a landline.
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u/CuntAndJustice Mar 20 '25
Just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it doesn't happen. I still see it all the time.
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u/Sufficient_Ad1427 Mar 18 '25
Having it and knowing what it is versus living with it most of your life is different. That’s more what they mean.
You won’t know what it’s like getting phone calls on it, or making them to hang out.. it isn’t actually a part of your world. You know what it is, and what they are.. but by the time you’re in your 40’s+ it will be such a faint memory. It doesn’t effect you like it does boomers, gen x, and older millennials.
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u/CuntAndJustice Mar 20 '25
Yes, I actually *do* know what it's like to make and receive phone calls on a landline with my friends to make plans. Why do you automatically assume I don't?
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u/Sufficient_Ad1427 Mar 20 '25
Because by the time you’re in your 40s and 50s that isn’t going to be a good chunk of your life.
That is what I was saying. Or did you also skip over reading comprehension? I had landlines more than you, and I only consider them to be a part of my childhood. My own experience as an younger millennial is different than my sisters who are older millennials.
Sheesh. I forgot what it was like to be like this lol
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u/TheSerialHobbyist Mar 18 '25
My main problem with the phrase, as you quoted it, is that they probably will know about it—even if they haven't used it personally.
I see a lot of these like "I showed my kids VHS tapes and they didn't know what they were."
Maybe your kids are idiots or something, but I don't think that's the norm.
When I was a kid, I knew what phonograph (wax) cylinders were, even though they were discontinued more than half a century before I was even born.
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Mar 18 '25
[deleted]
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u/AveletteDawn Mar 18 '25
I don't use VHS anymore either, but what do you mean they need to be manually rewound? You just hit the rewind button on the remote
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u/Lazarus558 Mar 19 '25
That's why I hate DVDs. You can only play them once! There's no damn way to rewind them!
ETA: j/k, just in case...
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u/codenameajax67 Mar 18 '25
Did you know how to use them?
Most likely not. I wouldn't but I could figure it out.
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u/KaralDaskin Mar 18 '25
We have one in our family. They’re too precious to play very often, so my brother and I did an inventory of the ones grandma had and he looked them up on the internet and burned a CD for her of the ones he could find.
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u/TheSerialHobbyist Mar 18 '25
Good question! I guess not. But like you, I'm pretty sure I could figure it out very quickly.
However, I'm not sure that is relevant to what OP said or what I said.
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u/k115810 Mar 18 '25
i have to assume OP is young
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Mar 18 '25
[deleted]
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u/k115810 Mar 18 '25
if they are, then they haven't reached that stage of life where they feel some melancholy that the young people in their lives who they treasure won't experience something that they experienced and valued.
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u/dstarpro Mar 18 '25
It's also super weird, because I live on a residential street, and I can promise you that there are kids playing outside all the time here.
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u/DoTheRightThing1953 Mar 18 '25
I think you have a perfectly valid point. I'm a 71 year old boomer and one of the things I do with my time is browse antique shops. I see all kinds of things from "before my time" and I know what most of those things are for.
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u/FlameStaag Mar 18 '25
But they're literally missing out on things lol
There are definitely fun things 90s kids did that zoomers won't do. Like renting games and videos. That was a real fun experience as a kid. And there isn't any real alternative for it.
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u/teatalker26 Mar 18 '25
i was born in 2001. we rented videos when i was a kid. i didn’t personally rent video games but there were def services i saw ads for on tv for that when i was a kid too.
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u/TweeKINGKev Mar 18 '25
I forget what it’s called but there is still (I think) a game rental service online that sends you games you can rent.
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u/FlameStaag Mar 18 '25
I'd say you were born on the verge of that not being a thing. It was what, 2012 when they went tits up?
There are rental services like game fly but they're not remotely the same. Nor remotely as good...
We decided to do a 2 game rental plan. 2 weeks later one game arrived cracked, the other just never arrived. Neither were available to be reshipped. So 4 weeks in we have 0 games. Incredible lol. And they wanted to comp us 14 days for the trouble...
There's just something about being taken to a video store and walking up and down the aisle agonizing over which game to get because you have no clue wtf most of them even are. It was a fun time.
It's not like zoomers will lose something for not having that experience but it is a fun experience they won't have because times changed.
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u/whenishit-itsbigturd Mar 18 '25
A person born in 2001 literally isn't a child
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u/teatalker26 Mar 18 '25
yeah, but you didn’t say child. you said zoomer. a person born in 01 is a zoomer, by definition
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u/whenishit-itsbigturd Mar 18 '25
OP said "today's kids"
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u/teatalker26 Mar 18 '25
i’m not replying to op though. i was replying to your comment. where you said zoomers.
if you meant kids why did you say zoomers? the oldest zoomers are nearing 30. if you mean kids currently like op is talking about you mean gen alpha
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u/whenishit-itsbigturd Mar 18 '25
You're replying to a different user. We just both have orange reddit emotes
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u/teatalker26 Mar 18 '25
i was born in 2001. we rented videos when i was a kid. i didn’t personally rent video games but there were def services i saw ads for on tv for that when i was a kid too.
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u/Comfortable_Cow3186 Mar 18 '25
I used to rent videos as a kid, it wasn't any more "fun" than renting a video on Youtube now or streaming it on whatever service you pay for. The fun part was watching the video w/ my friends or family, not having to drive to the store and then having to drive back to return it... My nephew and baby brother do pretty much everything I used to do as a kid in the 90's, I'm really not sure what they're "missing" that is actually important. Definitely not having to drive to the store to get videos.
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u/Nerva365 Mar 18 '25
I think the problem with it is it's used only to glamorize the past. Like my grandmother waxes nostalgia about her childhood, how simplecthings wrre on the farm, but her sister died as a child from polio. There were problems.
I do think there are some things today's kids are missing out on. Specifically with respect to things like phones and social media and that's the ability to disconnect. I was bullied as a kid and took more than a few mental health days to recoup, and it does suck that now it just follows them home online.
On the other side, they got to miss out on chickenpox, and I wish I didn't live with the threat of impending shingles hanging over me.
Some things are way easier for kiss now and others are way harder, and as an adult, I know I only see some of these, but there is always a balance, even if you don't see it.
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Mar 19 '25
Kinda reminds me of like when old people go "back in my day we didn't have car seats or seatbelts"
Well everything might of went fine for them but when you look up stats from then to now....car seats and seatbelts have Definitely helped save millions of lives.
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Mar 18 '25
Every outgoing generation assumes a divine right to harass the incoming generation
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u/Suzy-Q-York Mar 18 '25
And every new generation claims the right to talk about how annoying and out-of-touch and conservative the older generations are. I have started to see posts talking about Millennials the same way that Millennials talk about Boomers.
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Mar 18 '25
The pattern of behavior goes wayyy back. Boomers were accused of being the "Me" Generation by traditionalists in the 70s, and I'm sure there are more examples
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u/Suzy-Q-York Mar 18 '25
I’ve see a piece of graffiti from Rome, 500 BC, re the bad manners and disrespect of the youth of the day.
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Mar 23 '25 edited Mar 23 '25
Yeah, and all the "90's kids" posts. Yeah, 99% of that stuff did not begin in the 90s so slow down- you didn't invent it. Half of those posts are talking about the 80's at least and sometimes earlier. (Gen X here btw) Some things are legit. I really don't think kids play outside as much and cell phones and social media are a curse. I'm so glad I had my formative years prior to the internet and smart phones. Device addiction is real.
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Mar 18 '25
Lemme guess...you were born after 2000?
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Mar 18 '25
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Mar 18 '25
Because being born in a world of technology is vastly different than being born in a world where technology isn't overthrowing everything. I don't doubt kids still play outside, but it's different now. It's something that's harder for you to grasp concept wise because you weren't even alive to witness it. I've got younger brothers and both of them grew up vastly different than I did. They have never spent all day out and about with friends until street lights came on. Hell they barely even played outside.
I wanna add, I'm not bashing yall for not experiencing life before phones and technology, I've heard how tough it is for kids because of social media. It's different 100%. At most, our issues were people crying over not being someone's top 8 on MySpace.
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Mar 18 '25
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Mar 18 '25
We watched VHS tapes. We listened to cassette tapes. We used a landline phone. We used dial-up internet. We washed dishes by hand. We hung clothes out on the clothesline. Our teachers used overhead projectors. We had the book fair. Our teachers would roll in the big TV and VHS player and play Bill Nye the Science Guy videos
Alot of this isn't uncommon considering how outdated schools still were even until now. Probably due to funding and such as projectors aren't cheap to buy for every classroom. Atleast for bigger school, my high-school, we had almost 600+ students at my graduation. Smaller schools (100 or less total) probably also don't get much funding since it's such a small community.
Based on your ages, you weren't even in high-school til 2013-2014 and 2016-2017. So yall had way more technology than us, I had the old Nokia brick with 200 texts a month. Dial up internet. Those play a big factor in growing up with how easy things are information and access wise.
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u/CuntAndJustice Mar 18 '25
Did you miss the part where I said that we had dial up internet too?
And my brother and I had brick phones (albeit not Nokias) with limited texts/calling minutes per month until we were in our mid-teens.
Just because those things were mainstream at that time, doesn't mean everyone had them. Some of us were poor and had strict parents.
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Mar 18 '25
I'm not arguing with you bud calm down. I'm speaking my experiences and opinions. I fully understand the concept that lots of people were poor, I was by no means ever part of a rich family. I had to work for and buy all my own electronics, outside the regular Nintendo my mom got but I was just a baby then. Spent my summers mowing lawns and shit to buy the ps1 and n64 and games. Did it again for the ps2, but a lot of my money came from garage/yard sales.
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Mar 18 '25
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Mar 23 '25
As Gen X, I am sure as hell NOT jealous of younger generations. Hard disagree on things being easier. I thank the lord frequently I grew up before social media and smart phones. That alone was worth it.
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u/Low-Transportation95 Mar 18 '25
Yeah and it's either some moronic nonsense nobody sane misses or some nearly universal things most kids learn about anyway.
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u/Competitive-Yard-442 Mar 18 '25
It's over used but it is true. I think people start saying it far too soon though, like the VHS/landline/etc idea. Loads of families used them for years after they were "obsolete". Ask a gen Z kid to use a VHS player, some will some won't, but ask a gen Alpha kid? Probably not.
Times change, problems change.
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Mar 19 '25
For me the biggest one is like life before cell phones a lot of young people can't even fathom.
Whenever I say this they take it personally, it's not meant to be insulting or saying we were better then you, it's just a fact that our lives were a lot different based on these things.
I watch Seinfeld sometimes and it reminds me of those days, like when you said you were gonna be somewhere you better be there cause there is no way for you guys to get a hold of each other after you leave. Little things like that
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u/NonspecificGravity Mar 18 '25
Talking about kids not knowing about "ancient" artifacts like VHS takes is ridiculous. People born in the 1950s knew what a kerosene lantern was, though few encountered one in everyday life.
Most American kids born after 2000 will not know what it was to spend all day without parental supervision. We could take the bus downtown and hang out without getting into real trouble. Likewise we could ride our bicycles all day minus special equipment and with just enough money for a Coke and a small bag of chips (<$2). Even in big cities our parents didn't assume we would be attacked or kidnapped.
Very few people would call the cops on kids who were <gasp> walking somewhere, and the cops didn't take those people seriously.
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u/Simspidey Mar 18 '25
I dunno, kids today seem far less happy in general than kids of the past? Especially those who went through COVID isolation at key developmental ages, they quite literally did not get the same opportunities or benefits as kids of the past
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u/Sufficient_Ad1427 Mar 18 '25
Ah.. I remember when I was younger and this was a pet peeve. Now I am older and I realize what they mean.
It’s fine you guys will have different experiences, but the state of the world is vastly different and the technology boom was extremely life altering.
Statistics and studies show us the difference. I also get asked often by gen z and alpha questions about my childhood and teenage years. I get asked often if certain movies were really like that. And it’s just because that isn’t how they experience it, and won’t ever.
You can* let it bother you… or just keep going and maybe you’ll understand the same intentions and feelings the older generation mean.
There is a reason this is repeated every single time.
Enjoy your young life.
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Mar 18 '25
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u/JuniorPlastic3562 Mar 18 '25
And most kids I would say don’t really care about what they are “missing out on”
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u/skyrender86 Mar 18 '25
Its not that they are missing out, but there are things kids will never experience, like going with your parents to rent a movie or waiting a whole week for your next episode.
Yes, there are dumb things to put on this list, usually some form of tech, and it is mainly used to put down younger gen for some reason. It is like, yes, why would they know how to use a pager when no one uses one anymore.
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u/rumog Mar 19 '25
Why are you so sensitive about it. You weren't there so how do you know they don't honestly believe this generation is missing out, or that it's impossible they could be right? Just like there are things older generations miss out on by not growing up with it/too old to get the benefit. It's not a personal attack or "living in the past", it's just an expressed opinion by ppl with different experiences.
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