I Was Thinking About…Growing Up Analog: Life Before Smartphones
By Andy Lee
Do you remember life before smartphones? I do. Born in 1971, I’m part of Generation X—the last generation to come of age before the digital revolution transformed society. My childhood in the 1970s was dominated by analog technology. Rotary phones still occupied kitchen walls, phone books piled up on doorsteps every year, and getting directions anywhere meant pulling over to unfold gigantic paper maps.
As a teen in the 1980s, I came of age alongside classic analog icons like the boombox, the cassette tape, and the glorious dawn of MTV. My friends and I would spend endless weekend nights clustered around landline phones, tangled up in those stretchy spiraling cords. Without the option to text, you’d talk for hours analyzing every tiny high school drama or you’d pass actual handwritten notes in class on folded notebook paper rather than through discreet Instagram posts. Sleepover parties always involved recapping crushes and relationship gossip in extensive detail during marathon three-way calls between best friends. With phones physically tethered to walls, you could nestle into nooks and crannies of your home seeking privacy, an extinct concept in today’s world of smart devices.
Making and keeping social plans required coordination skills that seem almost quaint by today’s standards. You had to call up your friends’ landlines and talk to whoever answered—parent, sibling, or hopefully the friend themselves—to agree on a specific time and physical location to meet up. Then you actually showed up there, minus all the text message updates and logistical frenzy. Last minute location changes or cancellations? Good luck getting the message out by trying to track people down through their home phone lines and leaving messages with family members. Payphones and a pocketful of change for them were necessities when you were out and about without a tether to home base.
Despite the episodic technology milestones—like arcade games and VCRs giving us glimpses of the digital future—the disconnected 1980s still had a certain timeless quality that today seems idyllic. Without the nonstop digital pings and notifications, endless scrolling options, always-on internet connection, you simply lived more in the moment. Conversations with friends felt more anchored, music listening was more intentional whether we were blasting cassettes on the boombox or carefully crafting mixtapes. I’d get lost in magazines and books for hours without hyperlinks or others digital rabbit holes beckoning. Don’t even get me started on television! Waiting all week for favorite shows, at the whim of network schedules. No binging allowed. And don’t forget dealing with the dreaded, unthinkable…commercial breaks!
While today we constantly complain about tech-induced FOMO (fear of missing out), before the internet and social media, it was common to be clueless about 95% of acquaintances’ daily activities and minor life updates. People didn’t feel compelled to provide 24/7 documentation of existence. When friends weren’t physically with you, whether they grabbed a sandwich or went shopping wasn’t something you typically knew—and it was admittedly freeing not to have that mental real estate occupied. When notable moments did happen, you exchanged animated first-person accounts live and in-stereo with all the freely flowing authentic details, no filtering required. No obsession with posing for selfies and digital approval via comments or likes—just those hilarious awkward candids courtesy of the Polaroid, with questionable hair and fashion preserved for posterity.
While the inability to instantly access information or contacts occasionally led to frustrating episodes—like getting stranded places once payphones ran out of change or having to demolish small forests in order to fuel our printed paper planners and address books—that analog lifestyle still imparted certain lifelong skills. Perseverance, flexibility and learning to access entertainment through pure imagination rather than simply opening an app trained our minds and personalities in valuable ways hidden beneath the nostalgia.
Today, I certainly marvel at the incredible conveniences and connections of the digital era. But along with the magic comes perpetual pressure to digitally document and publicize the minutiae of our existence—an urge I’m thankful I never grew accustomed to or came to depend upon for self-worth. My memories live vividly inside me rather than parceled out across my social media greatest hits. The physical artifacts I kept—diary scribblings, handwritten notes and letters, ticket stubs—proof of a youth well lived according to simpler measures than likes and links.
As I continue embracing this amazing digital evolution now into my 50s, I’m equally nostalgic for that pre-tech world of the 1980s—of rotaries and roller rinks, pen pals and Polaroid, Sony Walkmans clipped to our belts and the sweet sound of dial-up announcing new connection frontiers….when call waiting blew minds, every social call waited until safely after 7pm rates, and the only tweets came from birds. Would I ever want to permanently time-travel way back to my analog teen years? Not at all. But visiting that less complicated, less contaminated era now and then sure would satisfy my occasional pangs for the past.
Stay retro, be kind rewind! ⏪
I was thinking about... 