Parenting|

15 Reasons Why Kids Never Had It So Easy

by Lib Aubuchon
Updated: 
Originally Published: 
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Kids today have it way too easy. Easy isn’t all bad, of course. (Let’s be honest and admit we love the convenience of nagging kids via text message from the next room.) But they really have no idea how much harder everyday life was when we were growing up. Take a moment to think about the practically insurmountable challenges we faced.

1. The Terror of Answering the Home Phone

Answering the phone was basically a game of roulette. It’s hard to imagine now but we used to pick up a telephone without knowing who was on the other end. How did we survive this?

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2. The Burden of Listening to Music on CDs

Upgrading from the cassette Walkman to the CD Walkman meant suddenly feeling like the cool kid on the go…until the CD got scratched and the music started skipping. Or you went over a bump higher than half an inch. How did we survive this torment?!

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3. The Misery of Waiting for Dialup

Remember waiting a full 30 seconds for the Internet to connect? Or hearing the AOL man (Siri’s grandpa?) cheerily inform you that “you’ve got mail!”? Your kids won’t. Sorry Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks: no one under 25 knows what you’re talking about.

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4. The Torture Of Hard To Open Go-GURT Tubes

Starting this summer, kids will no longer know the struggle of hard to open Go-GURT tubes. Remember when you’d go to pull the tab and you’d almost, but not quite, be able to get to the yogurt with clean hands? Go-GURT now comes with EZ Open Tubes so no more scissors.

5. The Agony of Watching Your Favorite Show

Back in the day, watching your favorite show meant waiting until the specific date and time that it aired, probably fighting with a sibling over who got to choose, and having a 90-second commercial break to full-on SPRINT to the fridge for a snack. (Pausing? What’s that?)

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6. The Misery of Dusty Old Dictionaries

Serious question: Do kids today know what a dictionary is? If we didn’t know the spelling of a word, we had to look it up. In a BOOK. With spellcheck and autocorrect, kids don’t even know what they don’t know!

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7. The Anguish of Rewinding Because Someone Else Wasn’t Kind

Remember renting a movie and seeing that the person who had it last didn’t rewind? Related: the horror of actually leaving your house to go find a movie to watch?

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8. The Struggle of Doing Long Division

“Kid, you literally have a computer in your hand all the time.”

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9. The Curse of Depending on Batteries

Does anything need old-fashioned non-rechargeable batteries anymore? Will our kids ever know the misery of listening to their favorite song die a sloooow, distorted-sounding death? No. They will not.

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10. The Drudgery of Using Your Lungs While Gaming

Remember when your video game didn’t work so you’d take it out of the console, blow on it then stick it back in? Your kids will never know that struggle.

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11. The Limits of Keeping It If You Couldn’t Trap It

Kids today use Google Classroom for all their note taking and projects. They will never know what it was like to carry around everything – literally EV. ER. Y. THING – you needed in a Trapper Keeper.

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12. The Pain of Wondering “Who Sings This?”

If kids don’t know who sings a song, they use Shazaam. Or ask Siri. Or Google a lyric. Or they look at the dashboard radio and it’s literally RIGHT THERE, scrolling.

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13. Seriously: Telephone Terror!

Have you ever explained to your kids that when we were growing up, calling a friend meant calling their home phone and possibly having to speak to their parents first?

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14. The Horror of Sharing A Computer with 24 Other Kids

Kids today are likely to have their own laptops or tablets to use in the classroom. Remember how our classrooms had that one crusty, prehistoric Mac with “Oregon Trail” on it? And you would fight someone to have 5 more minutes on it?

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15. Suffering A Pre-Google World

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See? Pat yourself on the back today. You’re a survivor. And your kids have never had it so easy.

Go-GURT keeps kids going. With new EZ Open Tubes, Kids Never Had It So Easy.

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