Life
Phone Use Now Versus Phone Use In The '90s
The evolution of phone use since the '90s has been different in some ways, and more the same in other, unexpected ways. For instance, in the '90s, you used your phone to call people. Now, if your phone starts ringing with a voice call, you scream, run into the back yard, dig a hole, throw the phone in, cover it with dirt, and never speak of it again. We almost never talk on the phone anymore. But we do still while away endless hours on phone games, something that seems to be a timeless use of the phone.
Granted, in the '90s you might have only had a landline, and maybe a beeper if you were fancy. I didn't get my first cell phone until I was 16 (the year 2000, and it was a Nokia the size of my face). So in the '90s, phone use for me was limited to what I could do from a comfortable cord-reaching radius of a phone attached to the wall of my parents' house. Now that I have a smart phone, I can totally do other cool stuff, like walk around catching Pokemon and almost getting hit by cars when crossing the street while staring at the screen. Here's how you used your phone in the 90s vs. now.
In The '90s You Talked On The Phone For Hours And Hours
It was a struggle to get you off a phone call in the '90s. After school you'd tie up the landline for hours and hours talking to your friends. Single calls could last 4-6 hours, and that's not even an exaggeration. You loved talking on the phone in the '90s.
... Now You Only Text
Calls are the most terrifying, inconvenient thing you can think of. No, you'd rather spend an hour in a text conversation trying to communicate something that would take one minute via a voice call.
In The '90s, You Made Prank Phone Calls
Not only did you place serious conversational calls in the '90s, you also made a ton of prank calls.
... Now You're More Like "No Seriously, What's A Phone Call?"
You'd honestly rather eat your own skin than talk on the phone.
In The '90s You Played Snake For Hours
Remember how much time you "wasted" playing snake on your first (or your parents') cell phone? You could be a virtuoso piano player by now if you hadn't wasted half your life on that game.
... Now You Play Candy Crush For Hours
But you're still doing the same thing now, aren't you? Only this time it's not a pixelated snake on a green tinged screen but the lovely colorful graphics of Candy Crush. You're never going to get that career as a pianist of the ground now...
In The '90s You Called Your Friends To Make Plans
Phones were for calling friends in the '90s. You'd ring up, make a place and a time to meet, and then you'd be there.
... Now You Send A Text To Cancel Plans 20 Minutes Before Those Plans Are Set To Start
Thanks to texting, you can now bail on friends without even having to face them with the click of a button!
In The '90s, Your Phone Was For Communicating With The People In Your Life
Phones had one purpose and one purpose only in the '90s: contacting people you knew (or doing life admin stuff like calling the bank).
... Now Your Phone Is For Accessing The Entire Internet And Impressing People You've Never Even Met
But now your phone opens you up to the entire world. You used you phone for Google and social media more than you do to actually connect you to the people you care about. In fact, you're probably posting more tweets and Instagram photos to impress people you might not even know than you are actually calling your friends up.
In The '90s You Expressed Yourself With A Ringtone
In the '90s the most important thing you could do was choose a ringtone. Remember when you could choose a song? The agony of picking just the right one...
... Now You're All, "Ringing? What's Ringing?"
Now days you don't even know what that weird sound that comes out of your phone is, let alone care about changing it, it happens so rarely.
In The '90s, You Could Use Your Phone To Crack Nuts
Those first cell phones were tough. You could literally use them to break things. We called those early Nokias "bricks" and didn't worry if we dropped them. We didn't even worry if we violently threw them against a wall. They still worked.
... Now You Swaddle Your Phone In Cotton Wool
Your fancy glass screen smart phone is now likely to break just by you sneezing on it. Good luck.
