I keep cutting out things like social media from my lifestyle, but I’m finding it hard to fill the time. Reading can only go so far, there’s never anything on TV, and my friends all live twelve miles away.
So, before we really had social media, what did teenagers do?
Mostly video games, sports and chatting via Skype (both voice and text). Also image boards. Occasionally read a book. At least from a Zillenial perspective, it was not so different from now.
not so much skype, but the number of hours i spent on AOL Instant messenger (AIM) and later MSN Messenger. Trillian became a life saver when I started dating a weird Yahoo! chick.
Messenger was the only reason I had a hotmail account, and mostly just because the cute girls from school used MSN and not AIM. After Microsoft bought Skype the combined the two services and your Hotmail account was also usable as a skype handle (complete with @hotmail.com at the end) to this day I list that as my skype handle when potential employers ask for it, and I’ve often had recruiters tell me they think I put my email in the wrong field and I have to tell them they are incorrect. I hadn’t actually used that account in like 10 years, until Edge made it advantageous to do so for some of their features and now I probably use that account more than my Gmail.