Updated June 16, 2023 3.9K votes 604 voters 31.7K views
Voting Rules
Vote up what you're experiencing if you were a teen in the 2000s.
Being a teenager in the 2000s was such a unique experience. For young minds that were still in the process of being molded, they’d experienced pre-online life in the '90s and were introduced to the surge of computer and internet usage as they grew up. It wasn’t just the early stages of social media, but the trends, the pop culture and the all around experience of growing up, attending high school, and generally existing as a young person in the 2000s.
Before instant streaming there was the joyous time in which one would visit Blockbuster Video. Blockbuster survived the 2000s, dying in 2011, but it’s no surprise when you really think about it. They didn’t adjust prices as things like Netflix and Redbox (which surprisingly began in 2002) emerged, so as fun as it was to head to the nearest Blockbuster, walk aisles of entertainment options and buy overpriced candy, it began to not make sense financially, or convenience-wise. Still, hanging with friends and hitting up a video store is a memory former 2000s teens can cherish.
From tapes having to be rewound after watching to more significant delays, like the internet. You didn’t just open your laptop and browse the web, you had the early dial-up internet experience, which included a bunch of unpleasant sounds for like 15-30 seconds while it connected. Then, once online you got to enjoy waiting for pages to load and videos to buffer.
We talked to people on nights and weekends because that’s when it was free. Most didn’t text as liberally as we do now for the better part of the 2000s because there were limits. You can’t be sending short ‘K’ and ‘LOL’ responses when you’re only got so many in your plan. While calls were cut short as well, the biggest difference is the data, because while you might perpetually be on social media nowadays, if you even accidentally tapped the ‘Mobile Web’ button back then, you were freaking out trying to close it immediately to avoid any charges.
There were pesky things like not being able to move around much while using your DiscMan because the CD might skip, to again, that wretched dial-up internet, that literally used up the phone line. So, you had to disconnect if someone needed to use the landline, or if they were waiting for a call, well you could just forget about internet entirely until that came in.
Burning Custom CDs With Handpicked Songs Depending On The Friend Or Crush It Was For
There was nothing like making mixtapes with all of the illegally obtained tunes you’d scored. It was cool to make a mix that you could play on the way to and from school, which was the 2000s equivalent of being handed the AUX cord. Or, you could give a mixtape to your crush as a means of communication, hoping they’d listen, and I mean really listen to the lyrics of the love-professing songs.
All Music Was Downloaded From Kazaa, Napster, Or LimeWire
Sure it was sloppy and sometimes you’d think you were downloading one song, but it was incorrectly labeled so you got something else. Or it was just like a subpar version of the song you wanted. Either way, whatever issue the download might have, the fact remained that this was 100% free. Hundreds, thousands of songs being stored in your computer on the house. Well, illegally on the house, but naively pirating early on was great fun, though the 2000s music industry might disagree.
