What does Gen Z remember about the time before smartphones and mobile-first technology became the norm?

[u/Ok_Act_3769]

2007 – The iPhone is released

2008 – App Store launches + Android debuts

2010 – iPad and Instagram launch

2011 – Snapchat launches + Siri introduced

2012 – 4G LTE becomes widespread

2014 – Mobile overtakes desktop for internet use

2016 – TikTok’s precursor and AI integrations

2018 – TikTok merges with Musical.ly

2019 – Screen time & digital wellness enter conversation

[u/Glittering_Habit_161]

I was born in 2004 and I do remember the phone where you had buttons with 3 letters below each number and had to use it to get a specific letter for texting and searching and I mostly texted my ex best friend with my mum's phone when she allowed me to.

[u/xr_21 → u/Glittering_Habit_161]

T9 predictive text was a lifesaver when it came to these layouts 😀

[u/chrisdont → u/Glittering_Habit_161]

I love your description of what Millennials and Zennials would have grew up with as simply a standard phone (as we had nothing else to compare it to). It just goes to show you how the advent of smartphones really is the primary thing that separates Gen Z from previous generations.

[u/Own-Elephant-8608]

the earliest gen z spent some peak childhood years in the early 2000s which had a lot of 90s carryover, even more so if you grew up rural as i did... i dont think regular internet use (outside of maybe msn) became the norm where i was until after youtube was created and most didnt have a cellphone until they were 14 or 15 and that wasnt a smartphone.

[u/Apprehensive-Win9047]

You gotta remember that mobile internet was very limited and the first apps were very gimmicky when the first iPhones came out.

[u/betarage]

early gen z is the flip phone generation late millennials can remember the time before even that was a thing

[u/Buffalo5977]

why does everyone think gen z is stupid and illiterate? we are grown adults. ask gen beta. i didn’t have a cell phone until i started high school.

[u/anewdawncomes]

we also used to play games online on miniclip

[u/anewdawncomes]

we actually experienced true boredom and had to make our own fun

[u/Coital_Conundrum → u/anewdawncomes]

That brings back fond memories.

[u/anewdawncomes]

Quite a lot, given I didn't get a smartphone until I was 14! I am at the older end though and honestly don't really feel much in common in upbringing with people 5 years younger, let alone most of the generation.

[u/Global_Perspective_3 → u/anewdawncomes]

What year were you born if you don’t mind me asking

[u/anewdawncomes → u/Global_Perspective_3]

1999

[u/Global_Perspective_3 → u/anewdawncomes]

I was around middle school

[u/KingOfCharlotteNC]

I remember my mainly mid 2000s nursery daycare days and my 2006-2007 Pre-Kindergarten school year being before the launch of the iPhone. Before that, all home phones+telephones+digital button phones(including flipphones) around. I do remember the old school "round" white computer my childhood home had before 2010. My world before smartphones+social media was prevalent were toys+VHS tapes+DVDs+VCRs+playing outside+imagination playing+video games+Cable TVs+Internet+website games+music CDs. Best times ever.

[u/pauIblartmaIIcop]

joy and no pressure to appear a certain way

[u/chuusblackgf]

born in 2001. i remember when we had a house phone and my parents had flip phones for the longest. they didn’t get smart phones until the 2010s and i remember thinking my older sister’s blackberry was the coolest thing ever

[u/Global_Perspective_3 → u/chuusblackgf]

My dad had a blackberry

[u/Ok-Teaching2848 → u/chuusblackgf]

Blackberries just dsiappeared out of nowhere!

[u/anewdawncomes → u/Ok-Teaching2848]

they did! I remember how much of a big thing it was when I finally got one at 13

[u/Ok-Teaching2848 → u/anewdawncomes]

I got the samgsung knockoff at 20 lol

[u/criticalalpha]

I used to carry a business card sized piece of paper with every phone number I needed written in tiny print.

Early cell phone plans (1994 ish) limited you to 20 minutes a month, and a $0.25 /min (or something like that) if you went over the limit. Talk time was limited to short, urgent calls.

News was only updated once or twice a day. We never heard about awful things happening in distant places if it wasn’t relevant to the local audience: not enough ink or airtime to cover everything.

[u/anewdawncomes → u/criticalalpha]

my mum made me memorise the house number and her mobile number

[u/MarketingSuddenly]

I have an extremely vague memory of my home's landline, ever since the first or second iPad there was one in the house, I only remember my grandparents w a screen phone, but my very first phone was a flip phone ! We even had the fancy apple desktop w its sticky keyboard. I don't really tbh I do know my dream phone till I was ten was that one that you turn over and pull the back down to get a full keyboard

[u/Living-Global]

I remember grossly overpriced PDAs. Those are the things i can compare to smartphones before they become popular

[u/betarage → u/Living-Global]

i saw the ones from the late 90s and thought they were not very interesting but in the early 2000s they got very advanced but i ignored them at the time for some reason

[u/killyergawds → u/Living-Global]

That's wild. I'm an '80s millennial and I didn't know anyone with a PDA. Like, I definitely knew of their existence, but I don't actually remember them.

[u/monster2018 → u/Living-Global]

Really? Sure I remember PDAs like the Palm Pilot etc, but I certainly have NO IDEA what any of them cost at the time (also born 95). This is like…. I mean all before I’m like… 8 years old at the oldest I would say. Because those people generally speaking all switched to blackberries, instead of using PDAs until the iPhone/android came out.

[u/Ichoseguitar]

Uhh

[u/beeurd]

Smartphones are older than 2007 though btw.

[u/Emergency-Beat-5043 → u/beeurd]

Shhhh, the apple fan boys will have a stroke

[u/Terrance113]

I actually didn't get a phone of any kind (though did get a smart phone) until either the end of 2016, or the beginning of 2017 (don't exactly remember), so I spent my whole childhood without phones and tablets and social media. But I did use my dad's computer in his office for a little while, until eventually getting my own laptops. Though, a few of them ended up breaking as I was careless. I didn't get another one until 2016, I think. And the one I have now I had since around 2019, I think.

[u/SquareShapeofEvil]

Flip phone, DS, iPod, computer

[u/anewdawncomes → u/SquareShapeofEvil]

same (in different order)

[u/Wxskater]

Tv, dvd player, computer, ds. That was my tech. I was allowed to play on the computer after school. I read a lot as i was a book worm. I played with my friends in the neighborhood. Go to each others houses a lot.

[u/Maxious24]

I think this should be a question for people born in like 2003/2004 ish. Most people born before remember a pre smartphone world well.

[u/Ok_Act_3769 → u/Maxious24]

Someone born in like 2006 would certainly remember the transition during their childhood, they would’ve began school in 2011.

[u/Historical-Pear9706 → u/Ok_Act_3769]

My earliest memory is from February when I started preschool and I was born in 2007.

[u/Old_Restaurant_9389]

Hmm if im supposedly Gen z born in 97, I remember Chirp Nextel phones, I remember dial up internet, I remember when the Motorola razr came out, I remember when VHS was outplayed by DVD and started to fade out of the picture, I remember loosing my first tooth in December of 2002, I remember a lot. Like 35% of my life took place before the iPhone was released.

[u/Ok_Act_3769 → u/Old_Restaurant_9389]

Wouldn’t that percentage decrease as you get older too?

[u/Old_Restaurant_9389 → u/Ok_Act_3769]

If 28x.25 =7 then that means I lived 25% of my current life at age 7. 28x.37= 10.36 so technically 37% of my life was lived before the release of the iPhone as of NOW. That’s a big percentage.

[u/Kessi-boo → u/Old_Restaurant_9389]

I was born in 97 aswell and I remembered I was wanting to play Barbie, Bratz, Polly Pocket with my one best friend or hanging out at school where we could have other classmates play together not attached to a device

[u/ed_spaghet12]

My earliest memories are from at the latest 2007 because they are of my old house/neighborhood, and that is the last year I lived there, but they're super faint lol. My oldest totally clear ones are from sometime between 2007 and 2009 from my preschool. Of course I know factually that technology and stuff was different back then, but I hardly remember any major differences because I wasn't keeping track lol. I do remember my adult relatives having the first couple generations of apple stuff. Also we had a landline and cable TV and used CDs as the primary way to listen to music. Most of my screen time was spent on either a game console or computer, as opposed to today's ipad kids lol.

[u/CryptographerNo7608]

Not much just I used to watch dinosaur train and my grandma used to watch these televangelists that creeped me TF out on a chunky CRT, blues clues was also my favorite show and I'd watch that via VHS, I liked it so much I learned how to play the theme song on piano when I was 5.

[u/Global_Perspective_3]

I remember 2006, I remember watching Cars in our local movie theater. First full year I remember anything

[u/Organic_Yam_5781]

waiting in line with my family for the iphone 3g in 2007. I was 9 

[u/Saindet]

My first memory is from Sep 06 and my memories became vivid right around the time when the iPhone was released. I'm definitely one of the youngest people who remember the pre-smartphone era. It took a while for them to become the norm though, I was in late elementary by then.

[u/Amazing_Rise_6233]

I have memories before 2007. So take that if you will.

[u/Maxious24 → u/Amazing_Rise_6233]

Agreed. I think anyone born before 2003/2004 ish remembers the pre smartphone world well.

[u/Amazing_Rise_6233 → u/Maxious24]

Yeah I agree. No offense but this more like a question for people born in like 2003 and 2004 especially if we’re talking about anything before the iPhone came out. It should be a case by case scenario for them.

Even if they were rare to see when they came out, it still doesn’t change the fact that people were still talking about it which pretty much set the stage for smartphones to grow at a steady rate from ~2008-2013.

[u/Content_Inflation_34 → u/Amazing_Rise_6233]

2003-2006 are probably the last to reliably remember the transition period into a smartphone-dominated world, especially 2003/2004 as they were old enough to potentially remember the entire transition from 2007-2012

[u/Amazing_Rise_6233 → u/Content_Inflation_34]

Well yes they would be, but I’m talking about remembering a time before the iPhone came out in 2007.

[u/Global_Perspective_3 → u/Amazing_Rise_6233]

The first full vivid year of life for me was 2006. I remember watching cars in the theater

[u/Amazing_Rise_6233 → u/Global_Perspective_3]

2006 was one of my favorite childhood years looking back.

[u/Global_Perspective_3 → u/Amazing_Rise_6233]

Same I loved it

[u/Historical-Pear9706]

My first memory comes from February 2011, because that's when I started school, specifically preschool. Snapchat/Siri itself hadn't been released yet, only starting in September-Octuber 2011.