In r/AskReddit, someone asked, “For those who were in their 20s in the 2000s, what was life really like?” Y2K is trending right now, so I’m sure people have questions.
Folks who spent their roaring 20s using Blackberries, wearing low-rise jeans, and stashing Kodak memories in their digital cameras wrote in, and it was like entering a time capsule — one before social media took over and threats of AI weren’t looming. And if you could believe it, this was less than two decades ago. Here’s what people shared:
1.
“It was just before the internet absolutely ruled everything. It was a handy tool, but life didn’t revolve around it. It added to your life, didn’t take it away. Life was good.”
2.
“International travel was great at that time. You were cut off from people in real time, but you could find an internet cafe to write emails and maybe find some local info. But it was an activity. Once done, it was back to being immersed in the local environment.”
3.
“I worked nights, weekends, and holidays in the mid-2000s, and almost every night I ran out of stuff to look at. Now you can doom scroll or watch YouTube forever.”
4.
“Cheap-ish concerts were happening constantly. I went to tons of shows in the $15-50 range. For most of them, there were multiple bands on the bill that I knew, and that had multiple hits on the radio. Getting the tickets on Ticketmaster still sucked, and their fees did too, but the fees at that time were at least semi-reasonable. And the option still existed to go to ticket kiosks in person to save some of the fees.”
5.
“We had no GPS and somehow still found each other. ‘Text me when you get to the club,’ and then waited 20 minutes outside because nobody knew where anyone was. Peak anxiety, peak fun.”
6.
“You had to talk to people — you didn’t have the option to pull out your phone and disappear into it. You couldn’t look things up as easily and that meant there was more room for discovery and surprises.”
7.
“My friends and I would go to each other’s apartments and talk and hang out. We just cracked jokes all day and sat around thinking about what crap we wanted to do in life or not. We drove around and met up with friends everywhere. We also walked a lot back then. It was a great time to be young.”
8.
“Texting wasn’t really a thing yet because each text cost 10 cents, so we just called each other. Nights and weekends were free, so we called each other really late to just talk on the phone. It was a good time for connecting with friends on a deeper level.”
9.
“I just remembered, I had a super high phone bill at one point when we still had to pay per text (I was about 16 cents at the time). My parents demanded to know how I had run our shared family phone bill up so high, but I had no clue. Come to find out, back then, when you called your voicemail, that time counted against your monthly plan minutes. I thought calling your own voicemail would be free. I had exchanged a bunch of text messages with my long-distance boyfriend that month, and he had left me voicemails that I had saved. I had been calling my voicemail over and over like a lovesick puppy, listening to the voicemails he had left me, blasting through all our family minutes. The folks were livid, lol.”
10.
“Honestly, the biggest difference for me is that staying home was really boring. Like, you had to go out to have any fun. Nowadays, I can use so much technology for entertainment that I don’t feel the need to go out and socialize, but going out was the only thing that was enjoyable then. Staying home was only something I did when I was sick or needed to get some rest.”
11.
“I came from absolutely nothing and owned a home by 23. I had a ton of friends. I took dates out multiple times a week. I golfed multiple times a week. I also traveled the US and the world. I’ve been to damn near every amusement park. Vegas was like $150 to have a lot of fun and play poker with $40 rooms. I had the same job for the entire decade, where I kept getting promoted for hard work. No education. I worked f—king retail. Started part-time. This ain’t possible now, and it makes me sad for 20-year-olds.”
12.
“Everything revolved around alcohol. Going to the park? Going to drink beers in the park. Going out? Going on a pub crawl. Trying to meet new people? Go out drinking. The internet has been really good at creating niche connections. If you’re into board games, you can find a group. If you like Viking reenactment, you can find a group. Do you want to go on a climbing date? You can find a group. If you’re in a city, you can now easily access any activities you want, and there’s a big push for non-drinking things, which is great.”
13.
“For me, who turned 21 in 2000, the aughts were a complete disaster. It was a constant struggle with the radical 180 in terms of the political shift brought on by 9/11. Overnight, my friends and cousins signed up to join the military, and I even seriously considered it. Then it was years of worrying about them as old ass politicians sent them off to fight in foreign wars that had nothing to do with 9/11. Yes, there were some good times and good music, but there was always this pervasive worry and sense of dread because of the risk my friends and family were exposed to. It’s hard to comprehend for the people younger than us because the decade before was so chill and fun, but the aughts really ushered in a strong sense of dystopia. I think historians will probably look back on the George W. Bush administration as the start of the ‘Disinformation Age’ that we are all currently living through.”
14.
“I turned 20 in 2006. ’06-’07 were okay, but 2008-2012 were the worst years of my life due to the Great Recession and its lingering impact. I couldn’t afford anything, I had no job security, and I just worked all the time.”
15.
“I turned 21 in 2003 in San Francisco. There were still artist communities in industrial warehouses all over the Bay Area. I remember walking through Richmond at night, ducking through the fence, and running across the tracks to Burnt Ramen to see amazing shows in industrial buildings, and shows down in the basement of Mission Records in the city. Amazing fun parties at some Oakland artist’s warehouse, like the type of unreal parties you see in the movies. In hindsight, every one of those could have turned into the Ghost Ship fire, rest in peace, but it sure was a great thing to experience before it all ended. I experienced the very last moments when artists/musicians could live comfortably in the San Francisco Bay Area on nothing more than a part-time gig or a side hustle by way of those artist DIY communities.”
16.
“Music was good, the internet just started, almost no cell phones, and we didn’t all die at the end of 1999.”
17.
“Seriously unserious. Reality TV (Laguna Beach, The Bachelor, Jackass, Girls Next Door, Pimp My Ride, etc.) was just getting started. Influencer culture didn’t exist. Most people didn’t have strong political opinions other than on the most basic topics. Low-rise jeans were everywhere; it was hard to find jeans that didn’t constantly threaten to expose your ‘whale tail.’ We all listened to the radio and could discuss morning show DJs and which station had the best late-night song dedication show. MTV had a huge influence on music, fashion, and celebrity culture, and was paramount in shaping reality TV into what it is today (side note: RIP TRL, best countdown show in history). Obsession with celebrities exploded, and then came bullying and body-shaming.”
18.
“Everyone got lost all the time. Mapquest let you print maps, but people still got lost.”
19.
“In the 2000s, it was genuinely offensive to take someone’s picture without their permission, and you were risking getting into a physical fight.”
20.
“My first rent was $280 per month. I remember when it went up to $310, and I was so mad, lol”
21.
And lastly, “I turned 20 in 2009, so I’m probably not exactly the demographic you’re looking for. Still, I want to say one thing: Having had a childhood without internet and an adolescence without smartphones is one of the greatest gifts my generation, and the generations before us, ever received. Don’t get me wrong. I built my career on these technologies, and I use them every day now, probably far too much. I love them. At the same time, I can hardly imagine anything more depressing than growing up with parents who are constantly staring at their smartphones, with social media everywhere, and with smartphones being ubiquitous in schools.”
Did you grow up in the 2000s? What are some of your best memories, and were there any downsides, if any? Let us know in the comments! Or, if you prefer to remain anonymous, you can fill out the form below.
Note: Responses have been edited for length/clarity.
