It too was 90's kid for the most part. I remember life being way more simple then. Technology was WAY less integrated into everyone's lives. Most people's idea of high-tech then, was having huge DLP television, or a dual deck VCR. Stuff like GPS, cell phones, video calls, VR, etc, seemed more like a James Bond fantasy than reality back then. PCs were becoming somewhat common among the upper middle class, and some had access to the Internet, but it seemed more like a gimmick than a necessity at the time. It was really fragmented, everything was a ".com", connecting to and surfing was pain because of slow modems and the fact that it tied up your phone lines. It seemed at that time that not everybody had everything they could ever dream of having in materiel possessions then, as where today people own pretty much anything they want. I haven't quite figured out how that has came to be the case.
To me, the entire culture of the west seemed to be in a period of relative peace in the 90s. People were more chilled out and rarely political. They hung out, and had more face to face or voice conversation. They were less socially awkward, and more outgoing. They lived more in the moment, and weren't distracted by a bunch of other things competing for their attention at all times. You didn't have the world's information at your fingertips and you were okay with that, because that stuff just didn't matter as much. You were busy focusing on whatever was actually happening in front of you. You had to maintain friendships and relationships through regular physical interaction for them to count as legitimate. People had "time" back then. Everybody's so busy now and a lot of friendships are reduced to interactions on social media.
In the 90s kids often played with one another outside, and did things for fun that had little or nothing to do with technology. Although video games were quite popular among the kids who's parents could afford it, they were not a massive pop culture theme like today. The gaming industry was not as big, and was not perceived as being one that catered to an adult audience. Nintendo and SEGA were thought of more like children's toys, than a hobby let alone a lifestyle or career. There was a perception that once you transitioned into adulthood, you were getting "too old" for video games and you needed to grow up. I witnessed a few people reach that point and stop playing games ever since. Where as now, it's mostly adults who play video games, and most games are for adults.
Of course, retail and the culture of shopping was way different. There were tons more brick and mortar stores then. Indoor shopping malls were very popular, and were brimming with different specialty shops and outlets. It was considered a "cool" hangout for teens then. Where as now, malls are dead, most stores are empty, very few shoppers, and no one cares anymore. One of the indoor malls in my town was actually demolished because it became completely empty and started to decay on the inside. Back then, there were a bunch of retail stores not called Walmart that were pretty much like Walmart. Ames, Hills, Murphy's Mart, Magic Mart, Montgomery Ward, Heck's, Kmart. These were all popular shopping destinations at one time, and now they are all gone. There were multiple toy stores in my town when I was a kid, and now there are no major toy stores left anywhere. I don't really think that kids like toys as much. People are okay with buying more and more things online now and waiting for them to come in the mail, rather than going out.
I have a lot of early memories of my brother and myself playing Nintendo and Super Nintendo in his room, and of friends and cousin's coming over to play as well. I remember watching a lot of cartoons as a kid. My parents had this small child-size table and chair my brother and I would sit at and watch Nickelodeon while we ate dinner. Nick was the only cartoon channel we got then, as basic cable was limited in our area to about 43 channels I wanna say. Years later they expanded the channel line-up and stuff like Cartoon Network was brand new to us. Today, I kinda feel like people don't watch live TV anymore? Everyone likes Netflix, for reasons I can't understand. My childhood best friend lived about 2 or 3 blocks from me, and I used to ride my bike to his house a lot. He now lives about 5 hours away and we almost never talk anymore. It seemed like we all enjoyed bike riding a lot back then, but I rarely see kids doing this now. We would ride around the neighborhood for hours. Suspicious looking vans would tail us out of nowhere, we'd bail, then they'd just turn around a leave. Does anyone else remember such a thing? There used to be a lot of creepers back then. I'm positive some of them were up to no good when they spotted us.
10 years ago I was a young adult becoming obsessed with video game collecting, playing in a jam band with a good friend of mine, and trying to figure out what my future would consist of. 20 years ago, I was an awkward middle school kid, taking up an interest in drumming, and spending a lot of time hanging with my childhood best friend. Roughly 30 years ago, I was a young child who liked to play Super Nintendo with my brother, I was afraid of ghosts in my room, and I liked bologna sandwiches.
I actually still retain a lot of my early memories, I could go on and on...
