These days most people spend at least a couple of hours each and every day online. Whether it’s keeping up with social media, following the latest news, watching hilarious videos or simply just browsing to pass the time, the internet is a huge part of life for many of us. What did we do before we had the internet to occupy ourselves with? Here are 9 things we used to do before the internet took over our lives.
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Buy magazines
Though magazines are still popular, the internet has kind of replaced them in a way. We used to buy magazines religiously but now most of what you get from magazines is online and you don’t have to wait a week or two to get the newest bits of information or gossip.
2. Spent time outdoors
Thanks to the internet, it’s so easy to just pass the time indoors. There was a time before the internet when if we were stuck with time to pass, we would go outdoors to try and relieve our boredom. Thanks to the internet, you don’t see as many kids playing outdoors as you would have done several decades ago.
3. Remember things
If you’ve forgotten something, just Google it. If you’re not sure when a friend’s birthday is, don’t worry because your social media will remind you. Before the internet, we couldn’t access information as easily so we had to rely on ourselves to remember important bits of information.
4. Have friends we had actually met
Social media enables us to build connections and relationships with all sorts of people. Many of us have ‘friends’ we talk to but have never actually met in person. Back before the internet existed, all of our friends were people we had met and saw regularly. These days people have hundreds of ‘friends’ they will probably never meet.
5. Watch TV as a family
These days thanks to streaming and on-demand TV, you can watch whatever you want whenever you want. It’s common for families to watch different TV programmes in different rooms, though before the internet came along families would come together to enjoy the same programme.
6. Get the news from the papers or TV
The news is constantly being updated and thanks to the internet, you can check news sites many times a day and find new updates every time. If something important happens, shortly afterwards it will be online. When we got our news from the papers or TV, we would only get news updates a couple of times a day and would often hear about major events the day after they’d happened.
7. Correspond by post
We have email accounts and check our emails many, many times a day. Before the internet, we did a lot of our correspondence by post and would have to wait patiently for the postman to deliver letters.
8. Go to the shops for everything
Millions of us do most of our shopping online because it’s more convenient, doesn’t involve leaving the house and it’s often a lot cheaper. Before the internet, if you wanted to do some shopping, you had to go out to the shops and buy the stuff yourself.
9. Use paper maps
No internet, no GPS. Most of us rely on GPS to get around today and wouldn’t know what to do if we had to use a paper map to get from A to B.
