Drugs.
I used to buy these little pocket-sized Sudoku books that I’d keep with me, usually play a puzzle or two while commuting to work or something.
No one has mentioned magazines or newspapers yet.
Threw rocks at stuff.
Trains, signs, each other,
Peed off of tall stuff.
Ride bikes.
Try to build ramps for the bikes.
Crash the bikes.
Ask your mom for a popsicle cause you have a fat lip now from hitting your face on your bikes handlebars.
Generally dumb things.
Freak out cause the kid s few doors down got his hands on some dry ice.
But the dry ice in bottles.
Run away when that nosy old lady calls the police cause people are “making bombs”
I did not do half of that, but I did more than half of what you did not list, with glee.
Suspiciously specific
Listened to music. Hung out in a diner and had coffee & fries all night with friends. Hung out at the mall. Got drunk. Had sex.
You ever stand behind a couple of geezers in line somewhere and they start talking about some random stuff? They didn’t know each other. They were just bored.
Played outside with friends almost every day.
Read books. Make stuff from said books Show friends the stuff you made from books. Drink beer and watch sports and other hobbys.
Had conversations. Went outside. Did stuff. Had real hobbies. People were much less lame. Smartphones aren’t even smart. They just have The internet. If they were smart, people wouldn’t spend the entire time scrolling through dumb shit
And there are articles from newspapers decades ago complaining about people reading and not socializing. Some people just don’t want to socialize as much as others. It doesn’t make them wrong, it makes them different.
Usually I use my phone when I an sitting around waiting for something. In those times, before I had a phone, I would always think about things I could and should make, and the techniques and mechanics of how they would work.
Read books. Cereal boxes. Ride bikes and fuck around.
I read a bunch, and played a lot of video games. I am on the older-end of Gen z, so smartphones only became a thing when I was older, so most of my childhood was spent on computers running a mix of windows 98, Windows XP, and eventually Linux, where I got most of my books and almost all my games.
I used to pull a random Encyclopedia off the shelf and find something interesting to read about.
Yep, did that
Playing outside a lot more, which was really fun. Hit the beach or swim docks and jumped off the highdives. Went camping. Bike adventures, etc. Lots more physical toys like nerf, Lego, beyblades, etc. CD music players, cassette music players, or MP3 music players, depending on the era.
People on the metro buses would read the paper to pass the time, listen to music, or read a book.
Back then, you could rent videos or games at a rental place, and there were many more physical hobby shops (there still are, but for live stuff, like aquariums now). Malls were a lot more alive and were true third places. Though even back then, I found people gorging themselves in a materialistic frenzy rather…distasteful. People still do it, just via Amazon and fast fashion online.
The biggest things I remember were how chill people were, the ubiquity of newspapers, smoking and cigarette holders outside, a lack of really any graffiti, and people being incredibly chill and a bit more open. There were also like, zero bike lanes or rail, so everyone drove everywhere.
Read books, read newspapers, chat on the land-line phone for hours.
Before the cliché of everyone being with their faces in smartphones there were clichés about husbands who do nothing but read newspapers all day, or teenage daughters that massively inflate the phone bill because she’s talking with her friends for hours, or children with square eyes watching brain rotting cartoons all day.
