Sep 3, 2019
Image: RCA "Indian Head" TV test pattern TV stations used in the 1950's and 1960's after midnight - oldphotoarchive.com
For better or worse, Millennials have become the poster children for generational change, which makes sense when one thinks about how much the world changed between the birth of the oldest Millennials in roughly 1981 and youngest in roughly 1996 (researchers differ on the exact parameters, though all agree on early 80s to late 90s as the overall time span) according to definition.org. It also means there are a wealth of cultural experiences, products, and things Millennials have never heard of. Now a couple of caveats: First off, we’re sure there are Millennials who have heard of these things. We’re speaking in overall generalities. Secondly, some things may be familiar to older Millennials, but not younger ones. In cases like that, we’ve differentiated what age millennial we’re referring to.
1. Floppy Disks - Floppy disks occupy an interesting middle ground for Millennials. Older members of the generation probably used 3 1/2-inch floppies during their youth, though they would still be unfamiliar with the older 8-inch and 5 1/4-inch models that were used through the 1970s and 1980s.
Younger Millennials likely have little to no firsthand experience with floppies at all, and if they do it’s more as an antiquated curiosity than an actual usable piece of technology.
2. Automats - Automats, small restaurants that served simple hot food and drinks out of coin-operated vending machines, had existed in one form or another since the late 19th century. They achieved their peak popularity in the United States in the mid-20th century. However, the rise of fast food restaurants, combined with increasing inflation making paying for food with coins unfeasible (this is before vending machines could accept paper currency), decimated automats throughout the 1960s and 70s.
While automats still exist in some countries, many American Millennials have likely never seen, or even heard of one.
3. Milk Chutes - Prior to improved refrigeration and packaging techniques being introduced in the late 1960s, most homes had milk chutes built into them. Milkmen would collect used milk bottles from the chute, and in turn drop off freshly full bottles in their place.
Suffice to say, most Millennials likely aren’t familiar with milk chutes, or milkmen at all if we’re being honest.
4. Developing Film - When the aforementioned third season of Stranger Things was released, many younger viewers (Millennials on the younger end of the generation’s spectrum as well as members of Generation Z) were seemingly confused by Jonathan Byers’ (Charlie Heaton) use of a darkroom to develop film in throughout the series. In a post on movies.stackexchange.com, which has since gone viral, a user asked:
“In Stranger Things, we frequently see Jonathan go inside this [room] to ‘refine’ his photos or something. I don’t quite understand what happens here. He puts the photo in water, and somehow this makes it more clear? An example is in the first season when he refines Barbara’s photo and sees a little bit of the Demogorgon. Is this an old film technique, and if so, what is it called?”
It’s not hard to imagine that many younger Millennials and Gen Z members would be unfamiliar with the finer points of developing film, as home photography had mostly converted to digital by the time they came of age.
5. Rotary Phones (Older Millennials) - For most of the twentieth century, phones were controlled by a rotary system, featuring a “circular layout so that a finger wheel may be rotated with one finger from the position of each digit to a fixed stop position, implemented by the finger stop, which is a mechanical barrier to prevent further rotation.”
Touchtone keypads in the layout we’re familiar with today were first introduced in the early 1960s, and became commonplace in the early 1980s, meaning most Millennials (older and younger) had lived their lives with them, likely only seeing rotary phones in history books or perhaps at a grandparents’ home.
6. . Corded Phones (Younger Millennials) - While older Millennials didn’t grow up with rotary phones, they are likely familiar with corded phones, something that younger Millennials can’t say as cordless phones became the norm for home phones by the mid-1990s.
7. Car Window Crank - By the mid-00s, nearly all new vehicles shipped did so with push-button power windows. Meaning that, unless they bought a very old used car, most Millennials would have power windows from their very first car, and never have to use a crank to raise and lower their windows.
8. Jell-O Salads - In the mid-20th century, Jell-O salad recipes were all the rage in the United States due to their easy-to-make nature, and simple list of ingredients. However, as food preservation and packaging improved, Jell-O salads fell out of favor.
While they’re still somewhat common, especially in certain areas in the U.S., Jell-O salads likely aren’t at the top of many Millennials favorite food lists.
9. A World Without the Internet (Older Millennials) - In their very early years older Millennials didn’t have the internet period. However, by the time they reached school age, the internet was a tool used occasionally in school and at home, likely on a family desktop that used a dial-up connection.
While older Millennials certainly didn’t grow up with the ever-present internet their younger counterparts did, it was a part of their lives from early childhood.
10. Dial Up Internet (Younger Millennials) - As we said for older Millennials, a world without the constant presence of the internet is a real – if ever fading – memory. They can still remember a time when the world wide web didn’t dominate entertainment, education, and the economy, and was rather a bit of a toy, connected to through shaky dial-up connections.
Younger Millennials on the other hand have been surrounded by high speed internet pretty much since birth, and would probably turn to Google to ask what life was like before the internet.
11. The End of the Broadcasting Day - Before 24-hour cable networks changed the industry, television channels used to end their broadcasting day at a predesignated time, letting out a blast of patriotic music, usually the National Anthem, images of local landmarks, and a thank you to viewers before signing off for the night. The channel would then be occupied by a multi-colored or black screen until they began broadcasting again in the morning.
To Millennials used to the idea of 24-hour television – not to mention the aforementioned constant internet connection younger Millennials have grown up with – the idea of a network’s broadcasting day ending sounds as strange as saying running water would be turned off at a certain time every night.
12. Text-Based Video Games - Text-based video games were all the rage in the late 1970s and 1980s. Players would literally type out scenarios in response to text-based prompts, and imagine their way through an adventure. However, text-based games began to fall out of favor as home consoles from Nintendo and Sega become more and more graphically advanced.
While there is still a niche audience for text-based gaming online, it’s likely that a vast majority of millennial games have never heard of text-based games, and those who have likely see them as relics of a bygone era.
13. Duck and Cover Drills - Throughout the Cold War, American school children went through “duck and cover drills” in case the Soviet Union dropped a nuclear bomb on the United States, because obviously wooden desks would shield them from the radiation.
By the time most Millennials were in school though, the Berlin Wall had fallen, the Soviet Union had collapsed, and American children were totally safe in school… Right?
14. The Sears Catalog - For well over 100 years, the mail order catalogs sent out by Sears, Roebuck and Company was a staple of American life. At it’s peak, the catalog sold just about everything a person needed to live, including prefabricated home kits. In 1925, the catalog was spun off into a chain of retail stores.
While Millennials are likely familiar with Sears stores, the catalog that spawned the retail empire has long been replaced with other department stores and, for younger Millennials especially, online retailers like Amazon.
15. LaserDiscs - LaserDiscs were the first commercial optical disc storage medium – in layman’s terms, the vinyl record-sized discs were the non-tape-based way consumers could purchase movies for home viewing – and were sold in the 1980s and 90s. While not hugely commercially successful, the format was popular among film fans for introducing concepts like commentary tracks and special features that would later flourish on DVD.
Speaking of DVDs, it was the launch of that format in 1997 that put the final nail in the LaserDisc coffin. These days most younger Millennials have likely never even heard of the format (honestly, most of them have probably barely heard of VHS tapes).
6. New Coke - New Coke, a reformulated sweeter version of Coca-Cola, was introduced in 1985 and flopped hard, to the point where it’s become the prime example of a failed marketing campaign in many circles. For Millennials, the only way they would have heard of New Coke is in a college marketing class.
Well, until New Coke appeared in the third season of Netflix’s wildly popular series Stranger Things.
17. Napster (Younger Millennials) - While older members of the millennial generation are likely very familiar with Napster – the music sharing service that made music piracy mainstream and completely upended the music industry in the late 1990s – the younger members of the generation are probably more familiar with legal music purchasing sites like iTunes or streaming services like Spotify than the are the early, Wild West-style piracy sites of old.
18. Brownie Camera - In 1900, the Eastman Kodak company introduced the relatively cheap Brownie model of camera. For the next eight decades, the camera served as an introductory tool for many aspiring photographers, and documented countless holidays, family vacations, and everyday lives. The final Brownie model was discontinued in 1986, just when the oldest Millennials were approaching an age when they could use it.
These days, it’s unlikely that a millennial has any idea what a Brownie was. In fact, younger Millennials probably don’t even know what Kodak was.
19. Pay Phones and Phone Booths - In a world before cell phones (let alone smart phones) phone booths and pay phones dotted public areas. However, through the late 1990s and 2000s they disappeared as cellular phones became more common.
Older Millennials probably remember them, though likely didn’t use them much after they hit their teenage years, while younger Millennials likely only know them from old Superman cartoons.
20. Green Stamps - While most Millennials likely have no idea what green stamps are, they should.
Launched by the Sperry and Hutchinson company, the stamps were one of the first retail loyalty programs where “shoppers at grocery stores, gas stations, and department stores would earn the small S&H stamps of various denominations with each purchase. They could then collect the stamps in special booklets and redeem them for rewards in S&H stores or catalogs,” making them a precursor to today’s store credit card and specialty reward programs.
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