What Did People Do Before Smartphones?

No one can remember? I'll take the bait-

Star Wars Generation kid here, grew up in rural Minnesota with a rotary phone and eventually a black and white television with two channels. Wanted to watch a moving picture? We rented the VHS tape AND the player (this is how I first saw Episode IV, though my mom says she brought me to see The Return of the Jefi in the theater). Like another commenter(s), I usually had a book and/or notebook/sketchbook with me, and I spent a lot of time daydreaming.

Edit to add: So much physical activity: roaming the woods and railroad tracks; bicycling and walking the roads; climbing trees; sportsball; gardening; digging holes (yes, this was fun, including digging outhouse pits); and fighting with wooden sticks. In the winter? Building with snow, sledding, skiing, tromping around- all the richer for my imagination and aforementioned daydreams.

Woodworking, metalworking, getting to know neighbors, playing boardgames and roleplaying games and tabletop miniatures, casting and painting miniatures, playing with LEGO; ... is this Atlantic article a troll post by someone with no imagination? Is it like that article awhile back advocating for abolishing public libraries and just using Amazon?

I like this pocket computer but I will be okay without it.

> We did nothing, and it was horrible.

Actually having time to think about things and to observe and experience your environment isn't so bad. Books, magazines, newspapers, comics and graphic novels, paper notebooks/journals, and sketchbooks aren't bad either.

On the video game side, portable game systems have existed for decades. Game Boy and Game Boy Advance had some of the same great game series (Zelda, Mario, Pokémon, Final Fantasy) that we enjoy today on Switch. The games weren't cheap, but they also weren't tainted by obnoxious "f2p" monetization schemes. Video games also used to come with printed manuals that were fun to read. On Sega's Game Gear you could even watch TV.

Portable music players have also been a thing for decades, from transistor radios to the cassette walkman to boom boxes to the minidisc to the iPod. Personally I find boom boxes to be less annoying than tiktok/youtube/etc. at max volume on a phone.

Pre-iPhone I had single-purpose devices like a terrific compact digital camera (with optical zoom) and an iPod. And feature phones often had texting, simple games, and even basic cameras.

If all of those media and technology options fail(ed), you could even consider striking up a conversation with someone.

You mean before you have a device that is constantly connected to the Internet?

I go to bookstore, library and spend my time reading long, detail, well prepped and thought out content. Whether that is a Novel, Book or some Manual for certain thing to actually understand how things work.

A GameBoy Black and White. Even Gaming was fun back in the old days. Now most Smartphone Games are loot box Gambling alike. And the two Company have no shame in helping them simply because they collect 30% of it.

> NO one can remember....

I automatically assumes the author is under 30 where most of his life and memories were in smartphone era.

In 1999, I went with my mother to tour universities I was considering attending on the East Coast. We had both lived in a small town in Montana for 15 years at that point. Without any GPS to assist us, we used maps to drive and navigate through Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington DC. Nowadays, I barely even know the names of the streets near where I live.

Long form reading, doodling, observing and commiting things to memory for me. I use to listen to more music too.

> But I can’t remember how I’d spent my idle time in the years before, on the train or at lunch or at any other time of day when we found ourselves between things. Literally, what did we do? I cannot recall. [...] A spine-chilling revelation: We couldn’t remember what we did, because there was nothing to remember having done.

WTF? This sounds like a problem with the author. I absolutely remember always having this amazing device called A BOOK. Ideally small enough for a large pocket, but for larger ones I put it in a backpack or bag.

Sometimes it was a newspaper, writing in a pen-and-paper journal, or the new battery-hungry Nintendo Gameboy, etc.

This one irritated me.

There was (and is) so much to do. People used to talk to each other and interact with other and with their environment more though. It's vastly harder now.

Disconnecting from time to time is refreshing.

People were nicer to each other. The incentive to seek approval from thousands of strangers one would never meet simply didn't exist. What real people thought of you was more important.

Nintendo. Lots of Nintendo. Also Mtv.