For those who were teenagers during the 60s, 70s, or 80s: explain life as a teenager back then?

Question

specify which year, how old you were, your gender, if it was in US, eur, or asia? thx
just curious 2 know how people lived then. im 2 young 2 know

Answer 1

Growing up in the 60's was both good and scarey. The music seemed like it was changing every day. One day Elvis was popular then came the British invasion Beatles etc. Then came the hippie movement with even more musical changes. The Cuban missile crisis was scarey as hell. You didn'y know if a nuclear war was going to break out one minute from the next. Then came the killing of Kennedy. And then the images of the Vietnam war started flashing on the tv screens.

Answer 2

As a teenager in the 80's, life was as miserable for me as it seems for some of today's kids.

There was some fun to be had, the music was cool and I had my ZX Spectrum to play games on. I remember watching the film "War Games" he connected to other computers over his phone. I was impressed and yearned to be able to do that. I think a lot of us nerdy ones did.

Actually I miss the 70's far more. It seems like a far distant time, much more innocent and comfortable. The 80's was a decade of decay.

I'm in the UK.

Answer 3

I graduated in 1975, great time to be a teen, we had more racial harmony then, great rock music from the late 60's into the 70's, mini skirts on girls, good pot and no one really hassled us about smoking it. We had 50's parties where we dressed up like Happy Days, it was the end of the Viet Nam war and life was good.

Answer 4

this will be fun!
1st. off u can not use me as a normal person.
born 1952.
so........since I started kiNDergarten one year late, that put me one yr. older.
then I flunked 2nd. grade on purpose.
my teenage years were filled with reading medical books , history , Sci-Fi, till I was early 20's.plus I strated doing drugs the same time I broke my virginity

Answer 5

I'm a guy from N/E us, teen in 80's- and i feel for you! ( teens today) No one had cell phones, pc's, mabee 1 person on the block had "Arari". We rode bikes, walked, and gas was $1. Today, you kids have everything complicated; and perhaps missing out on the simple things- like hanging out on a neighbor's porch!! I could go on, but.......

Answer 6

80's
It was the same as now except no internet and no cell phones.

We skated, went to the beach, went to amusement parks, went to parties....but mostly we just hung out at the house of whoever's parents weren't home.

I'm in Cali

Answer 7

i was a teen in the 80s and life was so much easier and the music was great....it was simple and with no phones and laptops we had fun doing other things..i dont think there was as much pressure in the 80s and im glad i was a teen then..

Answer 8

I like young girls in jeans. It creates them look more home town like and it generally does not look like they try too much but if you are looking to get this men attention, this might not be what you want

Answer 9

I do enjoy putting on long skirts occasionally. They are simply actually more comfortable than Jeans and also not as hot to wear.

Answer 10

Hmmmm... I guess based on my nic, I must have been born in 1952...male... the U.S. (lived in France for 3 years in a French neighborhood with no TV and no radio, so I missed out on the entire 1950s thing - hey it is great living without TV or radio if that is your preference, or, in my family's case "no decision" as no American TV or radio was available). I guess Americans have always been the "Ugly Americans" and hated even by the teens who were afraid of a small American kid like me for 3 years from 1957 to 1960 which was a strange time in France as there was France and the Algerian war and de Gaulle coming to power, and I mean he was a million times bigger than life to the French as he had led the "Free French" from England when the Nazis occuppied France during World War II). My 2 best friends were my older brothers 1 1/2 years and 3 years older than me as only my much younger little brother learned how to speak French with all of his playmates as he was of the age where foreign languages can be easily learned and the French kids did not dare be seen with an American kid.

I became a teen while living on the edge of San Antonio's barrio as a military dependent in off base housing about two blocks from where 6 year old and brand new to the U.S. from Cuba in Gloria Estefan (never knew anything about her or who she was back then) was going to first grade just a couple of blocks from where I lived where she was learning English too. So, Gloria Estefan's first year in the U.S. was not in Miami, but in San Antonio. I went to junior high school deeper in the "barrio" of San Antonio's west side with my few fellow Air Force dependents at Junior High School which would have been almost 100% Hispanic if it was not for us white, black, Hispanic, and Oriental kids getting off those dark blue Air Force buses at that school. I really didn't notice anything having already spent 3 years in a country where I didn't speak the language and the kids hated me. Actually in my Junior High School days not a single Hispanic kid was mean to me as kids at that age no matter where usually are not too thoughtful. Spanish was the first language in the hallways between class, although it was against school district policy but we had a cool principal who was more worried about driving around the neighborhood and finding kids who were skipping class as he put the emphasis on education rather than on school district rules, which again didn't bother me having already lived three years where I only understood and spoke a little French. Then, my family left San Antonio by car for my father's next assignment in Minnesota the same day, June 5, 1968, that Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestenian raised as a Christian and then dabbled in the occult world as an adult, shot and killed Bobby Kennedy, "RFK", who was so far ahead in the polls in 1968 that Bobby Kennedy was a lock to be the next president of the United States which ended up being Richard Nixon barely defeating Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey for the 1968 presidential election. Apparently the reason that Sirhan Sirhan, born of Jordanian parents in Jerusalem, Palestine and raised in New York and California, was that Bobby Kennedy supported Israel's 1967 "Six Day War" which started exactly 1 year before the shooting on June 5, 1967 where the shooting occurred in L.A., California. So, the three oldest Kennedy boys all died: Jr. (as a pilot in Europe in World War II), JKF being assassinated as President, and RFK being assassinated as the almost next guaranteed president. Sirhan Sirhan had written many times in his personal papers that "RFK must die" after the 1967 war in the Middle East. The Democrat Party had always been a big supporter of Israel. In fact the 1960s northeastern U.S. Senator typically was a Jewish Democrat whose #1 priority was Israel (not the U.S.) just as the lone Senator like that left in 2006 in U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT), and former Democrat, put Israel first and the U.S. second (while non-Democrats make it sound like Lieberman is a Bush supporter and a closet Republican as far from it Lieberman other than the "war on terrorism" (that is Israel's defense) is the #1 issue with Senator Lieberman just as all of the 1960s and 1970s northeastern U.S. Senators put the emphasis on Israel's existence in the Middle East. The Democrat Party in the 21st century abandoned both Israel and the Democrat's own 2004 VP nominee in Joe Lieberman as in the 2006 primaries incumbent Democrat U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman was defeated in the Democrat primary to run for the U.S. Senate as a Democrat in 2006 as only a handful of people in both major parties run their parties including the primaries. Joe Lieberman won as an independent with his #1 issue being the "war on terrorism" and won the Connecticut U.S. Senatorial race in a landslide. So, U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman is the last senator left defending Israel in Congress when the Democrat Party used to be a major defender of Israel's freedom, but no more. Don't worry for Israel as most American politicians no longer are vocal supporters of Israel as in the past these politicians were primarily Democrats of Jewish descent in the northeast, as Israel has had three submarines plus two more submarines purchased from Germany which are obviously armed with nuclear cruise missiles as these Israel submarines are parked underneath the surface of the water off of Iran. So, the U.S. and particularly the traditional support of Israel having been abandoned Israel has been supplanted by a fleet of armed nuke Israel submarines sitting off the coast of Iran. Iran, which has had nukes since as early as the 1990s bought from "central Asian countries" will not nuke Israel if Israel will in turn nuke the major cities of Iran off the map. So, the Middle East and Israel will always be a problem of some sort to the U.S. as long as the U.S. provides the slightest support for the country of Israel which I personally support Israel's right for independence. Okay, so RFK was knocked off and murdered in 1968 about his support for Israel just as the first 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City occurred because of U.S.'s support for Israel just as the 9-11 attacks on the U.S. by terrorists in 2001, including the second attack on the World Trade Center in New York City in 8 years from 1993 to 2001 by radical Islamic terrorists occurred because of the U.S.'s support for Israel's continued independence. Okay, I will skip all of the Civil Defense Fall Out shelters in the U.S. and the regular practice sirens warning of an impending nuclear attack from the Soviet Union which continued well into my 20s.

What a wonderful world we live in full of peace and love.

Back on topic, I attended high school in Edina, Minnesota where 2,500 students had no minority students only because few minorities lived in that suburb as at the time few minorities lived in Minnesota and did not live in the suberbs. Finally, my senior year a student from junior high school who was black, the son of a medical doctor, attended my high school where as a first year high school student this black student was the most popular member in his class. It is kind of ironic that I went from going to Junior High School in a 100% Hispanic "barrio" area to going to a Senior High School which was 100% white. As previously mentioned that move to Minnesota in 1968 went from behind the times Texas to the "drug revolution" era and "sexual revolution" era Minnesota high school. And, no I never saw any drugs much less knew anyone involved in the sexual revolution. I guess it depends upon who you hang with. I did hear a lot of students talking about partying big time when their parents were out of town for the weekend. Such a contrast in going to school in the "poorest area" of the "barrio" in San Antonio which was almost 100% Hispanic to going to the richest suburb of the Twin Cities in Minnesota (we lived on the poor side and wrong side of the tracks though) where the school was 100% Caucasian until one minority student started at my high school my senior year. I went to high school in Minnesota in the late 1960s with a bunch of rich kids, and not being a rich kid, I did not fit in which is strange as because I never felt out of place attending an almost 100% very poor Junior High School.

As far as music, I really could not stand the late 1960s music except for the Mo Town music as everything was bubble gum Pop 40 music pretty much. AOR, Album Oriented Rock, which was the best era of music from the very late 1960s into the 1970s was, in my opinion, the best music as there were no restrictions from the music industry or radio industry on how long a song could be, so a song could be 2 minutes long or 15 to 20 minutes long for a single song. Music rocked back in that era of my teen years while my pre-teen years was pretty much all bubble gum Pop 40 music with the rare occasion of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, Jefferson Airplane, the Doors, Janis Joplin, Jimmy Hendrix who all started to gradually creep into music between about 1963 to 1967 before the big "non-commercial" Album Oriented Rock era of the very late 1960s and early 1970s of my late teen years.

I guess from my earliest memories, there were always, and I don't know if you call fear, but the knowledge, of possible nuclear Intercontintental Ballistic Missile war between the Soviet Union and the U.S. It was just something that you got used to, and I didn't think about it as I figured if you thought too much about an alost zero percent chance of a nuclear war and worried about it, then, that was needless and wasted worry.

During my mid to late teen years, "idealism" and "non-commercialism" dominated my peers and dominated music. Generally, everyone wanted to have the best world possible. And, generally no one was worried about becoming a millionaire particularly in the entertainment industry.

Now as far as TV, radio, music, etc... the "industry" is only interested in money, and unlike my mid to late teen years and very early 20s, money was not an issue when it came to music which I believe led to the best creativity for music.

In fact my current favorite musical artist is the last dinosaur from that era as far as "idealism" and "non-commercialism" in Neil Young who was the last member to join the group Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. Funny as Crosby, Stills, and Nash for decades after the end of the "Idealistic and non-commercial era" of my mid to late teen years, it is Neil Young who is the only one who remains idealistic and non-commercial, maybe reflecting some of my values too, but out of the four, without trying, Neil Young is by far the most financially successful music artist as he never got caught up in the "money trap" to this day. What do they call Neil Young, the "godfather of grunge" or the "grandfather of grunge" which is strange in that Neil Young has never done grunge music as he has only helped promote the new wave bands of each wave in music. Neil Young remained so anti-commercial that he had a song banned from MTV for being "anti-commercial theme oriented" as everything for the last 20 years or so has been all about the money.

It was strange moving from the blue jean wearing fellow peers in Texas where dress codes and short hair codes were strictly enforced in school to Minnesota as a teen of 15 years old where the high school students could do anything almost within reason that they wanted from having high school walkouts, high school demonstrations (like about the first day of high school in Minnesota their was a massive high school walkout and demonstration to allow the high school students to wear blue jeans which I thought was kind of weird as the girls could wear the shortest mini-skirts (I don't understand it that for the girls that the mini-skirt boom was at its height when the "maxi-coat" boom hit (maxi-coats were winter coats that went all the way to just above floor level)) and guys could wear their hair as long or any way they wanted to wear it). Well, the high school students at my Minnesota high school in the late 1960s and early 1970s were only interested in partying and having a good time.

I worked my last year in high school as a "bagger" (of groceries) at a grocery store; however, as this was up in Minnesota where it would snow in the winter, the cars would drive around to the front of the store to pick up their groceries as a shopping cart couldn't be pushed through the snow in the parking lot. I mainly worked outside putting groceries in the cars as I enjoyed the pleasant spring and fall weather of Minnesota where summer only lasts about 6 weeks, but it does get cold in the winter as on January 1, 1970 when I was 17, the temperature in the Twin Cities was a -35 degrees with a wind chill factor of a -70 degrees. That was the first time I ever heard of the term "wind chill". The next day, I worked outside at the grocery store in only -31 degree weather as it had warmed up four degrees from the day before.

It was a rich suburb with many of the local star athletes living there including retired NBA Minneapolis Lakers star George Mikan, singer John Denver (before he moved to Aspen, Colorado), etc... and less than a mile away from my family's house lived a young David Bloom who I never knew who was NBC news weekend anchor when he died of a blood clot in his leg back in 2003 in Iraq covering the troops there.

I guess for me unlike most Americans, I led a very unusual life moving from state to state and on another occasion to another country, so for my age, I was much more well aware of the real world up close and personal.

War always seems to be around. The strangest thing about war is that as a very small kid, I knew more, actually the only ones I have ever known, severely wounded in France's war in Algeria as a neighbor's fiance and our maid's son both suffered gun shot wounds to their head in that war.

In 1950, long before I was born, President Truman sent the first American military as advisors to South Vietnam, but these advisors were never in the news that I was aware until I was about 10 years old in the early 1960s with each year in South Vietnam getting a little hotter for American advisors through the Presidencies of JFK and LBJ (Lyndon Johnson whose wife Lady Bird Johnson just died Wednesday), and, it was LBJ who sent all of the massive amounts of American troops to South Vietnam starting around 1964 or 1965 where ultimately 57,000 Americans died. My father spent 1967 in Thailand flying a cargo aircraft around Thailand for a year in support of that war, I guess when I was 14 and 15. My father told me that he would be safe, so I never worried about him as I was a young naive and gullible teen who would believe, sometimes, anything that my father told me; although, later on I found out that my father would fly his unarmed cargo plane into South Vietnam to various American Air Force bases in South Vietnam. Starting around 1968 after the tremendous American victory in the annual January "Tet offensive" which was reported by the media as a major defeat primarily which was when the anti-war demonstrations started to occur on a regular basis as the military draft would draft 18 and 19 year olds into the Army and Marine Corps to be sent involuntarily to fight in South Vietnam. The guys didn't like it and their girl friends didn't like it. Today is a different atmosphere as although there is a war going on, all members of the military join voluntarily unlike my teen years when we were all subject to being drafted and being sent to Vietnam. Fortunately for me I did not become draft age until 1971 and by 1972, President Nixon lived up to his 1968 presidential campaign promise of withdrawing the U.S. from Vietnam. Although, the U.S. started to withdraw from Vietnam in 1969 and were totally out of Vietnam by 1972, anti-war demonstrations continued until by about 1975.

The U.S. withdrawal of the military in 1972 along with the U.S. Congress pulling monetary support from the South Vietnam government in 1974/75 resulted in the communist Vietnamese government killing millions of people in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.

To me no war is moral, but should the bloodbath that occurred in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos where millions were killed and millions were imprisoned be justifiable to the world community? I think it was the movie, "The Killing Fields" which shows part of the picture of how millions were killed in Cambodia by communists after the fall of the South Vietnamese government in 1975.

By 1975, I was in my very early 20s and all of the younger people had never been exposed to the war in South Vietnam, and, by 1975, the younger people leaving high school and college, no longer had the "idealism" and "anti-commercialism" of my high schoolers and were only worried about making as much money as possible.

I guess just like any normal teen, there were the typical teen problems that any teen of any generation faces. Teens back then in my era were far removed from tattoos and piercings and stuff like that. But, I guess my fellow teens had their own problems. My maternal grandfather had tattoos, so I guess each generation goes through something different but not something really all that new when you get down to the basics.

Some of my fellow teens who were females did not shave (kind of weird and gross to see someone wear hose over unshaved legs, but just about anything that could happen did happen in my mid to late teens), some of my fellow teens who were male grew their hairs, mustaches, beards, and sideburns however they wanted to.

I couldn't write in a trillion words how weird the late 1960s and early 1970s of my late teen years were. As Neil Young wrote a song after the Woodstock rock concert of 1969/1970, something like "we won't being going back that way". I am just glad that in probably one of the weirdest periods in American history that no American teen will ever have to go through that "surreal period" which cannot be described as you would have had to lived through it.

Thank God that no teen will ever have to live through another weird period like that again; although, the idealism and non-commercialism was a good influence.

The teens starting in 1975 and particularly the 1980s had it much better; however, as Lars from Metallica when asked what good music came out of the 1980s, Lars responded "None" as their was not that creativity of the late 1960s and very early 1970s. I think that the music sceen has gotten better but it is still all about will a song sell unlike during my mid to late teen years which saw some of the best and most creative and most diverse music, in my opinion; although, some of that carried over into my 20s and up until about 1980. Actually, there was some music in the 1980s that was good, but as far as new talent and originalism in music.

I guess during my late teen years, young groups of American radicals were blowing up buildings on American college campuses, taking over college buildings for days...

And, the airline hijacking to Cuba happened about once or twice a week, but those were usually much older people who would really have to be weird to want to hijack a plane just to go to Cuba.

Hey, some good things happened in my teen years like the first landing on the moon and subsequent landings on the moon, and, my best summer ever, the summer of 1971 when I was 19 years old because along with going to summer school, I became a gym rat for about 5 hours a day playing basketball, the Montreal Canadiens beat the Chicago Blackhawks in the Stanley Cup Finals, and I had my own separate room and my own separate bathroom in this koolest 1930s era style very large house provided by the U.S. government to my father for our family to live in when we moved back to San Antonio from Minnesota. Those groups of houses because of their unique architecture are not Historic Buildings, so, I never knew at the time when I was a teenager that I would be living in an official U.S. historic building, but really my bedroom was the maid's quarters so no one bothered me as my room and bathroom were part of the house but totally away from everyone else in the house. You know how parents or siblings can sometimes be bothersome, but I only got to live there for two summers as I was off in Austin, Texas most of the year as a teenage college student.

Being a sports fan, during my teenage years, I got to enjoy much of the Boston Celtics NBA dynasty where the Bill Russell led Boston Celtics won 11 NBA championships in 13 years including 8 NBA championships in a row which will never be approached on a professional sports team basis before or since.

My favorite baseball player was Mickey Mantle, and I got to see him play twice in Minnesota in person his last year playing when he hit a home run each of those two games.

In American football, the Minnesota Vikings were at their peak and always going to and losing Super Bowls during my high school years.

The Minnesota ABA basketball team always tried to feature games with Connie Hawkins or Rick Barry, but both of those players were always injured when there teams came to Minnesota.

Don't take what I write as a standard teen's life as obviously moving around and going to schools in a poor "barrio" of San Antonio and to a large all white school after all American schools had been fully integrated in one of the richest suburbs in the entire United States as I felt much more comfortable and accepted as a student in the poor "barrio" junior high school than I did in the very rich and highly academic oriented high school.

As far as the difference in living now versus then, as a teenager with a war going on, you don't have to worry about being drafted by the Army or the Marine Corps (the Navy and Air Force did not draft) to go off to some foreign land to fight in a war. We had just about everything that there is today. In fact as a 7 year old, I know that is not a teen, in 1960, we had cable TV which might surprise some people who didn't live in a small town like I did back then.

I guess the big differences are that $0.18 or $0.19 a gallon gas is no longer available from my teen years as the price of gas started to skyrocket after the 1973 Arab Israeli war (I know I was 20 years old at that time and no longer a teen). Back then we did not have electronic games, cell phones, microwaves, telephone recorders, video recorders (actually my best friend bought a TV video recorder back before I knew him probably around 1972, but TV video recorders really did not hit the market big time until about 1980), CDs, DVDs, PCs, no real use of the FAX machine until the 1980s (other versions of FAX machines actually pre-date the telephone going back to the 1800s but that isn't something that would be used at home), etc... did not exist, so we spent a lot of time playing outside even on hot days with the local boys playing baseball, basketball, or football. There was only one telephone company really in the entire U.S. and that was AT&T which remained as the lone, or, primary phone company for all Americans until the late 1970s or early 1980s. My oldest brother spent all day on the telephone talking to his friends on the telephone which would upset my parents at the time as when they needed the telephone and "call waiting" did not exist until the 1980s while my older brother and I were more into being outside the house and playing sports. We did have a tape recorder that my oldest brother used to record music from the radio. As far as music, particularly in the late 1960s long play vinyl albums (33 1/3rd speed) were the thing to buy while in my pre-teen years most music was sold on 45s with only one song on either side which is why I say pre late 1960s music was very commercial, very radio, and very pop oriented as all songs were 3 to 3 1/2 minutes long to fit on a 45 vinyl. So, of course we had "record players" to play either the short play 45s or the long play 33 1/3rd albums (which pretty much always existed but were not commercially aimed at the teen market until the late 1960s it seems). Just remember that anything that is digital probably didn't exist much in the 1980s and definitely not before the 1980s; however, analog version of digital items did exist.

Schools only had black boards with chalk to write on them in each class room. And, the copier was not affordable for most schools, so things that were duplicated occurred on a mimeograph machine with this blue or purplish ink. Xerox copiers existed probably from around 1970 or before but at very expensive prices. PCs started to hit the market in the early 1980s but no real use of the Internet. Large businesses had owned computers dating back to circa 1952 and before either UNIVAC or IBM. But at the home typewriters were used until the advent of "word processors" in the mid 1970s for home use (I say for home use as most of these products I am mentioning were available for commercial use many years before if you wanted to pay tens of thousands of dollars for them).

The major TV networks were not all in color for each program until about 1965 and my parents only had black and white televisions until I had long moved out as they bought their first color TV maybe in the early 1980s.

One of my favorite events occurred at the 1968 Olympics when Tommie Smith and John Carlos were kicked out of the Olympics and Mexico for giving a black power salute during the playing of the national anthym after they received their Gold and Bronze medals up on the stands in the 200 meter dash. I say favorite event as I like track and field a lot and loved seeing Tommie Smith and John Carlos blaze to their medals, so they could employ any form of protest on the medal stand if they wished. Most forms of protest up to 1968 were looked down upon in most cases.

I guess teen life was just as typical as it is today with the same or similar problems.

I could probably write forever on the topic, but I think you have an idea of how it was back then as far as life and as far as what machines were and were not available.

How can anyone explain life as a teenager as being a teenager is such a complicated and confusing era in anyone's life.

I hoped this helps.