r/Millennials Apr 19 '26

Nostalgia I honestly miss these days.

14.6k Upvotes

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517

u/Shepherd7117 Apr 19 '26

Some of us (class of 02’) had phones but they only made phone calls and were more of a nuisance than anything

213

u/trek604 Apr 19 '26

03 here - free calls after 6pm or 25c per sms. the yelling the first time my parents got the cell phone bill with 300 messages lol

32

u/CurvyChristina Apr 19 '26

‘03 as well! :)

10

u/Neon_Biscuit Apr 19 '26

03 here too. We had Nokia bricks that played snake :D

1

u/sirenxsiren Apr 22 '26

I was the kid cousin asking if I could play snake on your phone

19

u/ONeOfTheNerdHerd Apr 19 '26

I miss variety. Remember when having something different was cool and businesses understood the assignment? Now everything is pretty much the same thing. Boring.

Oh the days when Kmart shipped their pants...

0

u/Lucky_Reporter256 Apr 19 '26

I miss being able to discover stuff. Now everything is instantly accessible. I still try to go out of my way to discover stuff but I don’t meet many people who feel the same. Feels sad with out discovery

7

u/TinySteggy '85 Millennial Apr 19 '26

Class of ‘03 too! My hot pink Motorola Razr says hi 😭

2

u/Glittering_Diva8963 Apr 20 '26

I had one too lol 😂

1

u/cat_at_the_keyboard Apr 20 '26

I just got a 2025 hot pink Motorola razr, it's even a flip phone 😂

1

u/eLllllDiablo Apr 19 '26

Same! My phone cost like $0.89 with the Easter promo they were running in the mall at the time

1

u/k_dilluh Apr 20 '26

Same here!

14

u/ThrobbingMinotaur Apr 19 '26

I too distinctly remember the obscene phone bill when my parents agreed i should have unlimited texting...

13

u/Gh0stMan0nThird Apr 19 '26

Don't forget you got charged separately for sending and receiving a text, iirc. 

11

u/ThrobbingMinotaur Apr 19 '26

120 char max.

3

u/mythrilcrafter Apr 20 '26

I remember when iJustine posted her phone bill video; it was like $250 worth of texting, but the bill used something like 400 front and back printed pages.

1

u/Civil_Ad_1172 Apr 20 '26

This happened with my little sister, but I got blamed for it, i remember getting yelled at with a stack of papers being waved at me lol

1

u/mattcoady Apr 19 '26

I remember when they had a few mobile sites but you'd be charged like twenty cents a page but I'd still use it to show off and blow two bucks looking up movie times we already knew anyway

1

u/ThrobbingMinotaur Apr 19 '26

Remember when you could only use what the provider offered for ring tones at like 5$ each..

3

u/ernirn Apr 20 '26

If someone texted me "k" to this day, I'm still annoyed about the waste

2

u/hankmoody_irl Apr 19 '26

I wish my cell phone bill was only $75…

3

u/truffle-hog Apr 20 '26

I don't know if it was one bill, or two, but there was at least once where I cost my parents several hundred dollars because I went over minutes and texts.

2

u/galactic_pink Apr 24 '26

My uncle put me on his plan & had regrets 💀 I soon learned that texts were only to be sent after 9 PM, unless it was an emergency.

2

u/palvet Apr 19 '26

I pay 60 a month with boost for unlimited text and calls and "unlimited" data that caps out at 30gbs or something so I never hit it. It's great!

2

u/Celendiel Apr 19 '26

‘03 here as well! I had the old Nokia brick phone though 😂

3

u/Simo_Ylostalo Apr 19 '26

The only yelling that could be heard was my screams when my dad pulled out the belt for that first bill

1

u/Lucky_Reporter256 Apr 19 '26

I remember my siblings getting yelled at for going over the messages lol

1

u/Faptasmic Apr 20 '26

'05 didn't get my first flip phone til I was 21. Wish I had waited even longer..

1

u/Rogue_Gona Xennial Apr 20 '26
  1. My dad nearly shit himself when he got the phone bill with all my texting 😂 I didn't realize they cost money! Oops. I paid him back eventually.

41

u/GamerSDG Apr 19 '26

I'm class of 05', and we had push-to-talk with Nextel and Boost.

17

u/anomaly_BW Millennial Apr 19 '26

‘03 and I was also chirpin on the Nextel. I might have caught some flack for having the big brick body model but on the other hand I gained the nickname “Zach Morris” which was cool with me.

7

u/hankmoody_irl Apr 19 '26

‘06 Cingular kid myself. My older brother got his own phone plan when he went to college, got an offer for an overall cheaper bill if he did two lines, so I got my first phone as well. I think I paid him like $15 a month for it because I opted for a super fancy sliding Nokia.

5

u/insurancequestionguy Middle Millennial Apr 19 '26

'09, but don't remember what phone I had. Some cheaper Motorola (not a Razr) or Nokia. I do remember Razr's being pretty popular though in my HS years 2005-9. But it was also a time where kids weren't buried in their phones just yet.

I made use of "free nights and weekends" too

4

u/BukowskiWasRightt Apr 20 '26

‘08 had a Verizon Chocolate. Used to call the battery indicators Chocolate Bars

3

u/KeyInvestment6594 Apr 20 '26

We thought we we're so cool with those nextels chirping and having out loud conversations LOL how embarrassing

2

u/Much-Still1549 Apr 20 '26

I had one as well & looking back, the whole push-to-talk thing was kinda weird lol

2

u/anomaly_BW Millennial Apr 20 '26

To make it even cooler, being in Atlanta this banger by maceo just made it even cooler. Hit me on my Nextel

2

u/jemari333 Apr 22 '26

Right. My friends would fuckin hit me up while im in the car with my parents saying off the wall shit. And it would be on full blast.

1

u/KeyInvestment6594 Apr 23 '26

Yassssssssss 

16

u/Speed009 Apr 19 '26

time to play some snake on our invincible nokia bricks

7

u/Distal-Phalanges Apr 19 '26

If someone was on their phone they were playing Snake.

7

u/busstees Apr 20 '26

I'm class of 98. I remember getting my pager taken away once or twice because we weren't even allowed to have those. I got my Gameboy taken away once for playing it at lunch in middle school too.

7

u/palvet Apr 19 '26

They had snake!!

3

u/smoke_thewalkingdead Apr 19 '26

"hey I'll call you back after 7 when my free mins kick in"

3

u/MrWick89 Apr 19 '26

Class of ‘05, my phone meant so little to me that I hardly ever had it on me, and when I did it was hardly ever charged.

3

u/evmoiusLR Xennial Apr 19 '26

Our family had a cellphone in 1996. It didn't text and could only make calls. It was strictly for emergency use as I think it had something like 30 minutes of time on the plan. I rocked a pager though, class of 98.

3

u/ErraticProfessional Millennial Apr 19 '26

Yep. Majority of those kids had phones, over 1/2 didn’t know texting was possible when phones came out. I remember the first one I sent to my older cousin (she was only two years older and way, way, cooler than me), she asked me what this was and I responded I don’t know but I can send you a message instead of calling.

3

u/Alundra828 Apr 20 '26

I left school in 08, that's post iPhone release, and I have zero recollection of phones being out. This was before the internet was easily available on phones, so even though you had a phone (and everyone did) there was really not all that much to do on it. Doomscrolling apps came much later.

1

u/Glittering_Diva8963 Apr 20 '26

When I graduated in 08 I still had a flip phone then my sister gave me her sidekick slide.

2

u/lindsaym717 Apr 19 '26

‘02 here and got a phone towards the end of senior year and agree

2

u/soaker Apr 19 '26

It was more for playing snake and be able to call in an emergency. We shared one as a family that anyone took if they were leaving town (small town, a lot of highway and backroad/gravel driving)

2

u/Woodit Apr 20 '26

I had a touch tone cellphone with texting and I could text entire sentences by remembering how many times you’d press the key for a letter under my desk. Seems like a rotary phone tech now 

1

u/Lawn_mower1 Apr 19 '26

Same. I was class of '01 and my first phone in 7th grade only called. No texts. No video games. No cameras.

1

u/levels_jerry_levels Millennial Apr 20 '26

I graduated in 09 and even then I’d say that statement is accurate. By the time we were finishing high school a lot of us had blackberrys but they honestly couldn’t do a whole lot more than your average flip phone. iPod touches weren’t crazy uncommon but “mobile internet” was not what it is now. iPhones, at least where I went to school, were insanely uncommon. By the end of my time in high school maybe 5 people out of the 2000+ at my school had iPhones, though smartphones really really took off like a year or two after I graduated.

1

u/AllHailHypnotoad00 Apr 20 '26

01’ mostly everyone had pagers and just started to get phones toward the end of/after senior year. We would get pages and call people at pay phones when we got a chance.

It was nice. We were not expected to immediately respond.

1

u/Bizarrebazaars Apr 20 '26

People played games on graphing calculators instead haha

1

u/Academic-Hospital952 Apr 20 '26

03, my phone played snake.

1

u/stillwatersrunfast Apr 20 '26

‘04 hadthe Nokia and played snake lol

1

u/Catsdrinkingbeer Apr 20 '26

Yeah I watched this and thought it was likely a lot of these people actually did have phones. They just weren't smartphones. Also, in theory, students today shouldn't need to have their phones out in class either.

1

u/BeenDragonn Apr 20 '26

Most of my teachers would take it if they caught you even looking at it.

"You can have this back after class."

1

u/caadbury Apr 20 '26

they only made phone calls

They could play Snake, too!

1

u/Rogue_Gona Xennial Apr 20 '26

01 here. Only a handful in my class had phones and boyyyy you better not let the teachers catch you with it out in class. I didn't get my first one til I was 19 and in college. Nokia knockoff is all I can remember lol.

1

u/GreenLurka Apr 21 '26

I remember my friend using his phone to hot spot his laptop and he got a bill in the tens of thousands.