21 Life Struggles Only 90s Kids Will Understand

John Summers • Contributor

Jun 1, 2025 10:00 PM EDT

I wouldn't say life was tough in the 90s. It's not like our parents, who always claimed they had to walk 20 miles in the snow just to get to school (sure, Dad, whatever). No, we 90s kids had it pretty cushy in a lot of ways. We had cars, TVs, mobile phones, gaming systems, and portable music players. But let's be real - everything still kind of sucked back then.

Like, yeah, we had a big screen TV in the living room, but it weighed as much as a fridge and had a resolution so bad you could barely see your favorite Power Ranger's face. Or our gaming consoles that needed a full-on ritual to make a cartridge work - rub your head, spin three times, blow into the slot and then pray to the Nintendo gods. And those early cell phones? They were basically just a brick you carried around to make phone calls (and only if you were lucky enough to have reception).

So here's to all the 90s kids who grew up in that weird, in-between era. Where everything felt like the future, but still didn't work quite right. Let's take a trip down memory lane with these 21 life struggles that today's kids will never understand.

01
When you called your friend's house, you had to speak with their parents first!

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02
Connection to the Internet was so unstable, it literally said "Dialing attempt 1 of 5"

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03
And the Internet speed was absurdly slow

$0.49% of cc32e47.exe Completed Saving cc from ftp.netscape.com Estimated time left: Download to: Transfer rate: 39 years 8.89 MB of 180 MB copied) D:\Other Stuff\Downloads\cc32e47.exe 4.61 KB/Sec Close this dialog box when download completes Open Open Folder cancel ☑$

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04
"Wanna watch a movie tonight?" "Sure, let's get in the car and go find one"

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05
You had to pass secrets through people you didn't trust at all

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06
If you missed a show - You missed it. That's it.

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07
Unless you set a timer to record. But you never did

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08
When you took a photo you had no idea how it came out until you took 30 more

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09
Setting the alarm clock to "Radio" but it's on static so you don't wake up

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10
There was no Google. Let that sink in

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11
You had to choose one album to listen to until you get back home

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12
Some windows just refused to open or close. and that was that

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13
This always happened and you just lived with it

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14
This would only happen to your favorite album.

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15
Manually deleting messages one by one

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16
All we could do is blow and hope for the best

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17
This used to be cutting edge graphics

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18
TVs were huge, heavy, terrible quality and you couldn't choose what to watch

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19
If someone had to cancel last minute, you would just wait for them until you gave up

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20
Trying to navigate using this

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21
What's on TV? better open the TV guide and start searching

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