Top 10 Best and Worst Things About Being a Kid in the 2000s

While cellular data can still be costly now, it was absolutely unreal how expensive it was at the dawn of the information age – right when people realized that cell phones were no longer optional. There was certainly pushback about how old someone should be before they get a cell, both at the time and even years on with the rise of social media, but you got one eventually and your parents were paying for it. That’s why the panic kids felt when they accidentally opened the phone’s web browser was so profound. Worse, phones were so slow that it took the browser an age to close, after which your parents would get a mile-high bill because you looked at Google for two seconds.

Though they probably kept you awake at night, creepypastas were – and still are – an iconic part of internet culture. Most people who grew up just as creepypastas were beginning in the late ‘90s and onwards have one that affected them more than any other. Maybe your worst nightmare to this day is Jeff the Killer, maybe you still think about Ben Drowned every time you hear someone mention “Majora’s Mask,” or maybe you’re haunted by the Slender Man. Slender Man remains the most infamous creepypasta of all, thanks in no small part to the viral success of Marble Hornets, and the creepypasta craze created a generation of new horror fans.

The first “Twilight” novel was released in 2005, and the first movie came out in 2008, right at the end of the decade. The hype around “Twilight” was completely inescapable, with equal numbers of people building entire personalities around either loving it or hating it. If you liked “Twilight,” as so many of us did, you probably spent whole years of your young life hotly debating with your friends who was better: Edward or Jacob. Though in hindsight neither of them is a particularly good boyfriend – Jacob started to get pretty creepy as well by “Eclipse” – it was an intense time for many young people. Maybe you even lost entire friendships because of disagreements over vampires and werewolves.

There was only one way to effectively communicate with your friends in the 2000s: MSN Messenger. You may also remember it as Windows Live Messenger, and it does survive to this day through Facebook messages, but nothing compares to the original. Unlike texting, it was free and there was no limit on how many messages you could send. And who can forget the universal experience of sending your crush a heartfelt confession, only to pretend your account was hacked when they rejected you? MSN was responsible for making DMs a necessity for any social media site, connecting people around the world.

If you thought paying for half a second of internet use was bad, wait until you remember the pain of having a limited number of minutes and texts each month. Today, nearly all cell phone packages have unlimited texts and minutes: it’s the data that you pay for above all else, but even that gets cheaper all the time and unlimited data packages exist as well. But back then, you’d basically never be able to call anyone except your parents in an emergency because of the fear of running out of minutes. Maybe you only had an hour or two of minutes each month, and only a few hundred texts. Thank goodness for MSN.

With skateboarding and rollerblading rising in popularity in the ‘90s and early 2000s, it was only a matter of time before somebody decided to put wheels in regular sneakers. That’s exactly what Roger Adams did when he created Heelys in ’99, sneakers with built-in wheels that became a worldwide fad. Heelys were awesome, but eventually, parents and teachers became convinced that they were dangerous – and honestly, they weren’t wrong. There was real evidence that they could cause accidents and falls in many countries, which contributed to their decline. But for a while, everybody had or desperately wanted Heelys.

It’s still a giant genre of TV years on, with the likes of “Love Island” taking over the world, but reality TV was new and ruthless in the 2000s. There seemed to be absolutely no safeguarding or concern for anybody’s welfare, either the contestants or viewers, warping everybody’s perception of reality. The 2000s saw the birth of “Big Brother,” “Are You Hot?” and “Cheaters,” not to mention a myriad of makeover shows that outright encouraged people to get plastic surgery they often didn’t need. They were terrible for body positivity, getting criticism for how insecure they could make you feel. It’s fun to look back on now, but at the time, it’s a miracle these things were allowed on TV.

When you were bored in class and had access to a computer, Flash games came to the rescue. Who can forget the stress of hastily closing a tab so that your teacher didn’t catch you playing “Happy Wheels,” “Run,” or “Bloons Tower Defense?” There were so many great Flash games that it’s likely every single person had a different favorite and a different one they kept playing even when they got home. Some Flash games were even more fun than mainstream console and PC games – plus, try as you might, you just couldn’t take your PS2 to school and shirk off math class with “GTA III.”

Speaking of games, there was one that stood a cut above the rest and well-and-truly traumatized an entire generation: Scary Maze Game. It was a simple maze you had to navigate by moving your mouse, until the very end where the maze got too narrow for your dot to make it to the end. When you inevitably touched the wall, you were subjected to this nightmarish jumpscare. Though you were probably too young to have actually seen 1973’s “The Exorcist,” you knew enough about it to recognize Regan MacNeil when she appeared at the end. Between that and the infamous “relaxing car drive” video, it’s a wonder millennials and Gen Z ever used a computer again.

Not only did 2000s kids get to grow up watching Aang’s journey to master the four elements in “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” but they got the cream of the crop where TV in general was concerned. Be sure to tell us in the comments which you look back on most fondly, but every single channel had multiple shows that have stood the test of time. There were cartoons like “SpongeBob,” “Totally Spies,” “Kim Possible,” “Codename: Kids Next Door,” and “Samurai Jack.” And there were incredible live-action offerings on every channel as well, like “Hannah Montana,” “Wizards of Waverly Place,” “Drake & Josh,” “iCarly,” and “The Suite Life.” It’s no wonder we spent so much time glued to our screens!