Top 30 Things Kids Today Don't Recognize

Top-30-Things-Kids-Today-Dont-Recognize

Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re looking at objects, places, or concepts that aren’t commonplace today and which many kids probably wouldn't recognize immediately.

#30: Hanging Up

While the concept of hanging up a phone is something kids are obviously familiar with, how many of them understand that the term used to have a literal meaning? Before smartphones we all had dial and rotary phones which required us to put the handset back on the body of the phone in order to end the call. And if we want to go back even farther, older rotary phones would literally require one to hang the receiver back on the device to finish a call. But perhaps the biggest thing kids today will never experience is the feeling of release that comes from angrily slamming down the receiver to end a call. Tapping that hangup button just doesn’t provide the same satisfaction.

#29: Slide Projector

The first question some of you probably have is - what is a slide, and why would I want to project it? To answer that question we have to go back to a time before smartphones, back even before digital cameras. Back to a time when we put a roll of film into a camera and then took that roll to have it developed. Besides printing out photographs you could also turn those images into slides - which were small mounted transparency versions of your photos. And why would you do this? Well, that way you could - with the help of a slide projector - project your photos onto a wall or large screen and bore a large group of people with your vacation photos.

#28: Transistor Radio

These days the only connection most of us have with even the term transistor radio comes from listening to “Brown Eyed Girl” on the SiriusXM oldies station. Invented in the 1950s, transistor radios were revolutionary because they switched from the old vacuum tube technology. This allowed them to be made smaller, more portable, more durable and mass-marketable. The truth is that if you see a radio these days it’s probably a transistor radio. Although, a non-digital, stand alone radio in the wild would probably feel like a museum piece to the younger generation.

#27: Microfiche

Listen up kiddos. There was a time when the internet didn’t exist. When you couldn’t find anything you wanted with a quick Google search. Back then when you wanted to look at old newspapers or archived documents your best option was something called microfilm and microfiche. Often found at libraries, these teeny-tiny scaled-down document reproductions were viewable using a special projector or microfiche reader. And as 90s movie fans will tell you, microfilm played a key role in helping people solve various mysteries in films from that era.

#26: Sanitary Belt

Ok, so this one isn’t just something kids won’t recognize, but there are gonna be plenty of adults confused by this thing also. In fact, unless you are a woman who came of age prior to the 1980s, sanitary belts were probably never a part of your life experience. And you should probably be very happy about that. You see, sanitary belts were what women used before tampons and pads came into being. It was a literal elastic belt with hanging clips in the front and back to which one would attach a towel or pad passed between their legs. You can figure out the rest.

#25: Pay Phones

While mobile phones have pretty much taken over our lives, every now and then we still see someone with a landline. But seeing an actual pay phone in the wild - now that must be a truly shocking experience for the younger generation. Not only are these phones attached to a specific location without a touch screen or apps - but you have to actually deposit money into them for them to work. And they don’t even take Apple Pay! Back in 2002 the film “Phone Booth” lamented the disappearance of pay phones - so imagine how they must look to kids today, over 20 years later.

#24: Traveler's Checks

When it comes to traveling there are some things that haven’t changed since the last century. We still need to pack clothes and toiletries and make sure we have our passports. However, back in the day, another important item on our pre-vacation checklist was “get traveler’s checks.” Before everyone had a credit and debit card and ATMs were everywhere, traveler’s checks were the go-to money option for visits to foreign countries. They were as good as cash and were guaranteed if lost or stolen. It was a way to take larger sums of cash with you without having to carry lots of dolla’ dolla’ bills. These days the idea of physical cash is shocking enough to the young folks - let alone these archaic traveler’s checks.

#23: Typewriter

While there are still those who love typewriters, like Tom Hanks and John Mayer, it’s safe to say they aren’t as popular as they were before the personal computer hit the market. However, we aren’t saying that kids today wouldn’t recognize a typewriter if one was put in front of them. But whether they knew what it was or not, how many of them do you think would know how to actually use one? Not only do you have to insert the paper yourself, but when you make a spelling mistake the typewriter doesn’t even underline it in red to let you know.

#22: Manual Car Windows

It’s true! There was a time when you couldn’t just push a button to open a car window. You had to grab onto a crank-like handle on the inside of the door and use actual arm muscles to turn it around and around until the window was as open as you wanted it to be. And while to some that may seem as ancient as churning your own butter, manual windows haven’t been gone that long. Even into the early aughts, many manufacturers were offering both automatic and manual window options on their automobiles.

#21: Record Adapter

While the hipster revolution brought records and record players back into the pop culture scene, both those items are probably still somewhat unknown commodities to young kids these days. But even if records are popular again, record adapters are certainly odd looking things to most folks under a certain age. Throughout the history of the record there have been 78 rpm, 45 rpm and 33 rpm records available. But the holes in records made to be played at 45 rpm were larger than those of 78 or 33 rpm records. These adapters were necessary to play them on your standard record player. Now why the holes were different sizes in the first place is a whole other question.

#20: PalmPilots [PDAs]

Personal Digital Assistants, or PDAs, were essentially the first smartphones… only you couldn’t call or text or surf the internet… Okay, let us explain. If you wanted to do “complex” computing on the go, Palm Pilots were where it was at! They allowed you to store contact info, plan calendars, send and receive emails, write up documents – you know, computer stuff! The most popular of these devices were PalmPilots, which pretty much dominated the market. They were absolutely everywhere in the late ‘90s! But with the advent of smartphones, PDAs generally fell by the wayside, and even their attempts at smartphone versions couldn’t compete with the likes of iPhones or Androids. Unless their parents are tech buffs, we doubt today’s kids have even heard of them.


#19: Paper Maps

Yes, kids can (probably) tell what a map is. But hear us out: the ubiquity of apps like Apple Maps, Google Maps and MapQuest has made paper maps nearly obsolete. While kids today probably know what they are, they might be hard-pressed to actually read one if the need arose. Online maps can not only be optimized to filter in and out information, but they also feature directions and routes overlaid right on the screen, all read out by the sweet, accommodating Siri lady. If you’ve ever had to navigate using a physical road map, especially if you’re lost, you definitely know all about the unique ‘joys’ that come with it!


#18: Mail Order Netflix

Netflix is everywhere these days. It’s one of the biggest streaming services on the planet. But what many children today may not know is that Netflix began as a DVD delivery service. For a monthly fee, Netflix mails DVDs to your home in these letter-sized red sleeves. That’s in present tense, by the way, because they still do! For people who don’t have access to internet fast enough to stream, this is a pretty great option. And, for kids whose families do have access to high-speed internet, they probably have no clue about this side of the company or its origins.


#17: Church Keys

Keys to a church, right? Kids can figure that one out, so what’re we talking about? Not so fast though! “Church key” is an American term for an older type of bottle opener. One end typically has a large loop for opening bottles--sort of like the large loops on old-fashioned keys. And sometimes, there’s a piercer on the other end of these bottle openers, which is useful for opening cans. If your family is comprised of avid soda pop or beer drinkers, there’s a good chance there’s one of these still lying around in a junk drawer somewhere. And, there’s a good chance it’s completely foreign to the little ones of the house!


#16: Rolodexes

Personal organizers are still around, sort of. While kids typically use school agendas, most adults keep organized with their favorite handheld device. Rolodexes, on the other hand, have largely ‘spun’ out of use. It was a spinning card organizer that held business cards or other contact info, that you could flip through to easily find the contact you needed. It was sort of like a phonebook, but with a lot more pzazz! At least it was, until digital organizers took over. You might come across one of these organizers in the odd workplace but, for the most part, the term “rolodex” just isn’t something kids need in their… rolodex.


#15: Test Pattern

Test patterns, or test cards, were signals broadcast on television when the transmitter was active but there was no footage airing. They might sometimes have been used if something needed calibration or general repairing. In most cases they were brightly colored and usually accompanied by a sine wave tone. (If you’re sitting there thinking, “hm, I’m not sure what a sine wave tone is,” trust us, you do.) These days, with the ever-evolving advances in technology, test patterns aren’t broadcast as frequently. TVs don’t require troubleshooting as often, and airtime is more likely to be filled 24/7. While today’s kids might recognize the display of a test pattern as meaning something is wrong, they won’t ever hold our trauma from that seemingly endless radio tone.


#14: Wired Video Game Controllers

Again, we’re fairly sure most kids can figure out what a video game controller is, even with a wire sticking out of it! But they definitely won’t know the pain of perpetually tangled wires! Modern video game controllers are gearing increasingly towards being wireless, in favor of relying on battery power and infrared or Bluetooth, as opposed to plugging directly into the game console. It honestly wouldn’t surprise us if game companies stopped making wired controllers altogether at some point. While retro consoles would likely still require them, there probably won’t be a lot of demand for them from kids growing up on modern gaming alone. Nostalgia is nice, but not having to untangle wires is nicer!


#13: Cassette Tapes

While nostalgia – and some help from “Guardians of the Galaxy” – has promoted the recent revival of cassette tapes, there are many in the newer generation who didn’t get to experience them the first time around. Before CDs, cassette tapes were the go-to medium for playing audio. They work a lot like VHS tapes… which kids actually do know about. (At least that’s what they told us on our last list like this!) Cassette tapes play music and other recordings in a cassette player, and then need to be rewound, physically, to be played again. While they’ve largely been replaced by the modern smartphone, there’s still something special about a classic mixtape.


#12: Library Card Catalogs

Libraries in general are sadly seeing less and less traffic, but one aspect of their operation has also become nearly obsolete – card catalogs. Before computer databases, records of the library’s contents were kept in huge drawers full of cards. These listed all the books in the library and where they were located. Finding a specific book almost always meant [gulp] getting help from the librarian. While card catalogs are still around, either as a backup or in lieu of a computer database, most kids probably don’t know what they are, unless they’re in good with their local librarian.


#11: CD/DVD Storage Binders

While CDs and DVDs are themselves becoming less common these days, even less well known to youngsters is one of the methods for storing them: binders – but not your school kind. These binders have sleeves, a little like photo albums, in which the discs are slipped inside. They can also be zipped shut around the border to keep the CDs or DVDs from falling out. It was a more compact way to store your music and movies than, say, hundreds of individual sleeves. Although storage binders are still around, the average kid doesn’t really have a need for them anymore. Their movies and music are mere clicks away! Video game discs might be the worthy exception though.


#10: Phone Books

Quick: think of your friend’s phone number. Did you know it right away? Probably not, because these days, names and numbers are in our contact lists and a phone call is a button away. Gone are the days when you actually had to hunt down the person you wanted to call by finding his or her city and his or her last name in the phone book. You also had to look up businesses rather than Google the name and follow the phone number. In fact, it seems like these days, phone books are more often used as fodder to show off your inhuman strength than anything else!


#9: TV Guides

Ah, the TV Guide. Yeah, even watching TV used to involve a lot more effort, as you had to look up each specific day, find out what was playing, what channel it was on, and plan your schedule accordingly. Before the internet, pirating and streaming services weren’t around to allow access to whatever shows and movies you wanted, whenever you wanted them. Not to mention that, now, cable boxes come with a guide that’s right there on your screen. Too bad though, we kinda liked seeing which celebrity was on the cover of this week’s issue!


#8: Rotary Phones

We’re going WAY back for this one. Even before push-button phones, there were rotary dial phones. They featured a finger wheel with holes that represented individual numbers. To input a number, you would put your finger in the corresponding hole and rotate the dial, which would then spring back to its starting point. Now imagine doing that again and again, for every digit in someone’s phone number. Unsurprisingly, they started going out of style in the 1970s, when touch-tone phones took their place. While there’s something tactile and satisfying about spinning that dial, it’s definitely time-consuming and a lot less convenient!


#7: Encyclopedias

Kids today may wonder what the row of identical bible-sized books titled “Britannica” are doing on their grandparents’ shelves. For those of us who didn’t grow up with the internet, we know all too well. Before the internet, books were the best (and only) standardized form of information we had. While many of us today use Wikipedia, the website is the humble descendent of encyclopedias far and wide. Although encyclopedias are still around, print versions are far less common than they once were. Even Britannica has moved online! And you definitely won’t see them being sold door to door anymore.


#6: Pagers [aka Beepers]

Until the early ‘90s, there were tons of different pagers on the market. But once cheap and reliable cell phones came along, these wireless telecommunication devices all went the way of the dinosaurs. Which, funnily enough, is what you’ll be called if you still use one. Alphanumeric pagers simply displayed a phone number that you had to call back, while more advanced ones like the two-way QWERTY pagers could send and receive early forms of text messages. This is nothing that a cell phone can’t do though, so pagers are now the butt of ridicule.


#5: Portable Audio Players [Walkman & Discman]

Walking down the street with one of these bad boys brought an instant feeling of cool. Looking back … weeell hindsight is 20/20! A Walkman or Discman is a portable audio player – with the former for cassettes and the latter for CDs - that would sometimes fit in your pocket. If we’re talking a Walkman, then we’d have to deal with turning over the cassette tapes once you reached the end of one side. When it comes to a Discman, it would seem that it always started skipping at the most inopportune times because... well, they sucked. In reality, these portable music players were usually bulky and inconvenient, AND there was no shuffle on a cassette, so you’d better have made a really good mixtape.


#4: Fax Machines/Telecopiers

Ask anyone born after 1990 if they’ve ever owned or even just used a fax machine, and the answer will probably be a resounding “no.” Faxes, short for facsimiles, and sometimes referred to as telecopying or telefax, are images transmitted through a phone line and then printed out. Prior to the rise of email, fax machines were the fastest way of transmitting printed information over long distances. Although fax machines still see some use in the business world, to a lot of kids today, they probably just look like a printer with a phone mysteriously attached.


#3: [Developing] Photographic Film

Even today, there’s a lot of people who love shooting on film. But digital cameras definitely dominate the market. For some kids, used to pointing and shooting and sharing their photos straight away, it must seem bizarre that back in the day, you’d have to choose your shots carefully, to avoid wasting film, and wait for them to be developed. And you wouldn’t know how your pictures turned out until you got them back. Only then would you realize that the flash or some other setting had ruined half your masterpieces!


#2: Dial-Up Internet Access

Isn’t it amazing that you can watch this video in HD without having to suffer through buffering or having to make a sandwich while it loads? Yeah, this was absolutely not possible in the 1990s. Thanks, broadband! Back in the day though, we once had dial-up internet access, which would make an awful, mechanical noise while it connected to an internet service provider and would be painfully slow when you actually got online. And God forbid your mom needed the phone, because if she did, it was back to the TV for you. As of 2013, only 3% of internet users still use dial-up. We feel for you.


#1: Floppy Disks

Today, the floppy disk lives on as the icon you click on when you want to save your file. But few kids would actually be familiar with the object itself. In fact, one viral Tweet even wondered why the save icon is a “beverage dispenser.” Prevalent in the 80s, the floppy disk was the precursor to CDs, memory cards, and flash drives. There was the 8 inch, the 5¼-inch, and then the 3.5 inch disk, which could hold an astounding 1.44 MB of data! That’s pretty crazy considering there are thumb drives today that can hold terabytes of information. Maybe in a few years, we’ll be laughing at our measly terabyte flash drives… who knows?



Do you still come across any of these kid-confusing items these days? Let us know in the comments.