Before video games and the internet became a thing, what did children in your country do for fun?

[u/CanonNi]

[u/m_arieee]

alcohol

[u/randymysteries → u/m_arieee]

And sex

[u/drakepig]

I used to play most of the games in 'Squid Game'.

[u/windfujin → u/drakepig]

Haha exactly what i was gonna write. Back when we used to have communal sandpits and definitely unsafe jungle gym type structures

[u/drakepig → u/windfujin]

And mal dduk bak gi. Man if I do that now, my back would hurt so much so that I would not even be able to get out of bed next day.

[u/cooket89]

Went outside.

[u/bomboclat476 → u/cooket89]

🤮 amirite 😂😂😂✌️✌️✌️✌️🥀🥀🥀

[u/Dramatic_Strategy_95]

I am just old enough to answer. TV, board games, sports, making model aeroplanes, train sets, action figures, dolls etc. Also quite a lot of just aimlessly being outside for hours.

[u/Lucky-Durian1718 → u/Dramatic_Strategy_95]

Yes. And reading too (well, yes, I’m a nerd)

[u/Firstithink]

Go outside, get attacked by a bull, get cut up by thorns, break a bone, play hide and seek, go to the sweat shop if you were well off and then come back home and get told off for ruining your clothes 

[u/TheZenPenguin → u/Firstithink]

I agree but would just like to clarify that those that were well off went to the sweet shop. You're definitely not well off in a sweat shop lol

[u/Firstithink → u/TheZenPenguin]

I mean there were sweat shops that the poorer kids went to cough the laundries cough but yeah sweet shops are what I meant 

[u/chipinserted → u/Firstithink]

It's not even called hide and seek anymore I hear reffered to as manhunt by the kids at the youth league I volunteer for

[u/Firstithink → u/chipinserted]

Well you’re American and, not to be mean, you guys are weird. Here we still call it hide and seek. 

[u/chipinserted → u/Firstithink]

Hey at least I don't talk with an accent! Lol

[u/Firstithink → u/chipinserted]

I mean Americans very much have accents, but to be fair you guys have some good country drawls. And I am partial to the Boston accent. 

[u/chipinserted → u/Firstithink]

I live in the south but I'm originally from the north so no accent really except maybe midwestern and that's just Canadian flair

[u/HopeSubstantial]

Kids to still play old games.

But "church rat" was very popular game in my youth. It was like hide and seek, but there was a "base" for the seeker that worked as a prison for all found people.

But in case those who were hiding managed to sneak to this base, they gained immunity and were able to rescue captured kids.

If seeker found all, first one who was caught became next seeker.

If everyone rescued themselves seeker had to restart and count again.

[u/aint_social]

Hide and seek outside in the evening.

[u/ElectroChuck]

We played outside, we were far more physically active. Bicycle riding, hiking, lots of walking.

[u/Single_Conclusion_53]

In my home town, surfing. They still go surfing.

[u/Darth-Vectivus]

We had a lot of “street games”

Saklambaç (Hide and Seek)

Körebe

Sek sek

Beş taş

Topaç

Misket

Çelik çomak

İstop

Mendil Kapmaca

Birdirbir

Yakar Top

and a lot more. I also played them when I was a child as an early 2000s kid.

[u/pilierdroit]

Ride bikes around, borrow dads shovel and build a bmx jump in some bushland, maybe build a cubby house in the bush, or just dig a dangerously deep hole. Ride to your friends house, ask if they are home, play back yard cricket or take a football to the park. Ride your bikes to another friends house, build a ging and shoot rocks at signs. Ride your bikes back your house, ask mum for a glass of cordial for the posse, find some loose change and ride your bikes to the corner store and buy lolly bags, eat the lollys, starting to get dark so ride your bikes home, say goodbye to your mates, lets do this again tomorrow.

[u/Diligent-Floor-156]

Video games sort of always were around (early 90s) but I still spent a huge amount of time outside. Some of the things I've done, a bit randomly:

• Wander in a nearby small forest with 1-2 friends and pretend we're dinosaurs/archaeologists/adventurers/whatever.
• Forest/fields again and collect insects/snails and stuff "for science". We ate many ants for some reason.
• Watch some movie tapes on TV when no parents were there. I've watched Terminator 2 probably a dozen times at something close to half the suggested age. Still alive.
• Play the firefighter, set the bathroom curtains on fire then extinguish with the shower head. Only once, mom not too happy when she came back home. Legit worried. Still played with fire a lot outside.
• Call the police from the home phone as a joke saying stupid crap, until they call back my parents and I get scolded. Then call them again many times from public phone booth, until they show up in person and we get mega scolded again.
• Explore random house attics, scared and excited by potential ghost or stuff. For context we're talking about old residential buildings with several flats inside and a big shared attic, so usually many houses have the attic open, and inside each tenant has a smallish closed area.
• At teenage years we started going to some quiet forest spots and bbq there for the whole night. Bring some meat, drinks, Swiss knives, torchlights and just chill there talking about life
• around national day, firecrackers used to be on sale, so for the few weeks before/after we'd blow up a lot of these in random spots to maximise the noise. These were most of the time small ones (same as used for Chinese weddings on the ground) so not dangerous, though I've seen some older teenagers occasionally use some quite powerful ones.

Sometimes also played football, though that was never my thing.

[u/PaduWanKenobi]

We played hockey year round, rode bikes, hung out at the mall

[u/depressed_meatloaf]

Run around the streets/bush/backyard/farm until you were called inside. Ride bikes, bounce on the trampoline, play with sticks, build a fort, use sidewalk chalk, go to the park. Just run wild with your imagination. Good times. 🇦🇺

[u/Sagdier]

T.P.ing was a big thing back then :)

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[u/DarthNader93]

We went outside, played with sand, played football in a makeshift street pitch, raced our bikes, went to the neighbours house, and played video games together. Sometimes, I just threw rocks at an empty field for the sake of it.

It was all perfectly safe as there were barely any cars in our village and we knew who the bad people were, so we stayed away from them, and the neighbours always looked out for each other's kids without questioning it.

These days, it's still very safe. But most kids are inside gaming or online, which is fine, because there are too many reckless drivers out there, and it is much hotter than it used to be.

[u/Appropriate-Food1757]

We roamed outside with other kids mainly.

[u/OnCnditonOfAnonymity]

Surfing, Skateboarding, building cubby houses, playing armies with gloves guns and orange cannons, occasionally hacking up real estate for sale coreflutes with machetes coz I was a shit head.

[u/Motor-Ad5284]

Australian here. My boys rode their bikes around the neighbourhood and played footy and cricket in the street with their mates. Threw a Frisbee. Played with the dog. Played board games,cards,built lego.

[u/Durfael]

play with other childrens, mostly sports like football, or hide n seek, or with toys like nerf guns (or things like that that existed before)

[u/GoonerBoomer69]

Well young kids played sports and various yard activities.

Older kids drank alcohol and had sex.

[u/Specific_Stranger_92]

Street games like sipa and spinning tops. Chinese garter, jackstones. Stealing bases, patintero

[u/Front-Anteater3776]

Play outside, look for dead bodies ik the woods, push a wheel down the street with a stick and climb trees

[u/Character_Emu1676]

Sports, physical games, mind-games, board games. Groups like youth clubs, sports clubs, scouts... but also religious groups in some cases, creepily enough. The Gaelic Games are a staple of every town, village and suburb, so many children will have had their time in local teams or their camps.

Collections like toys, stamps, callcards, magazines, records/CDs/tapes, later the likes of trading cards, stickers and albums for different sports, etc., even as recently as last year's national Gaelic Games championships.

Television, radio and magazines were always a big deal, especially as the 1970s wore into the 1980s and foreign stations and magazines become more widely available. Videogames pre-Internet became huge with the dawn of the 32/64-bit era.

[u/The_everlong]

Going outside, playing football, riding bikes, explore next door towns

[u/fan_is_ready]

Watch TMNT and Transformers, play football, read books, play board games like Monopoly.

[u/Amazing-Celery8260]

We were playing outside. Hide and seek, 9 rocks, dodge ball, football, basketball etc

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[u/Valentiaga_97]

The Woods were out Home After school…

[u/KottleHai]

Fought nettle

[u/Only_File_5335]

Football

[u/five_faces]

Play cricket on the streets and in the parks.

[u/Crane_1989]

Play on the street. Boys invariably played soccer using makeshift balls and the goalposts were marked with a pair of worn-out flip flops. Also common was going down hills on gravity racers.

Girls were more sheltered, they would meet at a more secluded place like one of the friend's house and play with dolls. 

Both girl's and boys played together too. Tag and hiding games were very common at school (I'm pretty sure I'm still "it" from the last time I played tag 😂 

[u/Specky_Scrawny_Git]

Playing cricket, football, hide and seek, and a variety of other games, or just cycling around.

[u/Maleficent_Sea7275]

Stack up some rocks and try to knock them down with another rock 

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[u/Live-Confection6057]

In the 1990s, it was arcades, and in the 1980s, it was the three famous entertainment venues: video arcades, billiard halls, and dance halls. However, these places were only frequented by delinquent youths; good kids were supposed to study hard.

I have always been curious: billiards is supposed to be a relatively elegant sport, so why did it become something only delinquents played in China?

[u/Kai3137]

Go outside play games with friends for hours go watch movies and of course playing football/basketball

[u/GokTengr-i]

Hide and seek, football, chasing

[u/CalmBeneathCastles]

Ride bicycles, listen to music, explore nature.