The '90s

• Technology/life balance was in a great spot. You had lots of conveniences - online shopping, easy access to a wide variety of news, email, instant messaging, cells phones, GPS, and a bunch of other stuff. But you had to sit down at the computer, you could only (painfully) text using the old brick phones, etc. Now with smartphones it's nearly impossible to disconnect.

• Social media mostly consisted of innocuous stuff like blogs and Geocities websites. Less toxic shit like Twitter. I wish I could've been a parent in the 90s vs nowadays LOL.

• Going out to malls, roller rinks, arcades, was still common place. I remember my local mall being full of life in the late 90s, it's a ghost town now.

• On a related note, you still had all the best stuff from before: magazines, bookstores, lots more independent stores, with a bunch of other conveniences.

• Peak PC gaming (Half Life, Baldur's Gate, any Blizzard Game). Also N64/PS/Dreamcast were in full-throttle which was an amazing era in gaming.

• Generally better behavior online. Old school forums were common and those were slower. You had to sign up, introduce yourself, and behave. Now if you get banned online somewhere, you can create a new account in a few seconds. Discussions were much deeper.

• Great technology advances as well (e.g. DVDs, home computing making huge leaps, etc.)

These were just a few things I could think of off the top of my head.