Outdated Tech Struggles Every 90s Kid Will Remember

The 1990s were a time of rapid technological change, with new gadgets and devices revolutionizing our lives. But while we were thrilled by the arrival of things like CDs and dial-up internet, using them often came with a hefty dose of frustration. Today’s kids might take seamless streaming and fast Wi-Fi for granted, but 90s kids had to learn patience through a series of tech struggles that are almost unthinkable now. Let’s take a trip down memory lane and revisit ten outdated tech problems that every 90s kid dealt with.

The sound of a dial-up modem connecting was the anthem of the 90s internet experience — a series of screeches and beeps that signaled you were about to go online (hopefully). But the excitement was short-lived; dial-up was painfully slow, and even loading a single webpage could take minutes. To make matters worse, if someone picked up the phone while you were connected, your session would be cut off immediately. Today’s kids have grown up with high-speed internet and Wi-Fi, so the idea of waiting five minutes just to check an email is beyond comprehension.

If you had a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) or Super Nintendo in the 90s, you definitely remember the ritual of blowing into game cartridges when they wouldn’t load properly. The theory was that dust inside the cartridge was causing the issue, and a good puff of air would clear it out. In reality, it was more likely a placebo effect, but we all did it anyway. There was nothing more frustrating than sitting down to play Super Mario Bros. only to see a blinking screen or garbled graphics. Today’s digital downloads have eliminated this problem, but the memory of blowing into cartridges remains a beloved (if scientifically flawed) part of gaming history.

VHS tapes were the backbone of 90s home entertainment, but they were far from perfect. Every so often, your VCR would decide to “eat” a tape, mangling the film and causing a panic as you tried to eject it without doing more damage. Kids had to learn the delicate art of using a pencil to carefully wind the tape back into place, hoping it wasn’t permanently ruined. In the age of streaming, the thought of a movie being physically destroyed by the player feels absurd. It’s a hassle that today’s kids will never experience, but every 90s kid knows the heartbreak of losing a favorite tape to the VCR.

The introduction of CDs in the 90s revolutionized music and movies, but they came with one major flaw: scratches. A single scratch could cause your favorite song to skip or your movie to freeze. We’d try all kinds of tricks, from rubbing the disc with toothpaste to carefully wiping it with a soft cloth, hoping to salvage it. The frustration of hearing your favorite song skip repeatedly is something today’s generation of streaming listeners will never understand. The convenience of Spotify and Netflix means scratched media is a thing of the past, but it was a daily struggle for 90s kids.

In the early days of file sharing, downloading a single song on Napster or LimeWire could take hours — sometimes an entire night. You’d set up your download before going to bed, praying that it would be complete (and virus-free) by morning. If your connection dropped or someone else used the phone line, the whole process would fail, and you’d have to start over. Today’s kids can stream or download any song they want in seconds, making the patience required for early file sharing seem almost unfathomable.

Before streaming services and voice-activated TVs, your entertainment choices depended on a tiny plastic remote — one that was always going missing. If the remote slipped into the couch cushions, the whole family would launch a search mission, often ending with someone manually changing the channel on the TV itself. The frustration of losing the remote was a daily struggle, and it’s a problem that’s almost laughable now, with universal remotes and phone apps that can control the TV. But every 90s kid remembers the panic of flipping through channels without the magic of a remote.

In the 90s, some of the biggest video games and movies were so large that they couldn’t fit on a single CD or DVD. Titles like Final Fantasy VII and epic films like Titanic came with multiple discs, requiring you to swap them out halfway through. The immersion would be broken as you fumbled for Disc 2, hoping you didn’t scratch it or lose it. Today’s games and movies are stored digitally or on high-capacity Blu-rays, making this struggle a distant memory, but it’s one that every 90s gamer and movie buff can recall with a mix of frustration and nostalgia.

In the era before DVR, recording your favorite TV show required setting the VCR manually — and it was far from foolproof. You had to make sure the clock was set correctly, the tape was rewound, and you selected the right channel and time. A single mistake could mean missing the show or recording the wrong program entirely. It was a complicated dance that felt like high-stakes tech wizardry at the time.

In the 90s, turning on your computer was a process that required patience. Booting up could take several minutes as you watched a series of screens flash by, hoping nothing went wrong. If you had an older computer, the start-up process was often accompanied by the loud whirring of the hard drive and the creaking noise of the fan. Today’s devices are ready to go in seconds, but every 90s kid remembers sitting there, drumming their fingers and waiting for the desktop to finally appear.

Before cordless phones became the norm, every household had at least one landline phone with a long, coiled cord. These cords were constantly getting twisted and tangled, to the point where you’d have to unplug the phone and spend time straightening it out. It was a minor but persistent annoyance, especially if you were trying to have a private conversation while your mom hovered nearby. Today, with smartphones in every pocket, tangled cords are a thing of the past, but they were an everyday struggle for anyone who grew up in the 90s.