Spin-off — share your childhood media habits

[librarychica]

So I’m curious, what were your own levels of access to books/media as a kid? How do you feel about it?

And did it ever go (amusingly, horrifyingly) wrong?

[librarychica]

I had a very unsupervised childhood, with the exception of TV. My mother paid no attention to my reading material at all and I had unfettered access to her and my grandmothers’ bookshelves (my dad and living grandpa seemed to only read the Bible and nonfiction manuals) and the library, as well as the daily newspaper. But the TV was in the living room.

As a result, I was not allowed to join my classmates in watching/discussing 90210 or Dawson’s Creek even once I was in 9/10 grade, but by the time I was 12-ish I had read Flowers in the Attic, a whole series about vampires and witches and weird sexual rites a la Anne Rice (WTF grandma), and gone through a very long phase of dystopia fiction that frankly persist to this day. We also read all of the testimony from the Clinton impeachment on the bus, it’s how I learned about blowjobs.

The only time this went wrong was when my 5th grade teacher put out a library of clearly unvetted nonfiction books on the Holocaust during a WW2 and Holocaust unit. I read one on medical experimentation that, as an adult, I understand was in no way okay for a 10 yo. I would have ripped DD’s teacher a new one for that classroom library decision. I had nightmares for months. I still shiver thinking about that book.

[pinkly]

My childhood was very similar to prior poster. Just add in Clan of the Cave Bear.

[twinmomma]

My parents were extremely strict with my media consumption. We weren't allowed to watch Nickelodeon, MTV, or any of those kinds of things. There are still so many movies that I've never seen as an adult that it feels like everyone else my age saw as a standard part of growing up. Beau has a running list of things to watch to "culture" me. lol

We also had super strict rules about internet access. This was back in the AOL days, so my parents would set up crazy parental controls so I could only access the "kid" part of the internet and had time limits for how long I could stay online. The computer was a shared family computer in the living room, so they'd constantly be over my shoulder monitoring what I did. 

For books, I was basically left to my own devices. My mom was a huge Danielle Steel fan and I vividly remember reading through every single one of those in middle school. Apparently my parents were so strict we couldn't have a sex talk or anything, but trashy romance novels were fair game!

[librarychica]

twinmomma, same on movies. So many I haven’t seen and probably never will get around to.

Also, lol, AOL. The only computer was in the dining room and my parents popped over my shoulder constantly. Now I find myself popping over DD’s …. Whatcha doing over here?

[waverly]

We didn’t have cable so that limited it by a lot. As a young child I was not allowed to watch WB cartoons think bugs bunny because basically they just got hit by an anvil over and over. I get it. When better cartoons came out and I was older I was allowed to watch them but nothing but PBS mostly until age 5/6.

I watched a few horror movies at friend houses and was terrified. I still don’t like them much.

I too got my hands on some pretty bad books starting in middle school. VC Andrews is probably the worst author out there on incest and rape. It’s terrible. And my mom had no clue of the content of those books. So overall I was pretty sheltered but some things slipped through.

[mae0111]

Like waverly, we didn't have cable until I was like 14 years old. I was also not allowed to watch TV during the week during the school year as a direct result of me acting like a huge jerk. So like, in 4th grade, I had a stupid tantrum about something, my dad said "THAT'S IT! NO MORE TV DURING THE WEEK!" And then my report card came, my grades were stellar because I had nothing to do but read at night, and the rule stuck... UNTIL I WAS ACCEPTED INTO COLLEGE. For real.

So.

Very few channels, and no opportunity to watch.

Before that, I definitely watched shows with things blowing up and tons of fight scenes and car chases. Knight Rider, A-Team, Dukes of Hazzard. But no one ever got hurt. My nana would let me watch Love Boat and Dallas, but I didn't understand any of it.

I read anything I could get my hands on, but it all felt age appropriate. My parents' book shelves were boring. Business books, engineering books, encyclopedias. I think my mom hid her bodice-rippers.

[sakoro]

My family also did not have cable and didn’t get a VCR until the early 90s. I watched MTV and some of the racier John Hughes movies at other kids’ houses during sleepovers. I remember one girl showing us Rambo at her 7th birthday sleepover party which was not interesting to me at all!

We didn’t have a computer and I used the internet for the first time in 1996 when I went to college. A family friend had prodigy but I don’t think there was any inappropriate or adult content back in the day.

I read the Handmaid’s Tale at age 13 and was really disturbed by it. I haven’t watched the TV series because the book was enough.

[mommyatty]

I’m not sure it ever occurred to my parents to put limits on anything. When we moved to Texas and I got a library card, they asked my mom if she wanted to restrict me to the children’s section, and I vividly remember her saying, “Does anyone actually say yes to that question? Of course not! It’s the library.” I was EIGHT! Lol.

I was an 80s child. I knew every word to every song in Grease in Kindergarten. Who am I kidding… I knew every word of the entire movie. “Parent” definitely wasn’t a verb. I look at things now and I’m really appalled at stuff I saw when I was really little. But then again, my parents were right that a ton of it went right over my head. Like until I was in high school, I would have said Caddyshack was a movie about a groundhog and a mean guy who keeps trying to blow him up. And I regularly read my mom’s trashy romances by 5th grade.

[sandandsea]

We had 4 channels until I was a junior in high school and my parents were strict and conservative. We watched after school cartoons/saved by the bell/TMNT/duck tales/etc. it were only allowed an hour of tv then had to do something else.

I watched Dawsons my senior year (when it started) after my parents went to bed and some old reruns of 90210. They would not have been okay with it.

[mae0111]

sakoro, lol @ internet in college... It made me remember that I literally didn't have internet access at my first OFFICE JOB out of college! I worked for a huge financial company, and we did not have internet access. It's so hard for my kids to understand. I did not have a computer in college - I had a 7 line display word processor. But that was fine because, as a math major, we were not allowed to use any computer programs or calculators to do our work.

It seems so crazy now.

[tacokick]

We didn’t have cable so that limited some access. We were not a family that had the tv on unless we were watching a specific show. Still not! We had a tiny black and white tv in the kitchen and I remember watching shows on that into college lol

We went to the library all the time. We’d regularly go to libraries in two different counties and the city. We’d go to the library at the beach. No limits to what books we could get out. I read a lot of adult books as a kid, there wasn’t as much in the way of young adult back then. Agatha Christie, Danielle Steele, VC Andrews etc

I didn’t know anyone with the internet the end of senior year when I hooked up with this guy who had it. Very exotic! I remember freshman year of my very expensive college having to go to a class where they taught everyone how to connect to the internet and get email addresses. Even the rich kids I went to school with didn’t seem to largely have had internet at home and all had brand new laptops.

[186momx]

No cable when I was a kid. We watched TGIF every Friday night but other than that I don't remember watching much TV. We got satellite when I was in high school but by then I was too busy to watch TV. I remember watching CSI, Dawson Creek, Gilmour Girls a lot but I was way older.

Internet wasn't a thing until high school and then we could only use it for school. No surfing the web. I typed my first paper in middle school on dos and my brother and I played Oregon Trail on the computer.

Lots of historical romance novel over here starting about 7th grade. I wasn't really a reader until late 6th grade and it was a historical novel that got me into reading. I had no idea back then that "The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle" would be the book that turned me into a reader.

[rere]

My childhood was bizarre. My mom had no clue what I was reading or watching and didn't give it much thought. But high heels and eyeshadow was a battle because that would lead to being a "whore". So yeah that's weird.

[vasc]

Watched crap tons of cartoons and kid stuff at <10. No such thing as screen time limits.

Had my own TV in my room at age 14. Watched a wide range of stuff (Older kid stuff but also reruns of adult shows, TV Land oldies, MASH. The worst was probably South Park).

Had my own laptop in my room in high school with dial-up AOL. Parents didn’t have any clue what I was doing (nor my brother).

Brother also had his own TV, also a Nintendo 64, and a desktop.

[sdlaura]

My parents were strict. We didn’t have cable and I was the oldest kid and pretty sheltered. I think the no cable was partly a financial thing - we didn’t have much extra money and my parents once had to take a line of credit form the bank to get a new TV when ours broke.

My two best friends growing up, though, both had single moms who worked a lot. So I would hang out at their houses in middle school in large part to watch whatever we wanted, eat whatever we wanted, and play video games. We were also chatting on AOL instant messenger with random adults when we were like 12 (in 1993) which I’m sure was way more dangerous than any media we consumed.

One of the best friends’ moms got this special plug for the TV and you couldn’t use the TV without it. So her mom would either leave or take it when she went to work, depending on her kids’ behavior or grades or whatever. So we’d pass notes in school everyday, asking whether she had ‘the plug’ that day

My reading material wasn’t really monitored. I also found some of my Dad’s old 1970s playboys as a teenager.

[sillygoosegirl]

We didn't really do TV in our house when I was a kid, except for PBS. It never seemed to be much about sensorship, and mostly that my parents think most TV is a waste of time that'll rot your brain. Which I guess I largely have grown up to agree with. I was notably NOT allowed to watch Carmen San Diego, because they mispronounced Puget Sound in the premier show, and my parents didn't want me watching a geography show where they weren't pronouncing place names correctly.

I had unlimited access to the bookshelves and whatever I wanted at the library. When I was a preteen, we got dial up access to the library and back then the library would mail your books to you for $1 each (we lived in a rural area, so this was an awesome service--cable TV wouldn't have been an option where we lived, even if my parents hadn't hated TV). My mom encouraged me to check out whatever I wanted. And she read "Clan of the Cave Bear" to me, although she left me to read the subsequent books to myself. I'm also pretty sure I am dyslexic... so, like, if I was reading literally anything, my parents were pretty darn thrilled.

The media I snuck that my parents probably would have disapproved of was the radio evangelist that was on in the early morning and late night, when the local public radio station only had on classical music, and I wanted someone talking to me. And there were lots of stories, so that was great. I briefly (and secretly) got really into it, which I look back and shudder in terror at.