16.
“First year Gen X here. Just on phones alone: Being a kid and remembering the switch from dial phones to push button and the first models not having the hashtag or asterisk buttons. We didn’t call the symbol a hash tag; we called it pound. We called the asterisk the star button. For years, those two buttons did nothing except give you a busy single if you pushed them.”
“We were teenagers when call waiting became available (for extra). It was revolutionary. Have the young-ins today ever even heard a busy signal?
Hardly anyone had an answering machine, although widely available, until the later ’80s. No one home? The message waited until there was.
Most of us were in our 20s when caller ID first came on line in 1995. The same year the internet really became a thing for most. That seemed revolutionary too.
Up through the ’80s, it was technically illegal to use anything but regulation Bell Telephones you had to order and lease through the phone company. Novelty companies did sell phones, but few people had them.”
—kingdietrich
Source: https://www.buzzfeed.com/meganeliscomb/gen-x-nostalgia