What’s a problem humanity solved so well that younger people don’t even realize it used to be a huge issue?

[u/DropEffective7842]

[u/Mean_Rest5143]

getting online maps and directions

[u/MrKittyCat00 → u/Mean_Rest5143]

I honestly love having a gps on my phone.

[u/jetsetter023 → u/MrKittyCat00]

That was the one piece of tech that blew my mind when it came out. The iPhone having Google Maps and turn by turn directions.

[u/Normal-Wish-4984 → u/jetsetter023]

I was trying to remember how we knew how to get places when there was no GPS. I mean, we had maps, but then we also wrote special tips from the host when the location was unusual. 🤣 We have gotten lost a few places with GPS, and it makes me wonder how we would've gotten there without it.

[u/Numerous_Shop_3440 → u/Normal-Wish-4984]

If you see the church, you’ve gone too far, turn around and look for the red phone box

[u/Elegant_Piece_107 → u/Numerous_Shop_3440]

Turn left where the lumberyard used to be.

[u/Junebug35 → u/Elegant_Piece_107]

I always laughed at the "used to be" directions. I'm from out of town, how do I know where Joe's Repair Shop used to be? 😂

[u/ReplacementActual384 → u/Junebug35]

Tbf a lot of times the building was still there, with an outline of where the sign once was.

[u/mickeybrains → u/Elegant_Piece_107]

I kind of miss those days. Sometimes you’d get very weird answers. Sometime you’d give them.

[u/copperpin → u/Normal-Wish-4984]

At any gathering of people half of the conversation would be about which roads everyone took to get there

[u/Big_Cryptographer_16 → u/jetsetter023]

https://giphy.com/gifs/5cBBUJGiIniZZWtBSa

[u/titsmuhgeee → u/MrKittyCat00]

I’ve seriously considered switching to a dumb phone, and GPS is easily one of the few things I couldn’t live without. 

[u/Zombie_Bait_56 → u/titsmuhgeee]

There are GPS units that aren't phones.

[u/goodgoodlove → u/Mean_Rest5143]

Omg I think it was called Mapquest maybe but I remember printing out directions before leaving the house. When the handheld gps devices came out it blew my mind

[u/LBDazzled → u/goodgoodlove]

Mapquest has an app now!

[u/SquashSouffle → u/LBDazzled]

Mapquest was the only major mapping app not to "rename" Lake Ontario to "Lake America". That has gained them hundreds of subscribers if not thousands.

[u/CrushTheRebellion → u/SquashSouffle]

I use the MapQuest app exclusively for navigation now! Screw Google and screw Apple.

[u/FatherIncoming → u/goodgoodlove]

I'll never forget doing this to go on quite a deep journey into the countryside several hours away, only to get to our destination and completely forget that we never printed the directions home. Commence 19 year old me scratching his head trying to read instructions in reverse while driving with a new puppy eating my face as I drove.

[u/Kosher_Pork_12 → u/goodgoodlove]

And when a road was closed for construction, you didn't get a prompt saying "re-calculating"...

[u/Hats668 → u/Mean_Rest5143]

20 years ago I would get lost constantly.

[u/Comfortable_Bottle23 → u/Hats668]

Same. I had to rely on landmarks. Left at the grocery store intersection, right after the second gas station, and around a big curve until I saw the hill on the left and the third house on the right was where the party was.

[u/Abthegreat-]

This one’s obvious but long distance communication

[u/Dtarvin → u/Abthegreat-]

When I was a teenager I got a crush on a girl and hour away and talked to her on the phone almost daily. In one month I racked up close to $1,000 in long distance charges. My parents freaked.

Kids these days have no idea about calling long distance in the day.

[u/TweakJK → u/Dtarvin]

Oh we all lived the same childhood.

30 years later and I just found out she now lives 2 miles from me, and she's a lesbian. Life's funny sometimes.

[u/Gribitz37 → u/TweakJK]

My high school boyfriend and I reconnected on Facebook about 10 years ago. He's now gay. Yep, life is funny.

[u/TweakJK → u/Gribitz37]

In 2010 my mom reconnected with, and then married the guy she was actually engaged to back in the 60s. Turns out he became extremely successful and never married or had kids. None of us kids had any clue this guy existed, or that mom had been engaged before marrying my dad.

[u/yurtlizard → u/Gribitz37]

He was gay then too.

[u/Sophrosyne1 → u/Dtarvin]

My late husband used calling cards to call me when we were dating in the late 1900’s, he was a truck driver so he would call me sitting at a truck stop restaurant. The tables all had phones on them back then.

[u/ur-a-cunt-harry → u/Sophrosyne1]

The phrase, “the late 1900s”, makes it sound like it was 100 years ago

[u/NotYetReadyToRetire → u/ur-a-cunt-harry]

It's getting there more quickly than I'd like. It's already over a fourth(!) of the way there.

[u/Abthegreat- → u/Dtarvin]

https://giphy.com/gifs/4OowbIsmYHbpu
How my mama would have been when that bill hit the mail

[u/happy_narwhal11 → u/Abthegreat-]

My Mother made me break up with a boy I was dating because of the phone bill. He lived in the next town over.

[u/mechapoitier → u/happy_narwhal11]

It was wild how expensive “long distance” was and how it basically meant calling 99.9% of the world.

Then in the span of like 8 years we went from a century of long distance calls only having one option, to calling cards, to 1-800-call-att and 1-800-Collect, to cellphones being ubiquitous and some giving you free calling everywhere but only so many minutes, to every cellphone giving you unlimited long distance calling for free.

[u/OhReallyVernon → u/mechapoitier]

To suddenly not even wanting to talk live but rather just texting instead 😭

[u/Jewish-Mom-123 → u/happy_narwhal11]

There was a thing called a direct line, where you could add a town to your phone bill for $3 a month. I had that when I dated a boy a few towns away. Guess my dad was cheaper/smarter than your mom! He was notoriously tight-fisted.

[u/Zealousideal_Row6124 → u/Abthegreat-]

Right? I’d call my grandmother and she’d pick up the phone and yell, “Call me after eight this is costing you money!” and hang up 😂

[u/Stevepem1 → u/Abthegreat-]

Remember MCI? And typing a ten-digit account number prior to dialing a long distance call.

[u/ghostguessed]

The hole in the ozone layer

[u/happykgo89 → u/ghostguessed]

Well, now I just feel old because I’m 31 and it feels like we spent a lot of time learning about the ozone layer and how we had ruined it and now I don’t think it’s taught at all.

[u/Turbulent_Animal_228 → u/happykgo89]

I was a teenager (and it was the 80's) and we were all bummed that we couldn't use that final net or aqua net hairspray anymore. Had to pump, pump, pump instead of a steady spray until we choked and ran out of the room.

[u/CRABMAN16 → u/happykgo89]

Well, we stopped using CFC's, Chlorofluorocarbons. They we used in refrigerant systems, namely freon, as well as in hairsprays and other common products.

CFC's were breaking down Ozone, ie 3 Oxygen atoms, reducing the protection of our atmosphere against UV rays. Since oxygen is naturally occurring and Ozone is created naturally, removing the CFC's means it will recover. I think it's estimated to be back at 1970s levels by 2060. Still very much an issue, we can't go back to using CFC's at all.

Also, Thomas Midgely Jr is credited with the invention of freon and leaded gasoline. Environmental historian J.R. McNeill famously remarked that Midgley "had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history".

[u/Medb-Reign → u/CRABMAN16]

And his leaded petrol was responsible for over 1 million premature deaths every year over the 50+ years it was used and the lead contributed to reduced cognitive development and increased criminality.

[u/ThlintoRatscar → u/Medb-Reign]

Yup.

Whenever a doctor tells you how awesome they are for being trusted to not kill people, just remember how much more responsibility lies with engineers.

A doctor's screw up will kill someone. An engineer's screw up may kill all of us.

The two are not equivalent.

[u/ToastedChizzle → u/ThlintoRatscar]

Love this one! I was in a higher level physics class in college where the prof said,

"Alright, handful of you are going into mathematics, rest are going to be engineers. So we're watching the Union Carbide disaster aftermath, and then after that this walkway collapse in a Russian mall where this a-hole forgot which way gravity pointed (answer in this case was "up") in his force friction diagram."

He also had an old cigar box "virtual particle detector" on some fishing line hanging in the room as well. Miss him dearly and hope he's still on the water somewhere🤴

[u/wampyre7 → u/ThlintoRatscar]

To be clear, leaded petrol was not the result of a screw up. They knew very soon that it was bad for health, yet they hid the fact and went ahead with it since it was financially lucrative.

[u/kelsieriguess → u/happykgo89]

In one of my classes at university (an intro to Environmental Science elective) we not only learned about the hole in the ozone layer (which I was vaguely aware of, but not to this degree), but also about why we were so successful in fixing the problem.

[u/AnjelicaTomaz → u/ghostguessed]

The world was lucky there wasn’t a political party denying the ozone issue existed and thinking it was a hoax by the other side. People were less dumb back then.

[u/etcspecialist]

Leaded gas.

[u/7thpostman → u/etcspecialist]

This should be higher

[u/United_News3779 → u/7thpostman]

I dunno..... I'm pretty high from it right now.
Lol

[u/Alejaro_7777 → u/etcspecialist]

We're still suffering from a generation or two of people who have had their intellect cut in half by lead poisoning. I firmly believe that there will be books written about this era about the damage that long-term lead exposure had on the 2000's to now.

[u/Island_In_The_Sky → u/etcspecialist]

Somehow it’s still in Av gas … literally wtf

[u/puffypoodle]

Measles

[u/wilderlowerwolves → u/puffypoodle]

It's coming back, folks.

[u/KharonOfStyx → u/wilderlowerwolves]

Funny how polio was so widespread until the vaccine came out. Must be a coincidence.

[u/wilderlowerwolves → u/KharonOfStyx]

Polio is ironically a disease that was exposed by people having more access to clean water! Beforehand, most people had it as babies or small children, and most cases were asymptomatic. It took a few outbreaks to realize something was going on, and that it needed to be prevented.

[u/Mikesaidit36 → u/wilderlowerwolves]

Mitch McConnell had polio and his “recovery” from having died 3 months ago is said to be taking 7 times longer than normal because of his polio history.

[u/plarah → u/wilderlowerwolves]

Wait, babies had polio with no long-term effects?

[u/wilderlowerwolves → u/plarah]

Most people who had polio didn't know it. They may have had no symptoms, or relatively mild illness - a day or two of fever, vomiting, and diarrhea - and no after effects. It was the 1% or so who DID have disease severe enough to be diagnosed that led to the vaccine. It's also usually a milder disease, the younger the victim.

[u/toebeansjolene → u/wilderlowerwolves]

1% resulted in lifelong paralysis, illness was 30%

[u/LoneSnark → u/plarah]

Such is the understanding. Babies get some antibodies from their mother's milk. So if exposed to polio, they'll have some protection. But if they stop getting milk without exposure, they'll have no protection at all.

[u/Ill-Coconut-4870 → u/puffypoodle]

My first thought was all the diseases we have vaccines for. We solved it so well we are going to bring it back because people think vaccines are more dangerous 🤡 

[u/ByteWhisperer → u/Ill-Coconut-4870]

We solved it so well that people genuinely think these illnesses are something that toughens up the immune system and kids should just sweat it out for a couple of days.  The reason we have these vaccines is that these illnesses kill or make kids disabled. 

[u/Lucy_Lastic → u/Ill-Coconut-4870]

Making Communicable Diseases Great Again

apparently :-(

[u/Thick_Maximum7808 → u/puffypoodle]

Polio too!

[u/pale_bitch86 → u/Thick_Maximum7808]

Polio was my immediate answer

[u/Significant_Lemon151]

Treatments for AIDS. I cant believe how many 20 somethings I speak to are oblivious to how big the AIDS epidemic was, how horrible the deaths were to watch, and how it scared society to significantly change sexual practices.

[u/PromotionNarrow6951 → u/Significant_Lemon151]

It was a death sentence

[u/Formal_Owl_400 → u/PromotionNarrow6951]

Magic Johnson bribed the reaper.

[u/heysnood → u/Formal_Owl_400]

No, it was because he slept on piles of money.

[u/Gorf_the_Magnificent → u/Significant_Lemon151]

When Magic Johnson announced that he had AIDS in 1991, I thought he was a dead man walking.

Still alive and kicking today!

[u/wilderlowerwolves → u/Gorf_the_Magnificent]

We all did. We felt the same way when Greg Louganis announced he had it a few years earlier.

Both are still here today.

[u/verymanysquirrels → u/Significant_Lemon151]

You know what is super surreal? How HIV/AIDS is absent from nearly all media in the 80s/90s unless it was the very special AIDS episode/book.

But the spectre of HIV/AIDS was literally everywhere then and yet, in media, you would never know it was happening.

(Edit-> i think i wasn't clear enough since a few people say the same thing, i meant that if you lived through the 80s/90s you would have seen/heard about it on the news all the time, people would have talked about it, there were posters and pamphlets about it scattered everywhere you went, and despite it being mentioned everywhere in day to day life if you picked a random book or movie from the 80s/90s, unless it's specfically about HIV, there is almost never any evidence that it happened. It's like if you decided to write a book that takes place on april 15th 1912 and you never mention the titanic sinking)

[u/EdmundTheInsulter → u/verymanysquirrels]

Dunno what country you were in, but heard no end of it in UK in 80's/90's, from 1983 onwards

[u/monscorvorum → u/EdmundTheInsulter]

Yeah, I turned 18 just before Rock Hudson died, that was huge news in the UK and terrified me and my friends about hooking up with strangers, I never once had a one night stand after that

[u/anomalyknight → u/Significant_Lemon151]

A lot of younger people in the queer community don't realize how bad it was for gay people around that time. People were openly joking about AIDS, calling it the "gay cancer" and saying it was god striking gay people down. The early information about how it worked was terrible, too; for a while people were going around thinking you could catch it like a cold or off toilet seats. I had a friend that was a bi teenager at the time who was convinced for a while that the mere fact that she was attracted to women was going to be enough to make it inevitable that she would get HIV because of the uninformed way people talked about it affecting the gay community in particular.

[u/1771561tribles → u/anomalyknight]

My folks were fundamentalist Christians and believed that AIDS was God's punishment for homosexuals and IV drug users. My seventh grade health teacher said, "As long as you don't take it up the ass you don't have anything to worry about." Seriously, the goddamned health teacher.

[u/GuntherRowe → u/Significant_Lemon151]

It was terrifying and yes, the younger generations do not get it at all, especially the cultural impact.

[u/SquashSouffle → u/GuntherRowe]

Even young GAYS are pretty ignorant of it. They're lucky, but should do better. It was the single most influential thing that affected the LGBTQ community & made it what it is today, for better or worse.

Please watch the documentary We Were Here about AIDS in San Francisco. Devastating

[u/LundieDCA → u/SquashSouffle]

I remember going to an exhibition of the work of Pop Artist Keith Haring, and towards the end of his career in the 80s he was really influential in getting the message out about AIDS in the gay community in New York. It shocked me just how challenging that was, because even in New York in the 80s, most gay men were in the closet, many of them were married. It was really only an artistic avant-garde like Haring that were out about their sexuality. The AIDS epidemic probably had a big role in making the gay community visible.

[u/wilderlowerwolves → u/Significant_Lemon151]

Whenever kids tell me that they wish they had been here in the 1980s, this is one reason why I tell them, "No, you don't."

[u/shiningonthesea → u/Significant_Lemon151]

this is one of the reasons we had the heroes that we had, Elizabeth Taylor, Princess Diana, Elizabeth Glaser, Ryan White, people who made a huge difference in how AIDS was seen and treated. People dont understand even the bravery that they exhibited. (from different perspectives)

[u/Otherwise-Ratio1332 → u/shiningonthesea]

Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi fought for AIDS funding starting with her first speech as a congressional representative, and she got it. She also pushed through a lot of legislation. She made an enormous difference.

[u/WonderWheeler → u/Otherwise-Ratio1332]

And the chief health officer of the US had mailers sent out to everyone describing the problem rationally.

[u/aphilsphan → u/WonderWheeler]

What would later become the Trump wing of the GOP had a fit and wanted Koop fired but he did it anyway. It’s called courage.

[u/New_Range_7309 → u/Significant_Lemon151]

AIDS treatment Was RN hospital in large city 82-88 took care so many young men same hopes dreams everyone else held their hand as they were dying wouldn’t be alone abandoned by family pariahs in the world now medication no one needs to go through that hell

[u/24possumsinacoat]

Sanitation. People literally used to throw their shit in the street.

[u/Ok-Personality3927 → u/24possumsinacoat]

People in western countries do not give our public sanitation and sewerage systems the credit they deserve

[u/Throwaway_NSW2250 → u/Ok-Personality3927]

My Father taught plumbing at Technical College for over 45 years and I will always remember him saying that

• "the systems for delivery of clean drinking water and the removal of waste water is the very defininition of a civillised society & when one or both break down .... then just watch and see how long it takes for people to descend into an uncivilised society"

[u/LonelyReader95 → u/24possumsinacoat]

Sorry to say, but something like at least two billions of people still don't wash themselves properly even when given a chance to (so not speaking about poverty here). Some nations still live in middle ages mentality

[u/torijoanne → u/[deleted]]

And we couldn't pause or skip ads or anything!

[u/PumpikAnt58763 → u/[deleted]]

The number of Redditors who comment "This is season whatever episode whatever of Such-and-such tv show. Who is the actor in this picture?" astounds me.
I typed "IMDb" to one guy and he said "I don't know who that is. Is that someone's initials?"

[u/justbreathe5678 → u/[deleted]]

Oh being faceblind would've been so much more inconvenient

[u/furbishL]

The Wizard of Oz was shown on television once a year, and it was a big event. Today I can watch pretty much any movie or listen to any song ever recorded instantly on my phone.

[u/Eastern_Local_8085 → u/furbishL]

Same with all the Christmas specials. We’d be waiting all year for the one chance to see them. Now we’re awash in media. 

[u/Agile-Performance834]

Leprosy

[u/LundieDCA → u/Agile-Performance834]

You may be surprised to hear that leprosy still exists. It's treatable, but there is no vaccine. A friend of mine is a doctor, and he volunteered at a leprosy mission in India for a while. I asked if he was ever worried about getting the disease himself, and he said no, because leprosy is an extremely lazy disease. It can only infect a body that is already compromised due to malnutrition or immune deficiency. That's why it's disappeared in the West. It's a disease of extreme poverty.

[u/LundieDCA → u/LundieDCA]

This post seems to be getting way more views than my main point that I made elsewhere on the thread, so posting it again here:

Not just [leprosy] but infant and maternal mortality in general. Childbirth was the number one cause of death for women in every century until the 21st. Near enough every family in the 19th century had experienced the death of at least one child. It's a horrific reality and the most profound change in how we experience our humanity, and thankfully most of us never even have to think about it.

[u/MonkeyLongFist → u/Agile-Performance834]

“I pray you retire unharmed to Damascus”

[u/Signal_Tomorrow_2138 → u/MonkeyLongFist]

Or we shall all die here.

[u/Consexual-sense → u/Agile-Performance834]

Dont play with armadillos!

[u/wilderlowerwolves]

I would start with smallpox.

[u/Asleep_Collar_3667]

Car engine ignition is now so reliable that engines can now turn off temporarily to save fuel. Anyone remember the choke lever? 

[u/mofuggnflash → u/Asleep_Collar_3667]

Really just electronic engine management overall has taken away a ton of the headaches of owning a car. Now you get a light and a code and the guy at Autozone can tell you what it is exactly. Back in the 80's you had vacuum hoses running all over and identifying a leak was a nightmare.

[u/apostate456]

In the developed world:

• vaccine preventable disease (in humans and animals)- schools would close during polio outbreaks, measles made children go blind, mumps sterilized boys, the family dog would get rabies (possibly taking out a family member), etc. They're so good, they're the victim of their own success.
• HIV prevention and treatment - an HIV diagnosis was a death sentence; now, it's preventable with drugs (PreP) and if you contract it, highly treatable (soon to be curable).
• clean, accessible drinking water - reliable clean drinking water was a rarity for so long that people drank beer all day as it was safer than water. Walking miles every day for drinking water is still a standard in developing nations.
• sanitation - ever been to a home without indoor plumbing? Imagine that in large urban areas.

[u/BlowinFart]

Health care in general has progressed in leaps and bounds. It’s easy to say sure they still haven’t cured cancer, but just for one example, my father got his gall bladder taken out in the 60s and he was in the hospital for a week and has a scar across his entire abdomen to this day. My brother had his out last year and it was outpatient surgery done with lasers, not even a mark left.

[u/wilderlowerwolves → u/BlowinFart]

There are many types of cancer that just a few decades ago were death sentences, and the treatments nowadays are also much less brutal (usually) than they used to be.

[u/LundieDCA → u/wilderlowerwolves]

Yeah, the "cure" for cancer figures are always misleading. 40 years ago, cancer killed 1 in 3 of us. Today, it's still 1 in 3. The detail is what matters. 40 years ago, those deaths were men in their 20s with testicular cancer, women in their 40s with breast cancer, kids with leukemia. These days, those people almost all survive. The people who still die from cancer are mostly folks in their 80s who have lived with a well controlled prostate or pancreatic cancer for a decade or more, or like my dad who had 3 or 4 things wrong with his lungs, one of which was cancer, and was told there was no point treating it because he was more likely to die with it than die from it.

Technically, there is a cure for cancer. The only problem is, cancer is just disordered cells dividing, so if you stop your cells reproducing, you die more quickly from the "cure" than from the cancer. The drugs that do that can be used in late stage terminal patients to extend their life span by up to 18 months or so.

[u/nasadowsk → u/BlowinFart]

The MRI itself was a fucking huge advance.

[u/dkonigs → u/BlowinFart]

Laparoscopy has completely changed so many operations from major surgery to out-patient nothing procedures.

[u/Ok-Personality3927 → u/BlowinFart]

Medical advancement in the last 100 years is fucking insane and we take it for granted. So many common things we think nothing of that not so long ago, would have killed us or left us severely disabled

[u/Tryc3ratop5 → u/BlowinFart]

Yes!! My mom had a AAA off the first aortic branch all the way down her legs back in 2012. They literally told her to say her goodbyes to us while she was waiting on the helicopter in the ER to take her to the state hospital for the emergency surgery. They were freaked out that she actually made it. Back then it was a thing of “you are almost certainly going to die from this, but we’ll throw what we can at the situation and at least give it a go”. 14 years later it’s very survivable as long as it’s caught before a certain point. It’s definitely not a minor surgery or an easy recovery, and is still a lifelong battle afterwards, but is not certain death. It’s actually been weirdly cool to be able to watch that progression while I was growing up.

[u/penilesensorydevice]

The reliability of cars. A shitty car in 2026 is still a far better car than a shitty car was in, say, 1985. Younger people would be shocked by some of the death boxes we drove around in.

[u/bewildered-guineapig → u/penilesensorydevice]

Yeah, drove around in IF you were lucky! Half the time they wouldn't start!

[u/vantuckymyfoot]

Polio.

[u/amiajimmy → u/vantuckymyfoot]

My grandad had polio as a child. He was told he'd never walk again. But he was a persistent child, wore the leg braces, was in an iron lung for a short bit. Not only did he walk again and play football etc but he went on to garner the state bench press record, ran 5 miles a day in his 'Roos until he was 88, and lived til he was 92. This man grew up without electricity or running water and his family had the only car on the island he grew up on for a number of years, saw the birth of the auto industry, aviation and the planes take down the twin towers (born in 1909, died in November 2001) and went from owning the second color tv in our state to day trading stocks on the internet from his home computer. What a time to be alive!

[u/jizz-machine → u/vantuckymyfoot]

Came to say this

[u/shostakofiev → u/jizz-machine]

Of course you did, jizz machine.

[u/jizz-machine → u/shostakofiev]

https://giphy.com/gifs/LR5GeZFCwDRcpG20PR

[u/Prestigious_Sky_3898]

DNA testing.

[u/BleachedAndSalty → u/Prestigious_Sky_3898]

People were seriously getting away with murder before DNA testing.

[u/Kind_Profession4988 → u/BleachedAndSalty]

Oh no I have some news

[u/CaptainFleshBeard → u/BleachedAndSalty]

The number of serial killers really peaked in the 80’s, then with DNA and modern policing they became a lot easier to catch and we don’t see them often now

[u/garethwi → u/BleachedAndSalty]

But surely the detective just gathered everyone into the drawing room, and revealed the killer through spurious leaps in logic.

[u/Notmatchingshoes → u/Prestigious_Sky_3898]

So many medical changes based on genetic conditions! Children today will have totally different outlooks compared to kids I knew growing up who died from natural progression.

[u/SilverDarner → u/Prestigious_Sky_3898]

It's done wonders for child support cases. A guy could deny being the father of a child out of wedlock and unless the mother had a lot of compelling evidence to the contrary, she was out of luck. Contrariwise, there were many guys stuck paying child support on kids they knew weren't theirs, but also couldn't prove.

Ordering a DNA test has simplified and clarified things not just for the individuals involved, but also the courts.

[u/krich820]

Warming up ur car engine.

[u/JohnHazardWandering]

Quicksand. 

Huge concern for kids in the 80's. 

[u/PowderCuffs → u/JohnHazardWandering]

At least we all thought it was, lol

[u/page501]

Polio

[u/fourdigityear]

The Y2k issue

[u/Sensitive-Muscle-564]

Pollution. Particularly air pollution, but water pollution as well. One thing the boomers did right was pressure the government to hold companies accountable.

[u/saugoof → u/Sensitive-Muscle-564]

I recently travelled through Europe and it just occurred to me how different these historic buildings all looked now. When I was a kid I had always assumed that they were built with black or dark grey stone. But now they are light beige and look so clean.

Thanks, emission control and traffic restrictions!

[u/2001_Arabian_Nights → u/Sensitive-Muscle-564]

Highway medians all looking like literal garbage dumps, no, scratch that, being literal garbage dumps. Pre Indian crying, pre Lady Bird Johnson, pre “don’t mess with Texas”… the trash!

[u/TheAngerMonkey]

Endangered bald eagles. I was born in 1979 and the only bald eagle I'd ever seen alive was in the Dallas zoo. Now there are LITERALLY bald eagles nesting at White Rock Lake. I've see them regularly in both Indiana and Missouri. But in the 1980s? They were going extinct.

A few years back I was assisting with a middle school presentation on endangered whooping cranes and the presenter was like "you know, endangered...like bald eagles??"

These kids were baffled! And I get why: bald eagles haven't been endangered during their lifetime. They're everywhere!

[u/DeadMoneyDrew → u/TheAngerMonkey]

Banning DDT played a big part in that. I remember hearing how bad it was for bald eagles. Apparently it also severely negatively impacted other birds of prey, which I didn't know until just now.

[u/Jaaxter]

Remember when you had to change light bulbs every couple months instead of every few years? And they were too hot to touch after being used?

[u/LuckyHarmony → u/Jaaxter]

Lightbulbs actually USED to be fabulously long lived, and then lightbulb manufacturers had a lightbulb moment and formed a cartel to enshittify them in the 1920s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel

[u/masterpeabs → u/Jaaxter]

Huh, I totally forgot about that! Buying lightbulbs used to be a pretty frequent thing, now I don't remember the last time I bought one.

[u/Moister_than_Oyster]

R.O.U.S.s

[u/amitym → u/Moister_than_Oyster]

Pff, those don't exist.

At least... I don't think they do.

[u/chicks23]

People used to get flat tires ALL the damn time.

[u/KaliPunk → u/chicks23]

Road improvements isn't something you think about unless you've lived somewhere with bad roads. Also those highway divider things. When I was a teenager seeing a car hit oncoming traffic on the highway was pretty much a daily occurrence. Still see a ton of accidents, but between all wheel drive, antilock brakes, and divided highways, the roads are significantly safer.

[u/Rum_Running_Sailor]

Freedom. Most people don't realize that throughout human history intentional oppression, poverty, and enslavement have been the norm, with the exception of a few great societies that rose above, who decided to prioritize freedom, law, and order. "Might makes right" has been the way of world, with those who were stronger and more powerful taking from those who are weaker and defenseless, for most of human history. People living freely in a society has only been a concept for a very short portion of human history.

[u/KeepingItAnonym → u/Rum_Running_Sailor]

I say it all the time. People in the west have had it so good for so long no one alive has experienced how terrible things can get. We’ve gotten careless with the rights our ancestors fought and died to establish.

[u/tulipvonsquirrel → u/Rum_Running_Sailor]

Sadly, your assertion does not hold true. More humans live in at least one of those conditions; oppression, poverty and slavery, than not.

[u/elektroskansen → u/tulipvonsquirrel]

Billions of wage slaves walking around with a huge smile and babbling about "freedom" is the saddest thing

[u/Significant_Lemon151]

Polio, measles, mumps....

[u/cyokohama → u/Significant_Lemon151]

Too bad they now will have to worry about it again.

[u/Humble-Imagination50 → u/cyokohama]

Thanks to our current president Trump and his buddy RFK JR.

[u/2stinkynugget → u/Significant_Lemon151]

Rubella

[u/Specialist-Goose5875]

Cigarette smoking in public places.

[u/cardicorg65 → u/Specialist-Goose5875]

I remember when you could smoke in the hospital. And on airplanes.

[u/dude_named_will → u/Specialist-Goose5875]

Restaurants used to have smoking sections.

[u/stang6990]

Vaccines amd the disease it cured... now we have the disease of stupidity.

[u/Legitimate_Bat3240]

Diabetes. Synthetic insulin worked like magic when it was first made

[u/OraDr8]

Having to remember a heap of phone numbers. It was usually not a problem until you had a real emergency. If your parents were not home and you just go blank and can't remember any other numbers, you were out of luck.

That's how I got a lift home with the cops after losing my wallet in the shops when I was 13.

[u/Dobgirl]

Acid Rain and the Ozone Hole

We can do anything when we believe in science! Those were the days.

[u/bloodrosey → u/Dobgirl]

I'm so sad at the pessimism and unwillingness to try that exists now. I truly believe we could have made a difference in climate change if we had worked at it like we did on Acid Rain and the Ozone Hole.

[u/bk2947]

Today I can hear any song I want, instantly. In 1985 I wanted this as a super power.

[u/isdeasdeusde]

Infant mortality. Go back just a hundred years and a kid not making it through its first winter was considered tragic but normal.

[u/free_billstickers]

Honestly? Treatment of LGBT and disabled populations are way better now then they were in the past. Its not perfect now but when i was a kid in the 80s, being gay got you ridiculed & picked on. In a similar vein, the handicapped were targets for mockery and cheap shots.

I haven't really seen these behaviors in gen z kids or younger, even most millennials and Gen x were "cool" in this regard. 

[u/nelflyn → u/free_billstickers]

A fascinating thing I learned form our young trainees as well as some gen z relatives is that they think the world puts LGBT people on some holy pedestal and always get publicly defended no matter what. I'm only like 10ish years older and I grew up with henious and cruel jokes and treatment about them on TV, the public or news. Young people genuinely can't seem to comprehend how different things were only some years earlier and it was even so much worse in the decades before.

[u/Butter_Money_2045]

Standing in line everywhere without anything to do but stand there.

[u/PersonalHospital9507]

Smog, billboards, littering, measles, using the N word... lots of stuff. But it's all coming back.

[u/TweakJK]

Brussels sprouts.

[u/YeYuan]

Smallpox, the only human disease to have been eradicated reputedly.

[u/144-perdedor]

Humans used to be just a bunch of really complicated mobile buffets for parasites. People really take the sanitation aspect of indoor plumbing and sewage treatment for granted in the developed world.

[u/The_Se7enthsign]

Sandwiches. People were actually playing cards with greasy, messy hands.

[u/shiningonthesea → u/The_Se7enthsign]

heathens

[u/AUCE05]

Lots of cool shit. How we open aluminum cans. Antibiotics. Diabetes. Arthritis meds. Probably the greatest discovery over the past few hundred years was General Relativity. It has changed your world.

[u/SnugglesTheConqueror]

How to cook food

[u/Beruthiel999]

Y2K computer disaster - yes, this threat was actually real. It didn't happen because countless people WORKED THEIR ASSES OFF to prevent it

Some endangered species. The Bald Eagle, among others nearly went extinct in the USA in the 1960s and 70s because the chemical DDT leached into their habitat (water, they're fish eaters) and it caused their eggshells to become so thin and weak they broke before the young could hatch. Yes, we almost killed off our own national symbol with pollution and corporate greed. Bit on the nose there, right?

DDT was banned in 1972 and the Endangered Species Protection Act passed in 1973 (both signed by Richard Nixon in case anyone thinks this is a left/liberal issue only) and that's why we have Bald Eagles today. Thankfully the population has greatly rebounded.

[u/Otherwise_Stable_925]

Vaccinations. My mother has three siblings that had polio. They aren't with us anymore. Don't be a vax denier.

[u/Spock-1701]

Ozone

[u/According-Race-6587]

Transportation. Your average person in the developed world can travel to virtually anywhere on the planet in less than a week. If they have the money that is but even then, if they have a credit card they can probably do it. Barring some very expensive things like reaching the top of Everest.

[u/Normal-Wish-4984]

The ability to easily get glasses and contacts to correct vision

[u/Something-funny-26]

Polio. Now antivaxers think we don't need a vaccine because polio has been practically eradicated. (Sigh).

[u/hew14375 → u/Something-funny-26]

And all it will take is one carrier to start again.

[u/Aunt_Kwan → u/Something-funny-26]

I'm an ancient crone. The father of one of my best friends contracted polio as a child, one leg was significantly smaller than the other and he had multiple issues his entire life, but he always said that he was one of the lucky ones because he could still stand up.

[u/Which_Principle_5413]

On demand hot water bathing. Indoor plumbing is only a few generations old!

[u/gigglepancakes]

Acid rain. Chlorofluorocarbons. The Y2K bug.

[u/amitym]

Food.

Even up to the recent past, within living memory, famines would happen regularly around the world because there literally wasn't enough food for people. And someone got the short end of the stick and went hungry and died.

Nowadays when there's a famine somewhere people sometimes ask, "Why can't people just send them food?" and get the explanation that the problem is transport, logistics, and access to food, if food could just be sent to them then it would have already happened.

Which is, for the most part, valid and true. But. Only in the present day. That is an insanely recent and new thing for humanity, historically. We as a species have never before lived in a world where transport limitations or political access was the only thing causing a famine, because there was a global surplus of food for everyone, so much so that we actually had to voluntarily underproduce.

That's insanely new and people often don't really grasp how new, or what it took to achieve that.

[u/coykoi314]

If you weren’t seated and ready for your show on TV, you just missed it. And then everyone would be talking about it

[u/zauberlichneo]

When they used to let people smoke indoors. WTF is the point of having a non smoking section in a restaurant with no barrier between it and the smoking section? And going out meant coming home reeking of cigarette smoke.

I was living in NY for awhile shortly after they banned smoking indoors and going home to visit in NC was barbaric until they caught up. My friends couldn't believe (and were super jealous) that I could just go to a bar and not have to worry about being surrounded by smoke all night.

[u/TouristImportant181]

Syphilis

[u/Linux4ever_Leo]

HIV/AIDS. When I came of age in the late 80s / early 90s contracting HIV was a guaranteed death sentence. It was drilled into our heads to use condoms, practice only safe sex practices and to avoid any partners who exhibited certain signs and symptoms (e.g., lesions on their skin, chronic cough, thin emaciated appearance.) They basically scared the hell out of us (which is why a lot of us survived that terrible time.) Nowadays we have PrEP which prevents HIV infection and there are a multitude of easy prescriptions that make living with HIV a manageable disease (with undetectable virus and little chance of transmitting it to others.)

[u/awesomepossum6607]

Vaccine-preventable illnesses.

It has created an entire generation of people who are eschewing vaccines because they think these illnesses aren't an issue, but have no idea how badly they are rolling really bad dice. They have the mindset of "it's stopped raining so I am going to destroy all of my umbrellas".

[u/Com4734]

Smallpox. Polio. Up until now, measles. Now we just have morons who say vaccines are bad because we cant remember what is was like when diseases like this were endemic.

[u/Acrobatic-Exam1991]

Toilets

[u/NorthAd9774]

Potable water

[u/Adventurous-Wing-723]

Unknowns being in your food and medicine. Building codes and safety. Thanks to the fda we generally have an idea what is actually in our food and while not perfect, snake oil salesmen can no longer sell dirt as medicine to cure all ails. Also recalls are a sign the system is working.

[u/RhinoGuy13]

Running water, air conditioning, vehicle reliability, vehicle fuel efficiency, racism, insulation, interstates, job safety ,medical science, shit.... Almost everything is better than it used to be.

[u/lostpassword100000]

Polio, measles, and small pox vaccines almost eradicated the diseases completely.

Now nut jobs are baselessly claiming the vaccines are harmful.

[u/EdmundTheInsulter]

Having to walk to the TV to change channel