One of the most popular debates of recent years has been if Millennials should accurately be called the โdigital nativesโ, all those people who were born between 1981 and 1996 and grew up in the center of the fast-developing commercial technology that preceded this modern generation of smartphones and touch screens.
One could say that Millenials have witnessed and experienced two totally different worlds and were young enough to become proficient in both. There are many things that the Millenials were able to see and get to know that Generation Z seems to ignore.
Here are 35 items that every Millennial should recognize without any doubt!


1. Photograph film


2. Computer disks
This square-looking disk was where you would probably store your work while working on your computer, although they were quite big in size their storage space was quite limited. These were around long before USB sticks appeared!


3. Cassette tape
Millennials will probably recognize these, particularly if you were fond of making mixtapes and gifting them to your loved ones.


4. Discman
Discmans were a Must-have item for every teenager growing up in the 2000s when CD collections were still around and popular!


5. Game boy color
Game Boy was the portable game device to have the years before Nintendo switch or PSP were released! There was even a pink version of it, called Game Girl, specially produced for girl gamers!


6. Video cables
Try to guess now what these were for? Every Millennial will remember that we used to have tons of these for every device that we would connect to the tv or the video!


7. Titanic: Myth or Fact?
Who doesnโt remember Leonardo Di Caprio and Kate Winslet in the 1997s film production of the Titanic, what some people might not know though is that Titanic was based on the true story of the ship that sank back in 1912.


8. Old-school TV
Although it might look like a small oven or microwave, itโs actually an old-school tv that didnโt use to have a remote control. You had to choose the channels by turning the knobs on the right!


9. Car radio/ cassette player
Every car used to have one and 100% every Millennial had put their finger in the cassette opening.


10. 1990s Teen heart-throb
Brendan Fraiser was one of the most popular male actors in the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s, you might recognize him if you have seen the films, George of the Jungle or Blast from the Past.


11. N64 games
The famous game cards for the โoldโ Nintendo 64, every good gamer from the 1990s would have probably owned a bunch of them!


12. โI donโt want to wait, for our lives to be overโฆโ
Dawsonโs Creek was one of the most popular teen tv shows of the late 1990s about a group of teens, growing up in a small town. It was a more of coming-to-age show, full of teen angst and relationship drama. You might remember the famous intro song that all of us used to sing along once the opening titles would start.


13. Britney, who?
Britney Spears was basically one of the most famous singers of the 2000s, often compared to Madonna. Who doesnโt remember the famous โBaby One More Timeโ with nearly a billion of views on YouTube!


14. Rotary Phone
Which Millennial didnโt just love these rotary phones? They were very fun to use and if you took by mistake the wrong number, you had to start all over again from the beginning! Here you can see how to use one!


15. Payphones
Public payphones, run-on coins, or telephone cards were broadly used in the decades before mobile phones became an extension of our hands. Although, you might still see them around, they are rarely used anymore.


16. Pencil Sharpener
Now, this is definitely something that Millennials should recognize, as they were a permanent feature in every school classroom.


17. Mp-3 players
These little devices came much after the walkmans and discmans, once the digitalized music was here to stay for good. However, they quick became extinct as the use of mobile phones as music players became the only globally โacceptedโ way!


18. Library cards
Avid readers will probably be more familiar with these cards as they had to present one to the libraryโs desk in order to check out/ in a book!


19. Mobile or Calculator?
This heavy-looking gadget isnโt a calculator but one of the most popular mobile phones at the beginning of the 2000s. As you would notice, they used to have only buttons and no tactile features!


20. Slap Bracelets
These beautiful bracelets came in every color and design imaginable, and they were so popular among kids and teens that some used to have a whole collection of them. How could you wear them? Well, thatโs easy, you would just slap them on your wrist!


21. Dustbuster
This was probably one of your momโs favorite cleaning gadgets! There was probably no house that didnโt have a Dustbuster at some point!


22. โThe Joy of Paintingโ on PBS
If you donโt know Bob Ross, you were probably a kid with no television in your childhood home, this smiley afro-hair man, taught thousands of people around the world how to paint โprofessionallyโ in their house!


23. Arcade games
Every kid or teen growing up in the 1980s and 1990s knows what these machines are for! Arcade games were the favorite pastime for millions of Millennials around the world once the school was over or the weekend had arrived. These machines were fed on coins and they were nearly always occupied by the next kid who was looking to break a record!


24. Overhead Projector
If you were a student in the late 1980s and then 1990s, you will probably remember these machines used in the classroom. The projector would use light to project an enlarged image of the content of transparent plastic film sheets, on a white screen or the wall.


25. Aerobie
Aerobie is a flying ring used in a manner similar to a Frisbee that people just throw at each other. A basic difference between Aerobie and a Frisbee is that Aerobie is lighter and more stable in flight than a regular disc.


26. My Space
My Space was the biggest social networking platform in the world in the years preceding Facebook and Twitter. Although still active, My Space isnโt really visited that regularly and by 2019 the number of monthly visitors has dropped to 7 million.


27. Harry Potter
The Millenials claim โownershipโ over the famous childrenโs book series by J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter, as they were basically raised, reading these amazing books.


28. Pins
Pins were very popular among teens and young adults from the mids-1980s to the beginning of the 2000s. You could say they were a fashion trend, as they were used as clothing accessories or bag decorations, there was a pin about nearly everything, their messages were โSpot onโ and always relevant.


29. Old transistor radios
Transistor radios run on batteries and they were very popular and broadly used until smartphones and music apps took over the world. Their basic advantage was that they were portable and easy to carry around.


30. Fax machines
Many people growing up in the late 1980s and onwards would remember these bizarre-looking machines, the fax machines were a combination of a telephone and a printer, there were fixed features in nearly every office.


31. Yellow pages
Imagine living in an era that there were no social media nor internet, so in order to find the contact information of a person or of an establishment, what would you do? Well, all Millennials would probably give you the same answer, โlook it up on the Yellow pagesโ! Today, the Yellow Pages have been digitalized but there seldomly used anymore.


32. Etch A Sketches
Etch A Sketches was a mechanical drawing toy for young kids which used to work with no batteries, you just had to turn it upside down and shake it and then you would have a โblank slateโ, then by turning the two knobs you could create lineographic images.


33. Pogs
Milk caps or Pogs was a popular kidsโ game back in the 1990s, there were so many different types, featuring different famous cartoon or anime characters. You could find them in any toy shop or often they were offered as a promotional item in cereal boxes or McDonaldโs, and other similar big chains.


34. Tetris!
Which kid doesnโt remember the hours he/ she spent over the famous Tetris console, and letโs not forget that this console didnโt have the sound off/ on button, which means you would listen nonstop to the same loudish tune while you were playing!


35. Walkman
Walkman was the โgrandfatherโ of the Discmans, anyone who was a child or a teen in the 1990s will remember the famous โmixtapesโ that were going around friends and family, mixtapes were the equivalent of todayโs โplaylistsโ.


Please SHARE this with your friends and family.