Silly things you weren't allowed to watch/read/have as a kid?

[A Very Big Fish]

As for the whole parents getting less strict, that's everybody's parents minus exceptions, its an age thing. I've seen it happen in my own family and others but the last child is the most free because parenting only increases in difficulty as you get older and have more children, you care less as you get older.

I think that a lot of parents also are probably more neurotic and anxious about their first kids. Less experience, and possibly in a less financially secure place in their life than where they'll be when the younger siblings are born.

I also remember a vague notion that coffee wasn't good for children,

I think that was just one of those health myths going around, my parents said it too. I get that too much caffeine would be terrible for a kid, but unless you're chugging it, you'll be fine.

 

[Asian tech support]

My mom didn't get me rollerblades (even the poor kids had them, no rollerblades meant I couldn't hang out with classmates) or a skateboard (I wanted one because of Back to the Future), because they were "dangerous". I bought a skateboard with money from my first job, and rollerblades last year, when I saw a pair that looked cool. Both were underwhelming. (They were cool with bikes, though, and bought me four bikes. When I grew up, I bought five more. Bikes are awesome.)

My mom didn't let my brothers and I get skateboards either but eventually relented. I promptly broke my leg and she was vindicated.

 

[Testacles Maximus]

As a kid my television was more restricted than it ever was for my friends. I was allowed to watch three shows a day, so I had to pick carefully.

 

[eDove]

To be honest, it seems to me that your parents were just doing what their parents had instilled in them, not actually believing in what they tried to instill within you. I know this because for me it was the opposite, since mine genuinely believed what they taught to me.

The opposite may actually be true in their case. They both grew up in secular households full of abuse and neglect, got into drugs, then found Jesus. It might've been over correction rather than just repeating what they were taught.

They were extremely radical followers in the beginning. Eventually, they lost interest in the simplicity of God's word. They fell down the early-2000s-era conspiracy theory rabbit hole, adopted bizarre, heretical interpretations of the Bible, and gave up on church. They change their entire worldview anually because they aren't content with plain ole' faith/belief. QAnon, politics, and flat-earthism became their new religion because it was more fun to them.

I had to take the brunt of their spiritual growing pains. They thought I'd be possessed by devils if I saw too many Disney movies, lol.

 

[Lovely Kin]

like Veggie Tales

That religious kid I played with wasn't even allowed Veggie Tales because his mother thought the vegetables were possessed. I always wondered what happened to him and his strange family.

As for the whole parents getting less strict, that's everybody's parents minus exceptions, its an age thing. I've seen it happen in my own family and others but the last child is the most free because parenting only increases in difficulty as you get older and have more children, you care less as you get older.

I was raised by a single father so it was much different for me I suppose. He obviously loved and cared for me, I didn't think he was paranoid about the shows being bad influences. His literal reasoning was "Spongebob laughs like an annoying lesbian. No."

 

[Internet Wizard]

Big Nate, specifically just something about Big Nate. Mom forbade me from reading it "until I was in high school" so I grew up on Diary of a Wimpy Kid instead

 

[rel=alternate]

Having a gaming console.

They just never agreed, even though I begged quite a bit, or offered to buy one with my own money.

They never stopped me from playing games on PC though. It was just the console. Turns out I don't like playing video games that much anyway.

It seemed random at the time, but I can see why they did not want this into their home. At least a PC has other use cases than playing GTA.

 

[BradeRunna]

My parents never had a problem with anything I wanted. Till I got a bit older, and my mom kept throwing out my porn. My dad said he didn't care if I had it but he said "your mother doesn't care for it". So, he usually took it from me and threw it away. I managed to keep some of it around I just got better at hiding it.

I really wanted Goldeneye 007 for the N64 but this was during the Clinton administration where the violent videogame hysteria was at it's peak, so my mom said no. I think I was 12 at the time. My mom was a liberal then and still is now, although to a lesser extent, because she's more of an old-school liberal than a modern-day liberal.

That game is from 1997. By then the violent video game outrage pretty much died down. That was more of an early and mid 90's thing. By 1996-1997 games like Duke3D were being released. People stopped giving a shit as much.

 

[Ozul]

Cartoon network, Disney channel or Nickelodeon. I had to watch PBS kids k-12. I was coming home from 11th grade and watching motherfuckin Arthur. Well jokes on them because now Arthur has gay marriage and BLM propaganda.

 

[Tism the Return II]

When I stayed at my aunt, DBZ and Pokemon were banned for being the devil's cartoons.

 

[ArgonianVoter]

I wasn't allowed to watch regular show, or have friends, or a decent life in general or any hobbies.
yay childhood

 

[Toji Suzuhara]

Box cutters, I'm pretty sure that they also threw out/hid a box cutter that a friend gave me at school, and they didn't let me use the ones we had at home either. I don't know why they were so paranoid with that

 

[The Repeated Meme]

That game is from 1997. By then the violent video game outrage pretty much died down. That was more of an early and mid 90's thing. By 1996-1997 games like Duke3D were being released. People stopped giving a shit as much.

Sure, maybe not as much, but I remember regularly watching content from the early 2000s and on criticizing the ongoing controversy regarding violent videogames. When my mom said no, she specifically cited this issue. So, while it may have been dying down from it's peak, it was still very much a real issue.

 

[Baumstriezel]

I wasn’t allowed to watch Jurassic Park up until I was in late middle school because it was too violent. For the longest time I thought there was a scene in it of a man being drawn and quartered by velociraptors because that’s what a friend told me happened in it.

 

[Major Pain]

Oddly enough, I wasn't allowed to cut my hair. Only trim the dead ends. And when I hit teen I just said nope, and I had like 30cm cut off, and yeah.
Long, long hair like that is damned heavy and damned difficult to care for.

 

[BradeRunna]

Sure, maybe not as much, but I remember regularly watching content from the early 2000s and on criticizing the ongoing controversy regarding violent videogames. When my mom said no, she specifically cited this issue. So, while it may have been dying down from it's peak, it was still very much still a real issue.

It was more around the time Mortal Kombat released in 1992. It continued on till about 1993-1994. By 1997 it was pretty much over. Then in the mid to late 2000's it saw a resurgence with games like GTA and Man Hunt. But the pearl clutching outrage died down again. You can kill as many hookers in GTA as you want now.

 

[souschef]

Mom kicked me out of the room when i was trying to watch Demolition Man. In the scene where Wesley Snipes rips out the warden's eye.



Chavo del Ocho is very popular in my country, she didn't like me watching it because she thought it would make me stupid. I watched and became stupid anyway. Shoulda listened.

 

[PonderosaPete]

Parents didn't want to play any Doom games but were cool with resident evil because they were ching chong willy wong shit. They were also okay with me watching anything super violent as long as it didn't have tits in it. To this day I blame them for my addiction to huge fucking knockers.

 

[Bothriolepis]

...honestly, all I remember of YouTube circa 2005 was terrible skits and Runescape videos with Paralyzer by Finger Eleven and a massive watermark for unregistered hypercam 2.

In the mid- to late-2000s, YouTube was pretty much just shitty AMVs all the way down, along with a few edgy comedy videos thrown in for spice. It was the height of the moral panic over social media, though, where high-profile child abuse cases on MySpace led to significant controversy in the news over whether teenagers should be using similar sites at all.

In reality, the odds of someone getting groomed on YouTube c. 2005-2010 were incredibly low if their parents taught them literally anything about online safety and gave them any meaningful supervision whatsoever. It wasn't really a social network in the sense that MySpace or Facebook were, and "No posting videos of yourself; No sending/replying to private messages" would be a simple set of rules only a little harder to enforce than telling your child not to use the site at all. It's still easier just to ban someone from using a service altogether, though, and most older adults at the time didn't really understand the distinction between different services.

 

[Brenda Holiday]

No cartoon network. I remember my cousins wanted to watch PPG so they told me to cover my eyes but I peeked.