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12 Hudson Valley Parent n August 2019 in 2019 has to be with electronics. I worry about how much time my kids are spending online, how much of a digital footprint I am exposing them to by posting photos of our life on Facebook and what kind of sick and twisted dangers are lurking within the now very vast world wide web. My parents didn't have to worry about that. If we did something stupid as kids, we learned our lessons and moved on. Today, things our kids do will be stuck on the internet forever. 25 years ago, the World Wide Web was a bit more like the Wild, Wild West. There were roughly less than ten thousand websites and only two million computers connected to the internet. We waited for what seemed like an eternity for our computers to get through the buzzing and clanking sounds to hear that robotic voice alerting us, "You've got mail." We saved our schoolwork on floppy disks and we had no idea yet about the luxury of using YouTube videos as entertainment during dinner at the local Ground Round. Toys and games taught kids valuable life lessons As a parent today I often see flashbacks cross my Twitter feed and yell, "I had that!" The toys and games of the 90s By PAMELA PERRY H udson Valley Parent celebrates its 25th birthday this year. In honor of this milestone, I reminisced about parenting and life in the early 1990s. The 90s were the days of boy bands, frosted tips and slap bracelets. O.J. Simpson was on the run, Michael Jackson married Lisa Presley and everyone was watching Friends. As a 10-year-old, my parents would ship my sister and I off to my aunt's home in Pennsylvania where I would spend most of my time painting rocks and choreographing intricate dances to "The Sign" by Ace of Base with my cousins. Technology was just beginning to advance Before cell phones and social media we rode our bikes to friends' houses to see if they could play instead of checking their Snapchat for their whereabouts. Back then, technology was just starting to explode and Amazon was only just beginning (Can you imagine parenting without the convenience of Amazon Prime? NOT!) My biggest struggle as a parent certainly helped shaped my insecurities. As girls, we had quite the array of games that taught us we needed to be pretty, popular and avoid skin ail- ments at all costs. A sleepover staple, Girl Talk, taught me that the worst thing that can happen as a teenage girl is to get acne as I was forced to wear the dreaded "zit sticker" on my nose because I refused to call the popular boy in class and profess my love for him. Parents in 1994 were teaching their kids the proper way to blow into a Nintendo cartridge to get it to work again and other handheld electronics began to saturate the market. If only I could have warned my future parenting self about the Fortnite obsession to come, then I might have had a very different outlook playing my Donkey Kong video game back then. In July 1994, HV Parent published an article called The Hobby Connection. While a good amount of our time was spent playing with video games and watching music videos on MTV we also enjoyed hobbies such as model cars, collecting rocks and building sets. Family entertainment was much simpler We all watched in awe as Tonya 5 ways parenting has changed in 25 years Parenting then and now In 1994, kids enjoyed playing with model cars instead of scrolling through social media. 10-year-old Pamela Perry (second from right) enjoyed the simpler times of the 90s. Some classics never change! Little ones today still enjoy playing with Barbie dolls.