Stranger Things: How healthy were we in the 1980s compared to today?

Perhaps one of the biggest reasons that Stranger Things is so popular is its cross-generational appeal. For Millenials, it’s a window into the lives of adolescents in the not-too-distant past. For Generation X, it’s nostalgia; a depiction of childhood adventure with elements that will elicit memories of our own upbringing.

Adolescent life in early 1980s Hawkins is strikingly different from that of today. Three and a half decades of cultural, economic and technological developments have vastly changed how we spend time during our earlier years. As we’ll discuss, that can have a significant impact on our mental and physical wellbeing.

So when it comes to a healthier childhood lifestyle, how does the world of 1980s Hawkins compare to that of 2019? We got in touch with with Dr. Daniel Atkinson at Treated.com and a
nutritionist to look at the differences to examine this further.

Upside Down, Inside Outside

In Stranger Things, the main characters — namely Will, Mike, Dustin and Lucas — are often outside. They have active childhoods and spend a lot of time on their bikes. Will actually disappears into the Upside Down while he’s riding his bike home in the very first episode of the first season. (Though we’re not pinning the harrowing events that follow on their active lifestyles.)

There seems to be a relative difference between today’s generation of young people and how much time they spend inside, and those who grew up as children in the 1980’s and how much time they spent outside.

We spoke with colleagues in our office who were children in the 1980’s and asked them some questions about this idea. Many said they did have very active childhoods, and often played outside. There was a general consensus that staying inside, with much less technology available and therefore less to do, simply would’ve been boring.

Compared with the modern generation of young people, many studies have shown children are generally spending less time outside than their parents did when they were the same age. Much of this undeniably involves the advancement of handheld technology. In fact, it may often not even occur to children to play outside.

“Active play in a natural setting is really important in terms of social learning and development,” comments Dr. Daniel Atkinson, GP Clinical Lead at Treated.com. “Exercise is paramount because it helps us stay a healthy weight, helps muscle growth and development, is good for the heart and will generally improve our happiness.”

Writing on the Harvard Health Publishing blog, Claire McCarthy enumerates certain reasons as to why playing outside is essential for young people, including exposure to the sun so that our bodies can produce vitamin D, exercise, executive function and creativity, risk-taking, socializing and finding an appreciation of nature.

Methods of Learning

In Stranger Things, if our main characters encounter a problem or simply don’t know something, they take proactive steps to find a source of information. Dustin, in particular, reads a lot of books in the first season when they try to figure out exactly what is happening. We also see them go to the library and consult a lot with their physics teacher, Mr. Clarke. They’re also regular attendees at his A.V. club.

In short, if you were stuck for knowledge in the ’80s, you’d have to ask somebody who knew, or look in an encyclopedia. In modern times, Wikipedia and Google have come to replace printed resources for many.

The process of problem-solving, or finding the answer to a question in a way that isn’t instant, is actually quite important for development. Problem-solving is beneficial for certain areas of the brain. If you remove this process which, arguably, instantly accessible information has done to an extent, it can impact the brain and development.

Fast Food

The world is becoming increasingly interconnected and homogenous. McDonald’s restaurants operate in 120 countries and serve around 69 million customers every day – that’s more than the entire population of the United Kingdom.

In the 80s, while fast-food chains and unhealthy food was around and certainly still accessible — it wasn’t available on anywhere near the scale that it is today.

Expert nutritionist Ian Marber, when talking about food and nutrition in the 1980s, commented that “fast food was less accessible. I suspect that the general public was less informed but certainly we cooked more, ate out less and had less fat food. That said we had a lot of sugar — but didn’t worry about it so much.”

“Many of us are quite in tune with the dangers of fast food already,” comments Dr. Daniel Atkinson, “which is great. It’s important that we understand how harmful it can be. If it’s eaten in accordance with a balanced diet and we seek regular exercise, then it’s usually fine. However, people who consume too much fast food may be setting themselves up for some real health risks — not least obesity, heart problems, cholesterol problems, stroke and a reduced life expectancy.”

Noah Schnapp in Stranger Things season 3

Making your own Fun

As we see in Stranger Things, the characters are very much in control of their own activity and fun. If they’re bored, they must think creatively about what to do. Dungeons & Dragons is a great example of how they use creativity and imagination to occupy themselves.

Today, however, it’s arguable that we are seeing less and less of this among children. Video games and consoles are readily available, and while it’s true video games existed in the 1980s, their level of engrossment and complexity cannot be compared with that of today.

Even so, in the 1980s a lot of young people had to travel outside and journey to malls or arcades to access video games. And even then, as they were ‘pay per play’, they could only play as much as they could afford to. There was essentially then a cap, a limit to the amount of gameplay that had access to.

Today, if you own a console, it is pretty much unlimited. A young person with access to a gaming console can be lost in gameplay for hours and hours. Time can often slip away from us when this happens. We might miss out on the opportunity to socialize when we do this.

Smoking

We’re glad to see none of our favorite young characters in Stranger Things smoke, excluding Billy. (Though whether he’s a ‘favorite’ is questionable). The other two characters who smoke a lot that come to mind are Jim Hopper and Joyce Byers.

Though Netflix has cracked down on depictions of smoking after criticism in Stranger Things season 3, Hopper and Joyce still smoke a considerable amount of cigarettes on-screen.

How representative is this? Well, data shows that the rates of people who smoked in the US were certainly higher in the 1980s and has been decreasing steadily since a lot earlier. The same is consistent with other countries. Between 1980 and 2015, the sales of cigarettes sold per adult per day has fallen in steady trends in the UK, Spain, Japan, Austria, Germany, France and a wide host of other nations too.

“The main reason behind this,” Dr. Atkinson says, “is obviously because in the latter half of the twentieth century, the dangers of smoking became more widely known. Research into its detrimental health impacts became more prevalent and we began to realize societally it isn’t something we should do. Legislation, policies and public health campaigns followed to help better educate people, and this is why we’ve seen trends that demonstrate smoking rates are falling.”

So this is one vice then that children today are less likely to pick up than they were in the early 1980s.

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Social Media

We couldn’t talk about the differences between now and 35 years ago without mentioning the social media revolution. Obviously, social media didn’t exist in the 1980s. But it has become incredibly popular and widespread today, particularly among young people.

The characters in Stranger Things use walkie-talkies and telephones to communicate with each other. They plan where they’re going to meet and they call in on each other. These are merely ways of them getting together in-person so they can physically socialize.

Of course, young people today do still socialize in person. But the prevalence of social media has brought with it new challenges that young people face, including new expectations surrounding beauty and body ideals and pressures to conform.

Research into whether there’s a link between poor mental health amongst young people and social media is in its fairly early stages, though there is some evidence to suggest there is certainly a correlation between the two. The University of Copenhagen conducted a small trial where they asked half of their volunteers to continue using Facebook as they normally would and the other half to totally abstain. After just a week, the general trend was that those who had abstained felt more satisfied and happy with their general life.

“I like to think of social media in a similar way to how I think about fast food”, says Dr. Atkinson. “If you eat fast food in moderation, alongside a fair and balanced diet with regular exercise, then it’s generally okay and won’t impact your health too much. Personally, I deal with social media in a similar way. It can be a really useful tool to help keep us connected and help us access information more quickly, but too much of it can begin to feel quite draining and tiresome.”

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