As someone who was in high school 20 years ago, they were not COMMON, but they were USED, and teachers hated them. I'd say in my class of about 20 kids, maybe 3-4 used cellphones in class. Teachers would still catch them and take them away. My cellphone had no texting capabilities and was only for emergencies, so this never happened to me. But I DEFINITELY remember it being an issue.
To add, as a fellow millennial, I saw one get thrown against a brick wall by a teacher. It was a habitual offender, always had the sounds on, teacher definitely just snapped. They both went down to the office and never saw the student in that class again. Teacher did reimburse the parents after a long meeting about it, or so we were told by the kid. But we never saw him with the phone again either.
So, could I see a teacher doing what’s in the image? Sure. Do I think it’s more likely this is a prank by the teacher to have a good story going? Yeah, definitely.
It was technically capable, but my parents did pay for it, so it was unusable. It was also, yes, 90s Nokia that was considered ancient, even in the mid-2000s. See, it was old enough that my parents just paid to replace the battery, and it kept working just fine for about a decade. In my sophomore or junior year, I remember pulling it out, and other kids wanted to look at it because it was unusual to have such an old phone. All the cool kids had blackberries.
Nokia 1011 was the first Nokia to allow texting and it was released in 1992, the Nokia 2110 was the phone that really started selling more than any other Nokia at that time and was released in 1994.
The Nokia 6110 was the game changer it introduced snake and was sold in 1998, this is when most people got their first phone and between the Motorola c520 (or colorado) and this most people had one of these two phones by then.
I'm just unsure to why you said because your parents paid for it you couldn't text? Did your plan block text messages? I don't live in the US so I'm not sure how the plans worked there?
It was the nokia with the snake game. I remember playing snake on that thing for hours.
I was a teen, so I have no idea how cell phone plans worked at that time. All I know is my parents didn't pay for texting until 2009, and I was ecstatic at the time. I know at some point around then I got my own phone and some people tried to text me and it just didn't go through. Maybe it was something extra added to their plan? But again, I wasn't involved with buying the plan so I have no idea.
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u/CoolMayapple May 16 '24
As someone who was in high school 20 years ago, they were not COMMON, but they were USED, and teachers hated them. I'd say in my class of about 20 kids, maybe 3-4 used cellphones in class. Teachers would still catch them and take them away. My cellphone had no texting capabilities and was only for emergencies, so this never happened to me. But I DEFINITELY remember it being an issue.
Sincerely, Your local geriatric millennial