What It Was Like Growing Up in Miami Before Social Media

No filters, no likes, just heatwaves, loud music, and stories that only existed if someone remembered them.

Back then, your “status” was determined by who you knew at the skating rink, not how many followers you had. If you had a chirp on your Nextel or a MetroPCS with unlimited minutes after 9pm, you were elite. Texts were sacred. Group chats didn’t exist — you had to call your friends, one by one, and pray their mom didn’t pick up first.

After-school hangouts weren’t planned with DMs — they just happened. The mall food court was social HQ, and if you showed up with a Cinnabon in hand and fresh white Forces, you were basically famous for the day. Word traveled fast, but only through real voices — the kind that echoed in locker rooms, on the bus, or under the bleachers at Tropical Park.

We didn't watch other people live through screens — we lived. We danced at quinceañeras that felt like weddings, snuck into pools we weren’t supposed to be in, and memorized phone numbers like they were survival codes. The most “viral” thing in your world was that one kid who jumped off the roof into a canal and somehow survived. And trust — we all knew at least one.

Music wasn’t something you discovered in a curated algorithm — it blasted from your cousin’s Civic, or from a DJ booth at a warehouse party where the floor was half dirt. You had to catch the song on 99 Jamz, wait for the replay, or record it straight off the radio. If you missed it, you missed it. No rewinds, no screenshots, no reposts.

There was something pure about it. Something wild. Growing up in pre-social media Miami meant learning how to read a room, not a timeline. It meant getting roasted to your face, not in the comments. It meant making memories that didn’t live in your camera roll — just in your mind, in the stories you tell, in the way your voice changes when you say, “Bro, remember that one night…”

We didn't need apps to be seen. We had front porches, corner stores, and the back of the bus. And maybe that’s what made it real — the fact that it only mattered if you were there.