At sixteen, school was over but university was still years away. Two long years that felt like they would last forever. Two long years that felt like they would never end.

In the meantime I just had to get through sixth form and focus on my A levels. Heading into classes on the first day, this felt like it was going to be brilliant. A break from my old school which was badly funded and full of disruptive teenagers who didn’t want to be there. I was now learning alongside like minded young adults who chose every morning to get up and come to college.

It was a completely different atmosphere from the off - it was a melding of schools (and school cultures) from all over the North East of England. Yet it felt like for almost everyone I met, we should have been friends already. We had so much in common - we liked the same music, we studied the same topics, we had the same attitudes to life.

With friends from school it was often a friendship in spite of how we met - these were friendships created because of how we met.

Little did we know in those first few days that we would form some of the strongest friendships, the most intense relationships and the best nights out - only for us to drift apart years later. In this stage of our lives, we lived it as if it would last forever, but we were just in a holding pattern. We were preparing ourselves for adulthood and for university, jobs and our lives beyond.

Despite the overriding pressure of A levels, sixth form felt like a much more relaxed environment. It was no longer mandatory - if you wanted to mess up your chances by skipping classes then that was just up to you. Nobody was going to tell you off - it was your responsibility.

The balance of work and leisure time also felt less restrictive. There was more self study time and free periods than there were formal lessons. Lots of time to go to the library, work on your homework, revise for exams and set yourself up for success. Except, I don’t think anybody actually did that.

What we did instead was hang out in the common room. Somewhere between a cafeteria and a youth club it was the hub for the whole college. Groups slowly formed over the first few weeks and their usual spots and tables became established. To start with, we’d kill the time by playing pool, chatting, playing music and very occasionally, studying. Over time though, we’d slowly unlock new abilities and freedoms.

It would start with the first of us getting a driving licence - now we could feasibly leave and come back in between classes. Then once a few started turning 18, we could start to blag a group of us into the pub, or the bookies. Nothing ever very serious during the day, the odd pint at lunch or £5 on a horse (usually shared between us) - after all, we were all good students at heart.

At night though - it was a different story. These new freedoms and an injection of cash (from the governments new Education and Learning Allowance) meant that distances shrunk and options opened. Between us we could start to cobble together an adult lifestyle.

Not all of us could drive, and not all of us were old enough to drink legally. But once we had a few over 18s with proper ID - we could usually blag the last couple in (even the baby faced among us). A few people could drive and borrow their Mums car that we could all pile into. Between us we could afford a minibus to get home after a night out and one of us probably had a rough idea where we should go.

With those few adjustments and a bit of planning - we were now proper adults.

The memories I made on those nights out stay with me to this day. I still remember it being £1.52 for a pint in a Samuel Smiths pub (this was before they outlawed the fun in them). During the week you’d collect up all the 2p pieces you could for risk of spending the rest of the night with loads of loose change in your pockets.

After every night we’d go to GiGis Pizza and order a Parmo or “London Pizza”, two Middlesbrough delicacies.

We’d occasionally get lost because mobile phones were still pretty new and someone would forget theirs - or we’d be out of credit. But there was a simple rule - we’re going out drinking and making it to The Empire by 11:00. We’ll see you there.

The music scene was made up of what were affectionately called “Landfill Indie” bands. Largely interchangeable but incredibly fun bands with catchy guitar riffs and a signature sound which is completely reminiscent of the time. Ironically, these bands now have huge millennial followings and can sell out tours and arenas to this day.

This went on every week - every Thursday night in particular. Always the same and always great fun. But although we didn’t appreciate it at the time, this whole lifestyle had an in built time limit. We had two years to complete our A Levels and then either find a job, or go to university. Being from a deprived Northern town - the preferred route for most of us was to find a university.

That would mean we were scattered to Manchester, Newcastle, Loughborough, Portsmouth, London and other equally far away parts of the country. We’d all be back for summer holidays, but our lives moved on and moved further apart. Less of what we loved about Middlesbrough remained and many of us (including me) have never really returned other than to visit family.

Every now and again you might bump into someone in the pub, call out their teenage nickname and have them say “haha - nobody has called me that in years!”. We’ll always share those times, and I think if we all met up again today we’d share enough in common to remain friends. At least I like to hope this is the case anyway...

We didn’t know it at the time, but there was a Thursday night in The Empire that was our last all together. Childhood, school and sixth form friends would part ways and gradually drift apart. Not because of any huge decision, but lots of little ones that build over time to create a bigger shift.

It’s funny that the main reason we went to sixth form at all was to prepare for university and for adult life - we may have missed the fact that we were starting to live it already. In fact those two years may have been some of the most formative experiences that would go on to have a profound effect on who we are today. And although the pubs and clubs have changed names and closed down, the people have moved away, the time has passed - there is still a part of it that we all carry with us.

So, although sixth form is a transitional time and one with a defined time limit - it was never lived that way. I expect for lots of young people now - it isn’t lived that way today either. It’s your first time becoming an adult and a huge number of milestones are reached and accomplished. Driving licences, first pints, first nights out, first sex and relationships. It can be one of the best times of your life, but unfortunately it can’t last forever.

The early 2000s felt like a period of transition.

For me, it meant leaving Middlesbrough and moving across the Pennines to Manchester to start university. For the internet, it was the beginning of broadband, social media and permanent online life. Both felt unfinished in different ways, but full of potential.

Heading over the M62 on the first day of moving into halls, it would be the last time I’d sleep in my old bedroom full time. It would be the last time I’d regularly see some of my school friends. It would probably be the last time I’d hear the sound of dial-up internet.

University felt like adulthood with the stabilisers still attached.

I had to cook for myself, do my own washing and manage my own money, but student loans, summer jobs and halls of residence created a strange halfway world where there was freedom without full responsibility.

Most importantly though, it was the time I could really start shaping my own identity.

Before social media, that mostly happened physically. Through lectures, pubs, clubs, society nights and chance encounters. Two of my closest university friends I met completely by accident in a registration queue because one of them happened to be wearing a Middlesbrough shirt.

At the same time, my relationship with the internet was changing as well.

At home, the internet had always felt temporary. You’d wait for the phone line to become free, connect at 56kbps, spend an hour online and disconnect before somebody complained about the phone bill.

At university the internet was suddenly always on.

There was internet access in halls, in the computer science labs and in the library. Downloads that once took hours suddenly took minutes. MSN Messenger stayed logged in permanently. File sharing exploded overnight.

But despite this, the internet still felt separate from “real life”.

It lived inside computer screens and computer labs. Once you left your room for lectures, pubs or nights out, the internet stayed behind. There were no smartphones, no social feeds and no expectation that your life should be permanently documented.

That separation gave online life a strange sense of impermanence.

The web itself also felt smaller, stranger and far less commercial than it does now. You discovered websites through forums, MSN conversations and word of mouth rather than algorithms.

The internet existed in scattered islands.

One person would send you a strange Flash animation at 2am. Somebody else would show you a bizarre website in the university computer labs. Humour felt amateur, chaotic and experimental. People made things because they wanted to, not because they were building audiences or personal brands.

Websites like MiniClip, Albino Blacksheep and eBaumsWorld became part of that atmosphere, featuring looping Flash animations, strange memes and badly compressed videos that spread across forums and MSN Messenger.

At the same time, university life was expanding my world offline as well.

I was suddenly surrounded by different accents, politics, personalities and music scenes. Before online networking fully took over, university was one of the few places where you physically discovered your tribe.

Most of my social life revolved around music and nightlife. Rock Kitchen on Saturdays, Fifth Ave on Tuesdays and Satan’s Hollow on Thursdays. Cheap drinks, student discounts and crowded metal, emo and indie clubs full of people who looked confident to me, but were likely trying on new identities for the first time as well.

And because smartphones barely existed, almost none of it survives now.

There are very few photographs of those nights out. No Instagram stories, no TikTok and no permanent social archive. Most of it exists only in memory and in the stories we still tell each other years later.

In some ways that made those experiences feel more temporary, but also strangely more personal.

I’m still friends with many of those same people now, but we’ve moved from being indie and metal obsessed teenagers to having careers and marriages, being parents and moving to houses in the suburbs. The identities changed, but the friendships remained.

But looking back now, what strikes me most is how differently we related to documenting our lives.

Today, high quality cameras exist everywhere and recording has become almost automatic. Entire concerts are viewed through phone screens. Nights out are published online before they’ve even finished happening.

I don’t think this is a generational failing. People of all ages do it - myself included. And in many ways modern technology is incredible. It keeps families connected, preserves important memories and allows people to share their lives in ways that would once have seemed impossible.

But I do think something about the texture of experience has changed.

When thousands of people record the same moment simultaneously, the act of recording itself starts to feel less meaningful. We increasingly exist as participants, observers and archivists all at once.

Of course, the early internet had its own problems.

Alongside the creativity and freedom there was also chaos. Viruses, shock videos, mislabelled downloads and strange corners of the web that felt completely unsupervised. The internet was still culturally unfinished. Like me, it had freedom, but not yet much responsibility.

For people born in the 1980s there was an unusual overlap where adulthood, identity and the internet itself all seemed to mature at the same time.

Both felt temporary. Both felt experimental. Both were still becoming whatever they would eventually turn into.

And maybe that’s why this period still feels emotionally distinct in memory.

It was a brief moment before online life became permanent infrastructure. Before every experience became documented, searchable and archived. Before the internet stopped feeling like somewhere you visited and started feeling like it’s current all-encompassing form.

When I was a teenager, I didn’t know a single adult who played computer games — but now gaming is something millions of adults do every week.

I think that change really started with the PlayStation, which marked a turning point in the games industry. As a teenager during the height of the PlayStation’s popularity, I got to grow up alongside it, and that made the 90s an incredibly exciting time to be into gaming. It wasn’t just the leap forward in technology — it was the culture that grew around these consoles that made the era feel magical.

The PlayStation launched against a backdrop of BritPop, lads mags and lager louts. For kids graduating from their Super Nintendos and Amigas, it was the perfect time to be a teenager. Everywhere you looked, this new youth culture was pushing its way to the front. It had a strong identity, and Sony slipped the PlayStation right into the middle of it.

The covers of Amiga Weekly no longer held the same appeal against FHM, Loaded and Maxim magazines. Mario and Sonic were replaced with titillating images and soft pornography which appealed directly to the brain of the teenage boy.

It was the beginning of a new era for me, and for culture in the UK more generally.

From the very beginning, Sony positioned the PlayStation as something completely different from the consoles that came before it. They were new to the market, which meant they could create an entirely fresh image for themselves without any baggage about what their brand represented.

The new technology was impressive. The move from cartridges to CDs — something Nintendo stubbornly held onto with the N64 — suddenly allowed for proper music, full-motion video and cinematic presentation in ways that older consoles simply couldn’t match. However, this wasn’t the angle that Sony leaned into with their marketing - they sold an aspirational lifestyle and capitalised on youth culture in particular.

The PlayStation was no longer just a toy for children — it was something that would fit into an adult lifestyle.

Sony avoided the traditional family-friendly marketing approach and targeted the 18–25 market directly. Their adverts were edgy, strange and often deliberately confusing. The fictional organisation “The Society Against PlayStation” reinforced the idea that the PlayStation belonged to a kind of counter-culture. Not something your Mum and Dad were supposed to understand.

Of course, all of this sounds very cool — but where did I fit into it?

I’m a 13-year-old boy playing an Amiga 600 in a bedroom of a semi-detached house in a working-class area of Middlesbrough. Sure, I listen to Oasis and read the odd magazine, but I didn’t actually live the lifestyle all of those adverts and magazines portrayed. It wasn’t even close! For me, the entire marketing campaign was a fantasy and having a PlayStation wasn’t suddenly going to turn me into one of the effortlessly cool people from the ads.

And I think for a lot of people my age, the reality was something much smaller and more ordinary. It wasn’t coming home from the pub and playing Ridge Racer at 2am — it was playing football with your mates in the park before heading home for a game of FIFA or International Superstar Soccer. It was staying up too late on a school night trying to beat a level, or wasting your Sunday afternoon in front of your parents’ old TV.

So where did the PlayStation actually fit into my life?

Initially - it was still the games that pulled me in. The PlayStation had the technical power to represent shift in what games could be. It was genuinely revolutionary.

When you’d grown up playing Sensible World of Soccer and you booted up FIFA 97 for the first time, it genuinely felt like the future had arrived. Suddenly there was real music, video, commentary from Des Lynham and real-time 3D graphics. It felt like the limitations had finally been lifted.

Looking back now the graphics and style feels blocky and primative, but this was truly revolutionary. Augmented with the imagination of a child - these games felt photo-realistic. How could this ever be improved on?

Iconic games like Wipeout perfectly captured the PlayStation’s identity. Its futuristic visuals and nightclub-inspired aesthetic felt completely different from Nintendo’s colourful mascots, while the soundtrack borrowed heavily from the electronic music scene exploding across the UK in the 90s.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater had a similar effect. For thousands of teenagers, it became a gateway into punk, ska, hip-hop and skateboarding culture. The soundtrack shaped the music tastes of an entire generation - myself included.

And if you needed proof that the PlayStation was no longer aimed purely at children, then a trip to Raccoon City in Resident Evil — or even an hour with Silent Hill — would quickly convince you. Just a few years earlier I’d refused to play Doom because I found its atmosphere too frightening. That game had nothing on Silent Hill.

The PlayStation also saw the birth of Grand Theft Auto. Although it looks primitive compared to today’s cinematic open-world games, it still managed to cause outrage and controversy at the time.

Games also became a form of escape. Friends talked about how Final Fantasy VIII helped them through their GCSEs. Games became a place to retreat to during some of the awkwardness and pressure of teenage life, and that mattered to millions of people.

At the same time, this was still an era before online gaming really took over. Local multiplayer still mattered, and having two controllers was almost essential. In fairness, this was one area where the N64 absolutely dominated — four-player GoldenEye and Diddy Kong Racing felt revolutionary at the time. Luckily, most friend groups had at least one person who’d backed the wrong horse and bought an N64.

There were also no hard drives or cloud saves. Load times could be painfully slow, and memory cards were absolutely essential. Official PlayStation memory cards could only hold a surprisingly small number of saves - and some games took up an entire card to themselves, so most of us ended up buying bigger third-party alternatives from local game shops.

And those game shops mattered too. Before Amazon and digital downloads, buying games was a much more physical experience. You’d browse shelves looking at box art, pick up magazines, stare at games you couldn’t afford and occasionally bump into friends doing exactly the same thing.

Unfortunately, the biggest problem with the PlayStation was the cost. Consoles were well over £100, games could cost up to £40, and against my £5-a-week pocket money, that simply wasn’t realistic. Even the later Platinum releases at £20 could feel expensive.

At times, it felt like playing the demo consoles in Toys R Us was the closest I was ever going to get to owning one myself.

But the growing popularity of home computers and CD burners suddenly made gaming far more accessible — even if it was through slightly morally questionable means. You were no longer tied to the free demo discs and the odd big-money purchase.

Most of the CD swapping at school focused on albums downloaded from Napster, but games became part of that culture too. Having your PlayStation “chipped” opened up an entire underground world of copied games and disc swapping. At least in my school, it was absolutely everywhere.

Everyone’s dad, uncle or older brother seemed to know someone who could chip your console for you. Once it was done, the console’s copy protection no longer worked, and suddenly games became affordable in a way they never officially were. Usually there was some bloke selling copied games for £10 each — eventually dropping to £5 — or someone willing to burn copies for you directly.

I still remember buying huge spindles of blank CDs and slowly watching them transform into stacks of games and albums over the following months. Most had names scribbled on in black marker pen, although every now and then one of your mates with a fancy CD printer would produce something with proper printed artwork.

All of those kids I went to school with are now in their 40s, many with children of their own.

We live in a very different world now. Digital downloads have replaced disc swapping and piracy, while gaming communities have largely moved online.

Nintendo still holds onto its family-friendly image and iconic franchises, but the battle between Sony and Microsoft continues to focus heavily on cinematic, mature gaming experiences. Series like Call of Duty, Gears of War, Uncharted and The Last of Us would have been almost unimaginable to kids who grew up with the Atari, Super Nintendo or Amiga.

People slightly older than us were often called the MTV generation, and in many ways we became the PlayStation generation. As I moved into college, university and adulthood, I eventually did start living parts of that lifestyle Sony had promised us in the 90s. Indie music, clubbing and early-2000s nightlife all carried traces of the same culture the PlayStation had tapped into years earlier.

And even now, we’ve never completely left any of it behind.

The attitudes, interests and experiences we had as teenagers still shape who we are as adults. Maybe that’s why nostalgia-driven content has become so popular online. Through emulation, YouTube and social media, we now get to revisit those moments and even pass small parts of them onto our own children.

And for many of us, the PlayStation sits right at the centre of those memories.