20 things that were way harder before the internet

People like to think of the past as "a simpler time," but was it really?

Back before GPS, dating apps, and Google, people had to live their lives without the ease and accessibility the internet affords — which made the following 20 things way harder than they are now.

Keep reading to see what what life was like pre-internet.

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Looking up information required flipping through an encyclopedia.

Google wasn't founded until 1998 — before then you had to manually find information in books.

If you wanted to check out a book from the library, you had to use the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) system.

An American Librarian named Melvil Dewey developed the DDC system in 1876, and the system is still used in many libraries today.

Finding your way from point A to point B meant relying on a physical map.

Now, you need only plug your destination into your preferred GPS system and you're on your way. Kids these days probably wouldn't even recognize a paper map. Or be able to fold it back together.