# How did people find old friends and acquaintances before social media? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 13, 2020, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-find-old-friends-and-acquaintances-before-social-media/853692 "2020-05-13T06:37:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2020, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-find-old-friends-and-acquaintances-before-social-media/853692/41 "2020-05-14T00:48:11Z")
In the early 00s, I managed to find several old friends on [Classmates.com](http://Classmates.com), which still exists but it’s a pay website if you want to post, or it was at the time anyway. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2020, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-find-old-friends-and-acquaintances-before-social-media/853692/42 "2020-05-14T03:01:04Z")
Come to think of it, yes, I have a college alumni directory from when I graduated in the 80’s. And, I learned the names of some family members of old acquaintances from their parents’ obituaries. But yes, never underestimate the power of networking. Someone knows someone who knows something. Even if it’s parents who said “remember Joe? You went to school with him and he lived down the street. I saw his parents last month at the store and they said he’s married now and living in Chicago.” Social networking - the old fashioned kind, relying on gossip - is incredibly powerful. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2020, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-find-old-friends-and-acquaintances-before-social-media/853692/43 "2020-05-14T03:20:22Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > It boggles my mind that there was a book that contained the names, addresses and phone numbers of everyone in my city/region, including mine, and it was printed and distributed so that every house in my city/region had a copy. > > And we were OK with this. And there were city directories, which even listed people who weren’t in the phone book. ---
**Author:** ![Esprise\_Me](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/esprise_me/32/2947_2.png) [@Esprise\_Me](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Esprise_Me)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2020, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-find-old-friends-and-acquaintances-before-social-media/853692/44 "2020-05-14T03:39:07Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > You had to pay a fee to be unlisted, though. And people who did that were, in some circles, considered weird. ---
**Author:** ![smithsb](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smithsb/32/12107_2.png) [@smithsb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smithsb)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2020, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-find-old-friends-and-acquaintances-before-social-media/853692/46 "2020-05-14T06:07:07Z")
Our extended family had a letter (large manila envelope) that was mailed around with stories (gossip) about family and friends, pictures, newspaper obits, happennings. When it got back to you about yearly, we took out the old and furnished the new news. Now it’s facebook. ---
**Author:** ![smithsb](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smithsb/32/12107_2.png) [@smithsb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smithsb)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2020, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-find-old-friends-and-acquaintances-before-social-media/853692/47 "2020-05-14T06:09:23Z")
Our extended family had a letter (large manila envelope) that was mailed around with stories (gossip) about family and friends, pictures, newspaper obits, happennings. When it got back to you about yearly, we took out the old and furnished the new news. Now it’s facebook. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2020, 7:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-find-old-friends-and-acquaintances-before-social-media/853692/48 "2020-05-14T07:53:10Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > It boggles my mind that there was a book that contained the names, addresses and phone numbers of everyone in my city/region, including mine, and it was printed and distributed so that every house in my city/region had a copy. > > And we were OK with this. OTOH, I used to joke that the Los Angeles directory was the smallest in the land, because everyone there had an unlisted number, either because they were a celebrity or a wannabe. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2020, 10:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-find-old-friends-and-acquaintances-before-social-media/853692/49 "2020-05-14T10:21:34Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > To be honest, there is something kind of liberating never having to hear from people again. Not like I have anything against my old high school or college friends. But to a certain extent, I don’t really find it valuable to have a social network full of middle-aged people I kind of knew as teenagers who I don’t really share anything in common with. I fully agree with this. There is something to be said about life moving ahead, keeping your good friends close to you, but letting the casual acquaintance slip into the void of the past. I don’t know how many cases I’ve seen where someone gets in a fight with their spouse and ends up chatting with an old boyfriend/girlfriend that they last saw 23 years old. Dude/Dudette, there is a reason you haven’t seen that person in 23 years. Let it go. At the risk of sounding like an old codger shaking his cane at people, there is a good reason to let the past bury its own dead and move on to new things. Plus, in my profession, some guy I barely knew in high school acts like my best buddy when he or his family member gets a DUI or something and wants “friend” prices. I want to say, “Dude, we were not friends in 1992, and you wouldn’t have qualified for that discount then, and you sure as shit don’t qualify now” but I usually don’t. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2020, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-find-old-friends-and-acquaintances-before-social-media/853692/50 "2020-05-14T15:22:00Z")
> [@Kent\_Clark](#): > > You could always get an unpublished (not in the phone book) or unlisted (not available to anyone) phone number. And a lot of people did. It wasn’t that common here for people to be ex-directory - I remember there being one family in our street who were ex-directory and this fact was something that people talked about. The guy was a literal genius scientist, so I guess it’s possible he had 21st century ideas about data privacy back then in the 80s). But still, describing it to the modern world, it seems hopelessly naive - our solution to the problem of a few people occasionally needing to find someone’s contact details was to _ **broadcast everyone’s information to everyone** _. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2020, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-find-old-friends-and-acquaintances-before-social-media/853692/51 "2020-05-14T18:18:51Z")
> [@Keeve](#): > > And with no effort at all, you could make an anonymous phone call to any of those people, and they would have no way of finding out who the caller was. Even if they got the police involved, you’d have to call again, and stay on the line long enough for them to trace the call. > [@Mangetout](#): > > describing it to the modern world, it seems hopelessly naive - our solution to the problem of a few people occasionally needing to find someone’s contact details was to _ **broadcast everyone’s information to everyone** _. Thing is, though – we didn’t need to avoid negative consequences that at the time hardly existed. Unwanted calls were really rare, and ID theft was almost unheard of. I remember, through all of my life in the 50’s through 90’s, one case of a harassing phone caller; and that was three or four phone calls from somebody who thought heavy breathing over the phone was funny, or was getting him off. He stopped before we got around to trying to do anything about it. And spam phone calls, either for scams or for unwanted advertising, pretty much didn’t exist – probably because each such call would have cost something. Most people didn’t have credit cards, except possibly for individual stores, for much of that time, so stolen card info wouldn’t have been an issue; and if stolen bank info was a thing, it wasn’t enough of one to be publicized. Fraud schemes existed, but they were restricted by the fact that they pretty much had to go through the mail, and that again meant enough of a cost for every mailing that one’s mail didn’t fill up with the things. Now all that crap is so common that many people won’t answer the phone. And it’s if anything easier than it was to find out street addresses. If you needed somebody’s street address, pre-internet you used to need to have the directory for that area. Now all you do is type the name into any of multiple online directories, and pick from the list that comes up. Some of those directories will also cheerfully sell you lots of other information. Phone books didn’t offer to tell you people’s arrest records, or what other people they were known to associate with, or their ages, and so on. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2020, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-find-old-friends-and-acquaintances-before-social-media/853692/52 "2020-05-14T22:47:53Z")
For a while, you could get copies of the phone book on CD. I had one for all of Canada. IIRC, some court case back then said that a phone book was not original/transformative enough to qualify for copyright. So some company would send copies of the phone book to the third world to be typed in, and you had a database that you could search by name, number, or address order. ---
**Author:** ![Newtosite](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/newtosite/32/8623_2.png) [@Newtosite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Newtosite)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2020, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-find-old-friends-and-acquaintances-before-social-media/853692/53 "2020-05-16T03:40:43Z")
In 1991, I hired a PI. It took him a few minutes to locate my ex-boyfriend (who was happy to be found!) 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![dalej42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2020, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-find-old-friends-and-acquaintances-before-social-media/853692/54 "2020-05-16T12:40:41Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Y’know, it never occurred to me that e-book readers would do that… but now that you mention it, of course they would. Since we’ve already allowed this thread to be hijacked with someone needing to be a privacy warrior, what would be the point of having your Kindle spy on you? (Gotta take that shot at Amazon.) What’s the point of noticing someone lingering on a page? Isn’t it far more likely that the reader fell asleep or had to stop reading? Plus, a Kindle doesn’t need to be connected to the internet to work, only to download new titles. It’s quite possible for a Kindle to go years without being connected and it’s a device that is often used without an internet connection. Anyway, while Amazon will certainly see which books you buy, I can’t see any purpose in knowing that you lingered on page 103. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2020, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-find-old-friends-and-acquaintances-before-social-media/853692/55 "2020-05-16T20:38:56Z")
I didn’t say it was nefarious. Amazon wants to know what sort of things you like, so they can sell you more. And, for that matter, I want Amazon to try to sell me things I like. They can learn a lot about what you like from what books you buy. They can also learn a lot by which parts of the books you buy you tend to re-read. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2020, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-find-old-friends-and-acquaintances-before-social-media/853692/56 "2020-05-16T22:11:52Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Thing is, though – we didn’t need to avoid negative consequences that at the time hardly existed. Unwanted calls were really rare, and ID theft was almost unheard of. > > I remember, through all of my life in the 50’s through 90’s, one case of a harassing phone caller; and that was three or four phone calls from somebody who thought heavy breathing over the phone was funny, or was getting him off. He stopped before we got around to trying to do anything about it. And spam phone calls, either for scams or for unwanted advertising, pretty much didn’t exist – probably because each such call would have cost something. > > Most people didn’t have credit cards, except possibly for individual stores, for much of that time, so stolen card info wouldn’t have been an issue; and if stolen bank info was a thing, it wasn’t enough of one to be publicized. Fraud schemes existed, but they were restricted by the fact that they pretty much had to go through the mail, and that again meant enough of a cost for every mailing that one’s mail didn’t fill up with the things. > > Now all that crap is so common that many people won’t answer the phone. > > And it’s if anything easier than it was to find out street addresses. If you needed somebody’s street address, pre-internet you used to need to have the directory for that area. Now all you do is type the name into any of multiple online directories, and pick from the list that comes up. Some of those directories will also cheerfully sell you lots of other information. Phone books didn’t offer to tell you people’s arrest records, or what other people they were known to associate with, or their ages, and so on. I agree. It’s interesting though, that some people dismiss such things as dewy-eyed nostalgia. The world has definitely changed, and this part includes some changes significantly for the worst. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2020, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-find-old-friends-and-acquaintances-before-social-media/853692/57 "2020-05-17T01:40:09Z")
Beside what **md2000** said, there were CDs available with a good chunk of the phone numbers/names/addresses in the country - basically a cat of the individual phone books. My father-in-law found this girl he knew in high school using this. Didn’t work if your name wasn’t in the book or if there were thousands of people with a name, but it was a start. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2020, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-find-old-friends-and-acquaintances-before-social-media/853692/58 "2020-05-17T03:18:36Z")
> [@dalej42](#): > > Since we’ve already allowed this thread to be hijacked with someone needing to be a privacy warrior, what would be the point of having your Kindle spy on you? (Gotta take that shot at Amazon.) [Why Amazon is tracking every time you tap your Kindle](https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/31/21117217/amazon-kindle-tracking-page-turn-taps-e-reader-privacy-policy-security-whispersync) [how Amazon tracked my last two years of reading](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/03/amazon-kindle-data-reading-tracking-privacy) And it’s not only Amazon: > [@](#): > > [Book apps for tablets like the iPad, Kindle Fire and Nook](https://www.bullguard.com/blog/2015/07/did-you-know-that-your-kindle-is-spying-on-you-here-is-how-to-stop-it) record how many times readers open the app and how much time they spend reading. Retailers and some publishers are sifting through the data, to gain insight into how people engage with books. But my main point was that people shocked at publishing addresses in a phone book often casually accept invasions of privacy that didn’t use to exist – plus which, street addresses associated with a given name are now available online, making them more easily found, not less, than they were before the internet. ---
**Author:** ![aktep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f0a364/32.png) [@aktep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aktep)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2020, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-find-old-friends-and-acquaintances-before-social-media/853692/59 "2020-05-17T03:35:05Z")
> [@Keeve](#): > > 2004? Seriously? When I saw the title of the thread, I presumed that “before social media” meant “before pcs were so ubiquitous,” like 1990 and millenia before that. > > But by 2004, Google, Yahoo, and other search engines were up and running fine. I’ll admit that their reach and depth was not as far as today’s Facebook, but they were operational, and I did use them successfully for this stuff. Yeah, this. In 2004 or earlier, I had no trouble finding lost friends just using search engines. Heck, we surprised an old friend by sending her a congratulation card for her wedding, just based on information that came up when I Googled her on a whim. Heck, it wasn’t much longer after that that I was able to track down some WoW guild mates through Google starting with just first names, approximate age, one of their high schools, and a ventrilo IP address. (I had told them I could do it, and they challenged me to do so) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-people-find-old-friends-and-acquaintances-before-social-media/853692.md?page=2)