Remember when picking your Top 8 friends on MySpace felt like the most important decision you’d make all week? When burning the perfect mixtape CD was basically a love language? When your Motorola Razr in pink made you the coolest person in school?
Yeah, me too.
The 2000s were a weird, wonderful time for technology. We were living in this strange in-between era—no longer completely analog, but not quite fully digital either. We had one foot in the old world of physical media and the other tentatively stepping into the digital revolution that would eventually consume everything.
Looking back now, it’s kind of hilarious how excited we got about gadgets that today would seem laughably outdated. But here’s the thing: those chunky devices and platforms weren’t just technology. They were cultural touchstones. They shaped how an entire generation learned to interact, express themselves, and navigate the emerging digital landscape.
So grab your discontinued iPod Mini (you know you still have it somewhere), and let’s take a trip down memory lane. This is the story of 2000s technology—the good, the awkward, and the “wait, we actually thought that was cool?”
The Devices That Made Us Who We Are
The iPod: When “1,000 Songs in Your Pocket” Blew Our Minds
In 2001, Apple released the first iPod, and it completely revolutionized the music industry, marking the starting point of the digital age of music—suddenly, you could hold all your favorite music in your pocket, wherever you were headed.
I still remember the feeling of unwrapping my first iPod Mini in 2004. They came in a cute, colorful selection, were compact, and held about 1,000 songs. At the time, it felt like holding the future in my hands. No more carrying around a CD wallet with 50 discs. No more making impossible choices about which albums to bring on a road trip.
While there were eventually other comparable MP3 players on the market, like the Creative Zen, they couldn’t compare—Apple had already embedded their colorful, compact MP3 player into the hearts of Millennials everywhere.
And let’s be honest: those white earbuds became a status symbol. You could spot another iPod owner from across the hallway, and there was this unspoken kinship. We were part of the club.
The Motorola Razr: The Flip Phone That Made Us Feel Like Spies
Few flip phones were more iconic than the Motorola Razr, an impressively slim flip phone that helped establish the company as a rival to the ever-present Nokia, dominating the flip phone market for several years.
The satisfaction of snapping that phone shut after a call? Chef’s kiss. There was something so dramatically satisfying about ending a conversation with a definitive flip. Try doing that with today’s smartphones—you just can’t.
Motorola Razr V3s were pretty sleek, especially for 2000s tech and what cellphones looked like in the early 2000s—they even came out in pink in 2007. The phone became so ubiquitous that the entire world was obsessed with it, though getting a new cell phone was exciting because everybody else wanted to see which one you got.
Before smartphones homogenized everything, your phone choice actually said something about you. Were you a Sidekick person? A Nokia person? A Razr person? These weren’t just devices—they were extensions of your personality.
Nintendo DS: Gaming Anywhere, Anytime
Released in 2004, the dual-screened Nintendo DS, which boasted impressive-for-the-time touchscreen technology, quickly made its way into millions of households with a plethora of games including New Super Mario Bros. and Nintendogs, establishing itself as the decade’s most important handheld.
When I was still in elementary school, I remember how ecstatic I was to receive my first pink Nintendo DS Lite one Christmas, eagerly choosing various games like Cooking Mama, Diner Dash, and early versions of Mario Kart. But the magic wasn’t just in playing games alone.
Playing on individual Nintendo DS’s together was a staple among cousins growing up, choosing games to connect devices and compete against one another or just going on PictoChat to draw silly graphics and send each other random messages.
PictoChat! Remember PictoChat? That revolutionary feature that let you send doodles to other DS users within range? It was basically the precursor to modern messaging apps, except way more ancient and somehow way more fun.
Nintendo Wii: When Gaming Got Physical
If the DS dominated portable gaming, the Nintendo Wii revolutionized home gaming with games like Wii Sports and Mario Kart Wii, proving that motion controls could make for as fun an experience as any of its more conventional rivals.
Getting the Wii, along with starter games like Wii Sports, Rock Band, Mario Kart, Wii Fit, and Just Dance, meant spending hours making Miis for all family and friends and many weekends challenging friends to friendly competitions.
The Wii did something remarkable: it made gaming accessible to everyone. Suddenly, your grandma was playing Wii Bowling. Your mom was doing Wii Fit yoga. Gaming wasn’t just for “gamers” anymore—it was for everyone with a living room and a competitive spirit.
PlayStation 2: The Console That Dominated a Generation
The best-selling console of all time, even today, the PlayStation 2 was a phenomenon when first released in the 2000s—if you owned one, you were automatically considered a cool kid, with 980,000 units sold in one day in Japan.
The PS2 wasn’t just a gaming console. It was a DVD player, a social hub, a status symbol. Having friends over for a PS2 marathon wasn’t just about the games—it was about the experience, the community, the shared culture of gaming that defined so many of our childhoods.
The Quirky Gadgets We Loved (For Some Reason)
Tamagotchi: Digital Pets That Taught Us About Responsibility (Sort Of)
Even though it might be primarily thought of as a ’90s fad, it’s unlikely there’s anyone who was a kid in the early to mid-2000s that didn’t also get swept along in the hype for this egg-shaped digital pet-raising device.
The Tamagotchi was tiny, but its impact was huge—as of March 2021, Bandai Namco has sold a total of 83.73 million Tamagotchi units.
I’ll never forget the panic of hearing that death beep during class. You know the one. Your Tamagotchi was dying, and you were stuck in math class, unable to feed it or clean up its digital poop. The guilt was real. These little devices taught us about responsibility, consequences, and the cruel reality that things die if you forget to take care of them. Deep lessons for a keychain toy.
Heelys: The Shoes That Made Us Glide (and Fall)
With wheeled shoes continuing to find fans even in the 2020s, Heelys are one gadget from the 2000s that may have actually outlived the fad label many would have applied to them—although first patented in 1999, it wasn’t until the mid-2000s that they suddenly became must-have footwear.
Were Heelys practical? Absolutely not. Did we all desperately want them anyway? Absolutely yes. There was something magical about the idea of walking normally one second and then smoothly transitioning into a glide the next. The reality involved a lot more falling and scraped knees than we’d like to admit, but hey, we looked cool doing it.
Flip Video Camera: Before Everyone Had a Smartphone
Long before affordable phones with amazing cameras would become a thing, the compactness of Pure Digital’s Flip Video cameras immediately won over 2000s kids with their point-and-shoot simplicity, becoming an even bigger hit when the Flip Video Ultra was released in 2007.
The Flip camera represented this beautiful moment in technology history—right before smartphones would make dedicated cameras obsolete. It was simple, affordable, and perfect for capturing those spontaneous moments. It may have become redundant quickly, but the Flip Video camera was an important stepping stone that many still look back on fondly.
PalmPilot: The Original Smartphone (Kind Of)
During a time when mobile phones didn’t quite function the way they do today, PalmPilots bridged the gap between organization, computers, and cellphones—these PDAs were iconic and helped redefine how we see technology in terms of how it could impact our day-to-day lives.
Before the days of apps on our phones, we used PDAs to manage calendars, store contact info, and organize documents and spreadsheets all in conjunction with our computers, with the Palm Pilot providing the standardized model that most competitors followed.
PalmPilots went out of fashion around 2011 when mobile phones began doing it all for us, and extra products became obsolete. But for a glorious period, tapping away on your PalmPilot with that little stylus made you feel like a tech-savvy professional, even if you were just a high schooler organizing homework assignments.
The Software and Platforms That Shaped Us
MySpace: The Social Media Pioneer That Gave Us Tom
Ah, MySpace. Launched on August 1, 2003, it was the first social network to reach a global audience and had a significant influence on technology, pop culture, and music, with 115 million monthly visitors at its peak in April 2008.
In the mid-2000s, MySpace was your space to post everything from major life updates to “I’m bored,” spend hours crafting an “About Me” bio that speaks to your soul, and even more time selecting a playlist or custom background that reflects your personality.
The amount of time we spent choosing the perfect song for our profile? Astronomical. Everything from the song on your profile to the background you chose, your “Top 8” friends, and your “Who I’d Like to Meet” section revealed something deeply personal about who you are.
And let’s talk about the Top 8. That feature caused more teenage drama than any other piece of technology before or since. Choosing your top eight friends was an art form, a political minefield, and a declaration of social hierarchy all rolled into one. Getting bumped from someone’s Top 8? That hurt. Making someone’s Top 8? Victory.
MySpace jumpstarted the generation’s digital literacy as kids and teens became comfortable using technology to express themselves, with the ability to change backgrounds requiring users to perform HTML coding. We didn’t realize it at the time, but we were learning to code—even if we were just copy-pasting snippets to make our profiles sparkle.
The Rise and Fall: Why MySpace Lost to Facebook
After News Corporation acquired MySpace for $580 million in 2005, the focus shifted to advertising revenue, leading to pages filled with ads that resulted in cluttered and slow-loading pages combined with complex customization options, making the site less user-friendly.
Facebook launched in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, gradually became the dominant platform, initially exclusive to college students before opening to the general public in 2006, introducing features like the News Feed in 2006 that revolutionized how users consumed content.
While customizable profiles appealed to Millennial teens, Facebook’s standardized and streamlined interface appealed to a wider audience of users, with simplicity proving key as other major social media networks like Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok also adopted standardized interfaces.
Looking back, MySpace’s downfall teaches us an important lesson about technology: innovation matters more than market dominance. Being first doesn’t guarantee you’ll stay on top. You need to keep evolving, keep listening to users, and never get complacent.
AIM: Before We Had iMessage
Before Slack and MS Teams, there was AIM, AOL’s instant messaging program that was very popular with millennials, with topics of conversation ranging from what your screenname was to who had the most cryptic away message.
Your AIM screenname was serious business. It had to be cool but not trying too hard. Edgy but not offensive. And your away messages? Those were basically the original version of Instagram captions—cryptic song lyrics, vague emotional statements, and passive-aggressive jabs at people you hoped would read them.
The sound of someone signing on? The panic when your crush signed on and you had to decide whether to message them? The strategy of setting yourself to “Away” so you didn’t look too eager? AIM wasn’t just a messaging platform—it was a whole social ecosystem with its own unwritten rules and etiquette.
The Tech Trends That Defined the Decade
Burnt CDs: The Ultimate Mix Tape
Burnable CDs came out in the late ’90s and became truly mainstream in the early 2000s—curating the perfect playlist on a burnt CD was a millennial’s love letter to friends and crushes, spending hours meticulously sifting through your iTunes library and CD collection, burning songs one at a time.
You had the pleasure of decorating a CD cover, writing out each song on the track list, and selecting the perfect-colored jewel case to match the vibe of your CD. Today, you can share playlists with one click, but where’s the romance in that?
Creating a mixtape CD for someone was an art form. The song order mattered. The flow mattered. You couldn’t just throw any 20 songs together—you had to craft a journey, tell a story, express feelings you were too awkward to say out loud.
Digital Cameras for Every Occasion
You probably used a clunky handheld camera to take pictures for your Myspace page. Before smartphones made everyone a photographer, we had to actually carry cameras around. And those cameras were chunky.
But there was something special about that separation. Taking photos felt more intentional, more deliberate. You couldn’t just snap 50 selfies and pick the best one—you had limited space on your memory card. Each photo mattered a little more.
Windows XP: The Operating System We All Knew
Windows XP is the stuff of legends—seriously, the photo called Bliss, which was used as the default background for Windows XP, is quite possibly the most-viewed photograph in history.
That rolling green hill became iconic. The startup sound? Instantly recognizable. Windows XP wasn’t just an operating system—it was the operating system for a huge chunk of people in the 2000s. It was stable, user-friendly, and familiar.
Windows Vista, which launched in late 2006 and early 2007, visually appealed to consumers with its introduction of widgets and sleek desktop design, but faced criticism for restrictive licensing terms, longer boot times, and compatibility errors. The Vista debacle made us appreciate XP even more.
TiVo: When We Could Finally Control Time (Sort Of)
The TiVo recording system was a saving grace if you weren’t able to catch your favorite show live—TiVo changed the game for television lovers, and though many watchers still record television, they just don’t have to use TiVo to do it anymore.
TiVo introduced the concept that you didn’t have to organize your life around TV schedules. You could record shows, fast-forward through commercials, and watch on your own time. It was revolutionary. Today, we take streaming and on-demand content for granted, but TiVo paved the way for that freedom.
What 2000s Technology Taught Us
Looking back at 2000s technology isn’t just about nostalgia (though there’s plenty of that). It’s about recognizing a pivotal moment in history when we were collectively learning how to be digital.
It’s difficult to imagine a world without technology today—from iPhones to laptops to artificial intelligence, technology is central to every part of our lives, but our generation can still remember a time when technology was at the cusp of its digital transformation.
We grew up as the test generation for the digital world. MySpace showed us how to build an online identity. iTunes taught us what it meant to buy and own something you couldn’t touch. AIM and text messaging introduced us to constant, direct connection with friends. The iPod and Nintendo DS proved that technology could live in our pockets and hands, not just on a family computer.We were the guinea pigs, the beta testers for the digital age.
And we learned that technology evolves fast. The gadgets we thought were cutting-edge in 2003 were obsolete by 2008. That rapid pace of change? It’s only gotten faster.
The Legacy Lives On
According to experts, a combination of new technology and quirky crazes made the early 2000s a standout time for toys and gadgets, with the ’90s and 2000s presenting new opportunities for products to be much more interactive, making for a truly exciting time.
Today’s teenagers will never know the satisfaction of a perfect Razr flip. They’ll never experience the drama of a MySpace Top 8 rearrangement. They’ll never understand why we got so excited about devices that held a mere 1,000 songs.
And you know what? That’s okay. Every generation has its technology, its gadgets, its “you had to be there” moments. Ours just happened to involve a lot of chunky devices, slow dial-up internet, and an endearing optimism about what this whole “digital thing” might become.
We, Millennials, are exactly the age of starting to feel nostalgic about the good ole days and want something to remember the times by. We’re seeing a huge surge in interest in 2000s nostalgia and retro gifts lately, with people purchasing Gameboy cards and retro-inspired products.
The Y2K aesthetic is making a comeback. People are creating playlists that sound like 2000s radio. Brands are re-releasing products that tap into our nostalgia. Because here’s the thing: that decade wasn’t just about the technology itself. It was about what that technology represented—possibility, connection, creativity, and the exciting chaos of figuring out the digital world together.
The Bottom Line
Were 2000s gadgets perfect? Hell no. They were clunky, limited, and often frustratingly slow. But they were ours. They shaped how we communicate, how we share, how we express ourselves.
Every time I see someone using a modern iPhone with its seamless integration, powerful camera, and instant access to everything, I appreciate it. But I also remember what it felt like to carefully select 20 songs for a burnt CD, to spend an hour perfecting my MySpace layout, to feel the satisfying click of a Razr phone snapping shut.
Technology has come incredibly far since the 2000s. We’ve got AI assistants, virtual reality, instant global communication. But sometimes, don’t you miss when it was all a little simpler? When your phone was just a phone, your camera was just a camera, and your digital identity was just a colorful MySpace page with an auto-playing song?
The 2000s were a weird, wonderful, awkward time for technology. And honestly? I wouldn’t change a single chunky, glittery, dramatically-flipped second of it.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go dig out my old iPod Mini and see if it still turns on. Wish me luck.
