I mean, if you want an answer to that you could just stop using your smartphone for a few weeks and see what your brain comes up with. Here's a short list of some examples that were popular when I was a kid and smartphones did not exist yet:

Magazines, the daily newspaper, books, going out and exploring, shopping at malls, doing a hobby or craft, personal projects, television, chit-chatting with friends or even strangers, video games, puzzles, play with your pets, exercise, play sports, sitting quietly and being alone with your thoughts.

I remember reading any text i found while beeing on toilette when i was a kid(even shampoo ingredients).

I was getting my vehicle worked over recently. At the time I was listening to a podcast. A couple other people, probably early 50s were chatting. The old dude in the corner, likely around 70-80 was just sitting there hands empty, looking around, reading nothing like some kind of psychopath.

For 40 minutes.

He did nothing.

It was honestly rather impressive.

Read.

In addition to reading ….

As a kid, we were constantly outside. In the summer, spend all day in the pool. Three seasons, in the woods. Any time, playing with neighbor kids. Winter, skiing, sledding, snow forts

Without doom scrolling, we had time for actual activities. Marathons of Risk or Monopoly. Assembling and painting scale models. Building, fixing, or repairing whatever needed it

Drugs.

• Watch tv.
• Read a book.
• Play single-player pc games.
• Literally go outside and touch grass.

I used to grab anything I could to read when taking a shit. Even reading shampoo bottle labels. Now I'm here typing this mess to you guys as I take a dump.

Read books, play videogames, go outside and beat each other with sticks...

When in the bathroom, the marketing and ingredients to all the shampoos were read.

Same thing I do now. TV, video games, find something to do with friends.

Some tropes of the 80s and 90s: Teenagers ignoring their family while listening to a Walkman. Dads reading the newspaper and ignoring their family. Moms talking on the landline phone with friends and neighhbors. Nerds reading comic books. Dads playing golf. Mom shopping. Teens just "hanging out" at some random place like a parking lot, near a lake, under a bridge, behind the band hall, etc. Smoking. Crossword puzzles. Jigsaw puzzles. Cards.

Let me tell you a tale about downloading erotic jpeg files over 28k modems and stitching them back together, in which the image file was split into pieces, uuencoded and posted on Usenet.

Read books, read newspapers, chat on the land-line phone for hours.

Before the cliché of everyone being with their faces in smartphones there were clichés about husbands who do nothing but read newspapers all day, or teenage daughters that massively inflate the phone bill because she's talking with her friends for hours, or children with square eyes watching brain rotting cartoons all day.

Over the last two decades we have reduced the amount of time spent to get many of the items we need. Since we can now order online from our homes we don't have to go out and get them, this frees up a reasonable chunk of time.

Also, over the last 50 or so years we have lost many 3rd places. A 3rd place is where you would spend your time that is not work or home. A bar, community center, an arcade..ect. those were a common place to spend time socializing.

Finally, items like reading and watching TV filled a lot of time. From reading the newspaper to getting the local news. Channel surfing was a big thing for a while. You would cycle through channels until you found something you wanted to watch, you could cycle channels for a while before finding something, so that took up a large chunk of time.

When I was about 13 I downloaded a lot of the Simpsons or sort on my phone, which was not a smartphone but still could play videos and songs. Had a lot of great time with that little device.

I'm pretty sure no one knows this phone because I think it was for South Korea only but it had dedicated touch button bar at the bottom for media control. It was so good. I wish that is still a thing..

Television was actually fun to watch. Magazines were actually fun to read. Video games were actually fun to play. Hell, playing outside was fun. Playing with toys was fun (even as an adult). Spending time with users on early internet forums was also very fun. Music was much more aesthetically pleasing to listen to (at least the hits of the 00s were, imo). We fidgeted with literally anything we could think of. Pens, rulers, balls (it's not what you think), toys, even our own fingers.

It was really easy to get bored back then too, but at least it was really easy to escape boredom back then.

I used to draw anytime there wasn't something to do, which was most of the time. Now it's my job

We also were bored quite much. We also did lots of slightly less boring things like just runnung around, reading half bad books or learning assembler.

• Work more.
• Go to church.
• Go to a witch burning.
• Participate in a crusade.
• From which century are you asking?

Sometimes, you just had to suffer being bored. And it gave you time to really think.

We used to interact physically with other people..

Had conversations. Went outside. Did stuff. Had real hobbies. People were much less lame. Smartphones aren't even smart. They just have The internet. If they were smart, people wouldn't spend the entire time scrolling through dumb shit

Reading, TV, video games, studying, crafts/hobbies

Listen the ringtones and play games I have on my Nokia cell phone

Born in the late 70s, I only recall being bored when my parents made me go to mass, or waiting while they did adult stuff like going to the bank.

Horsing around with my brother or playing with the Casio stopwatch kept us sane.

At home it was TV, Legos, music and bikes

We had something like e-readers and they didn't need recharging as they were made out of dead trees. But each one held just one book, so you had to take a bunch of them to the bathroom with you.

Having sex. Maybe.

Don't judge me, it's all about statistics.

Comic books. And those weird bathroom readers.

I used to pull a random Encyclopedia off the shelf and find something interesting to read about.

Holy shit, I didn't expect that question in , fuck I am old.

masturbate maybe

Ride bikes, go on adventures in the woods, break sticks, throw rocks in a pond, read books and encyclopedia, talk about wild imaginary adventures, see what can be hit with a BB gun

Threw rocks at stuff.

Trains, signs, each other,

Peed off of tall stuff.

Ride bikes.

Try to build ramps for the bikes.

Crash the bikes.

Ask your mom for a popsicle cause you have a fat lip now from hitting your face on your bikes handlebars.

Generally dumb things.

Freak out cause the kid s few doors down got his hands on some dry ice.

But the dry ice in bottles.

Run away when that nosy old lady calls the police cause people are "making bombs"

Books before, still books.

Read a book, play card/board/video games, watch movies, listen to radio, go to a public space in your community (parks, squares, etc.)

Listened to music. Hung out in a diner and had coffee & fries all night with friends. Hung out at the mall. Got drunk. Had sex.