The 2010s
The decade we all got the same phone and started missing the old ones.
Vine, Blackberry Messenger, the death of the high street video shop and a supermarket own-brand of everything. Recent enough to feel like yesterday, gone enough to sting.
How the decade went
The sixth-generation Nano dropped the click wheel for a touchscreen the size of a postage stamp, and people wore it as a watch.
Free messaging when texts still cost money, on a phone with a proper keyboard.
Britain completed digital switchover in October 2012, ending analogue transmission and taking teletext with it.
Before the algorithm, Instagram was square photos in chronological order with a filter called Valencia on top.
Netflix launched its UK streaming service in January 2012 at £5.99 a month, with a famously thin catalogue.
The Olympics, the opening ceremony, Super Saturday, and volunteers in purple and pink everywhere.
Blockbuster UK went into administration for the second time in 2013 and closed every remaining store.
HMV went into administration in 2013, closing dozens of stores, and became the last mainstream place to buy a physical album.
A video app with a hard six-second limit that produced more genuinely funny content per minute than anything since.
DVD vending machines appeared in supermarket foyers just as streaming made the entire category pointless.
A plastic loom and bags of coloured elastic bands that produced bracelets, and then covered every floor in Britain.
A gentle competitive baking show that became the most watched programme on British television.
An extendable pole for your phone, briefly ubiquitous, then an object of universal embarrassment.
A specific look (full beard, top knot, rolled chinos) that spread from Shoreditch to every town in about two years.
A fixed-price lunch combination that became a national institution and a genuine economic indicator.
Food delivery apps replaced the paper menu drawer and the awkward phone call in about four years.
Sticker collecting came back as an adult hobby, with organised swap meets and spreadsheets.
An augmented reality game that briefly turned every park in Britain into a crowd scene.
Consecutive days of messaging tracked with a flame emoji, which turned casual chat into an obligation.
A bearing in a plastic frame that spun. Every child in Britain had one by May 2017 and none by September.
All 100 UK stores closed in 2018, ending the out-of-town toy superstore.
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