Growing up in the noughties was a strange time. The Internet was still new and shiny and all you wanted was to spend your time browsing it, playing games, and chatting with your friends. Here are 10 websites you definitely lived on when you were a kid!
This was the best social media website of all time and it sucks that it does not exist anymore. At least, not in the way it did. You spent every evening sending “luv” to your besties, drawing on your friends’ whiteboards, and trying to figure out if any of the fake celebrity accounts might be real. You probably also spent way too long picking out a theme for your page as well.
The Barbie and MyScene websites were iconic. You could design Barbie’s clothes, makeover her hair and makeup, and even look after babies! The site was also covered in advertising for all the Barbie toys you would end up begging your mum to buy you for Christmas. Barbie.com still exists today and is still full of games – so if you ever want to revisit your childhood, you totally can!
The ultimate hangout for children of the noughties, Club Penguin was probably the first MMO you ever played. You dedicated your life to decorating and upgrading your igloo. You waited patiently for the monthly party to get free clothes for your penguin. You argued with other penguins.
The day the servers were officially shut down was the saddest ever. Thankfully, there is a new version online now – so you can return to the penguin world whenever you like!
Smile was a Sunday morning magazine show for kids which aired on BBC Two, but most of us probably remember the website more than the program. The site featured a bunch of iconic games which definitely drained your free time. To this day, you are probably still arguing with your friends over whether Nev It Up or Bandit Bites was the best.
Not a website exactly but definitely an online feature which became a staple of your childhood. This was the greatest messenger system ever. Memories including appearing offline to hide from someone you didn’t like, changing your username to depressing song lyrics, nudging someone so many times that their computer crashed, and saving thousands of emoticons to your computer.
Everything Girl was the parent company of the Barbie.com and they also hosted this fab site. There were loads of fun games on here, including one where you could paint Polly’s house with the most garish decor known to man. Polly and her friends would randomly pop up from behind furniture and freak you out whilst you played.
This was the place to be for cheesy fanfiction. Did you have dreams of becoming Mrs. Harry Styles? Time to write a fantastic story about how you both fell in love at the X Factor audition! You probably heard a rumour about someone becoming a famous author off the back of a WattPad story and genuinely believed the same would happen to you with your Justin Bieber fanfic.
In the days before smartphones with an app store, this was where you would go to play games for free. You wasted hours browsing pages and pages of games looking for one really good one and then playing it religiously whilst your mum yelled at you to get off the PC. Miniclip still exists today and they are the masterminds behind 8 Ball Pool on smartphones.
Virtual pets were one of the best parts of the 90s and this website took it to the next level. The world of Neopia was looked amazing and was filled with sights such as the Money Tree, Rainbow Pool, Neolodge, Art Centre, and Magic Shop. The day they added a Disney Theatre and the McDonalds was more exciting than Christmas. Neopets is still active today. I know because my friend used to sit and play it during our university lectures.
We probably should not have been using Habbo Hotel, to be honest – but something about its cute 8-bit graphics was too enticing. You could order food and drinks, play games, and mingle with other people hanging around the hotel. Your parents probably got sick of you asking for money to buy credits, but it was the only way to customise your guest room! Channel 4 ended up launching an investigation into Habbo Hotel in 2012, revealing the darker underbelly of the site – but all we kids saw was a fun game.
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