Teens’ hilarious reactions to encyclopedias

Get ready to feel old…

The popular Internet series “Teens React” features a group of adolescents discussing and reacting to ancient artifacts. This week: encyclopedias.

“We are always taking a hard look at how life was in the past in coming up with interesting subject matter for our various series,” said Benny Fine, one of the videos’ producers, “and remembering how much I used to want an encyclopedia as a kid made me realize wanting a set is very unlikely for teens today and that conversation would be interesting. And it was.”

The teenagers were given a set of “World Book Encyclopedias” and had to guess what was lying in front of them.

While most knew what encyclopedias are, they struggled with trying to describe them. Some of the best responses were, “It’s like a dictionary for different stuff” and “It’s the Internet, but in books.”

“It was Google back in the day!” Tom said in the video. “It was the worst of times.”

Things took a tricky turn when they were asked to look up a chapter about reading. The teens were baffled — some didn’t realize the encyclopedias were organized alphabetically!

“It takes forever; this is annoying,” Alix says in the video. “This is why I don’t use these.”

Kids today!