Abby Connolly
If you were a kid in the 1990s and 2000s, there’s a good chance you had a Tamagotchi that you carried around in your pocket or had hanging off your backpack. Or, at least, you really wanted one.
If you don’t know what Tamagotchi is, they were little handheld digital pets you were responsible for caring for. Tamagotchis came in the form of small egg-shaped machines with tiny digital screens and three buttons you used to take care of your pet.
Tamagotchis are the size of keychains, and most kids wanted one in the late 1990s and early 2000s. While there have been different “generations” of Tamagotchis, the premise of them has remained the same.
Your Tamagotchi begins as a small egg, and you are responsible for helping it grow into an “adult” creature by feeding it and training it routinely, like a real pet. If you didn’t care for your Tamagotchi or forgot about the toy, your pet could “die,” and you’d have to restart your device.
While Tamagotchis were mostly considered fun and trendy back in the day, people often underestimate just how much we learned from them as children and how they inspired a generation of kids to educate themselves in caring for something else.
If you had a Tamagotchi, here are some valuable life lessons you probably learned from your experiences with it.
Patience is key
A lot of kids became extremely anxious while waiting for their Tamagotchi to grow and evolve.
However, the longer they had the toy, the more they realized that patience is key to growing as people or waiting for others to grow.
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