In 2012, Internet connections were much slower (40x in my case), there were far less YouTube videos and they were of much worse quality and sophistication. Android smartphones were a bad experience (for me at least), I don't know about iPhones, but my friend switched from iPhone to Android in 2012. Many people still used Core 2 Duos. SSDs were not common at all (and when someone bought one, it was usually about 120 GB), although I had one. Most people did not have a smartphone yet (I had one). New laptops battery life was 2-4 hours instead of 12-24 hours. Only the newest laptops had a 1080p display. Wireless earphones or headphones were very rare and they offered much worse sound quality than today, the battery would last a maximum of 3 hours (writing from experience). AI was seen as science-fiction outside of machine-learning, Singularity and Futurism circles. There were far less emojis than now. Language translation sucked and was almost unusable. The WWW was far smaller than it is today. Electric cars weren't really a thing outside of Tesla enthusiasts and many people were ridiculing an electric car idea. Elon Musk wasn't yet well known. Smartphonography sucked compared to now. DLSRs were getting popular, good mirrorless photo camera wasn't a thing yet. 4K wasn't a thing. More than 60 Hz wasn't a thing. People gamed on Wii, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo DS and Sony PSP. Angry Birds were very popular. Anime wasn't as popular outside of Japan as it is now. You couldn't legally buy a digital manga. China's GDP was 35% lower than today, Ireland's GDP was 58% lower than today. Overall, it was a different time than today.