National Geographic conducted a survey ahead of the Sunday premiere of the miniseries "The '80s: The Decade that Made Us," and found that three quarters of respondents believe the country was better off in the 1980s than it is now.
More than half of those surveyed believe the personal computer had the biggest impact on American life, with the cell phone behind at 27 percent and the microwave, VCR and Walkman all around 5 percent. That is the kind of ubiquitous media immersion that began in the 1980s, and apparently made it so memorable compared to the childhood nostalgia of past generations.