To answer your question of how kids write papers for school without PCs, the answer is on phones and tablets. I was in hs in the late 2010s and lot of kids at my school didn’t have access to PCs most of the time outside of school (whether there was one computer for the household which everyone had to share or just. No PC whatsoever) and had to write papers mostly on their phones and finish them on school computers. iirc my best friend would write his essays in the notes app.
that’s so crazy to me, I graduated in the mid 2010s & I remember using school computers/used laptop from my grandma/our home PC/the computers at the public library & I think most of my classmates did similar things. I didn’t have a smart phone until the summer before college 😭
