you're so right about credit cards in the 1970s....this is a really big change! And a car was $2K then too and there was less reason to go into debt since the cost of living was more manageable. The credit situation these days is really heartbreaking - as Americans we are encouraged at every turn to go into debt and then are enslaved by this for years.
I think that my 7 and 2 year old niece and nephew are also more social than I am ;-)). But like you, I really appreciate the creativity that arose daily back in the days of unstructured, unsupervised time. Life really was quite different!