Why Gen Z Loves Nostalgia Culture
Graphic by Valerye Hidalgo Garcia
Picture this: you just got home from third grade and threw your dirty pink Jansport on the floor before darting upstairs to your room to check the status of your Tamagotchi. Her vitals are stable, thankfully.
In your blissful childhood ignorance, you didn’t know that you would grow up and miss the days of digital pets and Club Penguin igloo parties as a 20-something-year-old. Don’t cry love, we miss them too.
We miss the sparkly Justice sets and the clip-on hair extensions; we miss the beaded bracelets and the chunky shoes; we miss watching Lindsey Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis switch bodies; we EVEN miss the slightly creepy Zhu Zhu Pets. We miss it ALL.
And while it’s healthy to reminisce on times past, there is def a screw loose with us Gen Z babies. We miss these moments a bit too much—and here’s why.
As the guinea pigs of growing up around a budding Internet, we were constantly adapting to the latest phone or device while simultaneously undergoing the digitization of our entire education system.
We had little time to fully grow out of phases on our own. Instead, we were stripped from one screen to another, overstimulated and fatigued by the new ways to play and learn while gripping onto our fleeting imaginations.
Instead of simply playing with dolls in our rooms or climbing trees, we were also in virtual chat rooms hosted by children’s gaming platforms creating online personas and amassing hypothetical wealth in digital universes. Yes, you read that right. While that may be a bit of a ~dramatic~ take on Club Penguin, we were dealing with some complex dynamics and stressors when we could’ve been playing hopscotch.
So how has the insanity of our digital childhood manifested itself into young adulthood, you ask?
Just take a look around campus. In the cycle of fashion and all things retro (cue sarcasm), we expedited the process to bring back our childhood favorites from not too long ago just so we could experience them for real this time. We manifested Y2K back into the conversation without even realizing it!
We are fully decked out in clay rings, vibrant tracksuits, playing Club Penguin Rewritten and listening to frat remixes of our elementary school bops (even the frat dudes are in their feels—that’s how we know this is a serious matter).
We are posing for pictures with the digital cameras we had in second grade for the grainy ~aesthetic~ just to feel something. And behind those cute throwbacks we are hurting, clearly.
Not to say we shouldn’t keep popping off in our jelly shoes and butterfly clips—and our inevitable Bratz Doll Halloween costumes—but we should probably throw therapy into the mix to unpack our years of acting as pawns for kid consumerism conglomerates (we're talking about you, Toys “R” Us).
Just saying. But like, if you have a working link for GirlsGoGames… leave it in the comments below. XOXO.