Not going to lie, when I heard the news that the Disney Channel Original Movie Memorial Day Weekend Marathon was a real thing and not just a hoax, I got kind of excited. A little too excited, maybe. Like, “Rearrange my weekend plans in order to catch The Thirteenth Year and Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century at 4 in the morning,” kind of excited. When my friends who didn’t watch those movies growing up questioned me about my obvious – and lowkey scary – fervor, I tried to explain it to the best of my ability.
“It’s a total throwback,” I had said. “It’s like being six years old again.” And that was the truth.
I still remember having family movie nights or sleepovers with my grade school friends where we’d mix popcorn and M&Ms and watch Cadet Kelly. It was fun, and looking back on those times makes us feel good. However, so do a lot of things.
So why are we so fixated on looking back a few decades ago?
You’ve got to admit, something about our generation just loves to reminisce about the past. I and several of the accounts I follow on Instagram post #throwbacks on days that aren’t even Thursday, we’re suckered into buying “classic” or “throwback” versions of products and food and we love to romanticize the time we were born by reviving 90s fashion trends. There are Spotify playlists dedicated to songs that we probably weren’t even allowed to listen to when they came out, and people are trading in their iPhone cameras for Polaroids.
If you think about it, it really makes sense.
Millennials are one of the first generations to grow up at the start of the digital revolution that we’re currently living in. We’ve been fortunate enough to witness just how much humanity can contribute to its own development and see how technology can change the world. However, this means our world has changed dramatically from our childhood to our young adulthood, and it continues to rapidly change.
As humans, we seek stability naturally. While we’re always being told that, “Change is a good thing!” it’s comforting for us to return to what we know. On top of that, in case you didn’t notice, adulting is like, hard. And, a lot of the time, it really sucks. Fixing our 90s nostalgia craving allows us to return to the innocence of our childhood.
To make a long story short, whether you’re a throwback fanatic or you think the whole “vintage from two decades ago” scene is cheesy, don’t close yourself off from trying to understand it. As we move forward, understanding the significance in celebrating our past is essential.
