Having a 2020s Summer
Parents my age or younger are supposedly trying to spend this summer encouraging their children to live like Nineties kids. I have only superficial knowledge of social media trends, but I gather that this means forcing kids to engage in activities that, I guess, kids are by and large assumed to not do anymore: playing outside, building blanket forts, having face-to-face family time. This was bound to happen, not only because our modern lives are inarguably degraded by Big Tech, but because the Nineties, specifically, are still in the middle of their nostalgia moment.
The Sixties had their nostalgic comeback in the actual Nineties. In high school, I embraced the resurgence of bell bottomed sleeves and was obsessed with media about the Sixties: music compilations, The '60s television miniseries (starring Julia Stiles), The Wonder Years, and documentary books about hippies. I gobbled up the stories about it being a turbulent time that nevertheless led to positive, lasting outcomes for civil rights. I felt naively grateful for the activists who had helped to liberate women and black folks. After all, my white family was prosperous and I didn't know anything different.
I'm not sure what you call nostalgia for an era you didn't live through—probably something like fetishization. I think that's the correct word for a lot of the Nineties-adjacent content I see on social media. People love to recirculate the iconic images that remain in the popular imagination as defining of that period; they pick out the most charismatic, easy-to-enjoy parts of an era and present an affinity for them as devotion to the era itself. It's like claiming to be a wildlife conservation activist because you feel sorry for the adorable polar bears. I see countless pictures online of colorful iMacs, paper cups with the famous teal-and-purple Jazz pattern, and neon-colored fast food interiors of yesteryear, accompanied by any number of sentiments boiling down to, "Things were better back then."
Part of me wonders if half of the Nineties nostalgia comes from people who weren't even of age back then, and the other half from influencers trying to make a dollar. I like a hit of nostalgia as much as the next person, but I usually scroll past this kind of content rather than join a discourse that feels too self indulgent. I tell myself I prefer to live in the now.
Nevertheless, I miss parts of that era because it's when I was still growing up. I had no real cares about life yet, other than the angst of being a teenager, which may have been a mixed response to both hormonal changes and the beginnings of learning how shitty the real world can be. But most of my immediate concerns were about the boys I liked and the homework I needed to finish. I can't fathom the extra worries that kids have these days, or that will occupy my son's mind when he comes of age in the 2030s. Maybe I will start to seriously yearn for the Nineties or Aughts when that time comes around. There could be something deeper in this trend of online nostalgia, and in my own recollections of how I spent my time as a kid.
I remember screen time being of little concern to the adults in my life, even during summer break, so long as I didn't sit too close to the television. There were precious few options for rotting my brain or ruining my eyesight. In the daytime, I played Nintendo and beat Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong over and and over until I was bored. Or I watched repeats of The Price is Right, Saturday Night Live, and The Kids in the Hall. In the evenings, my family watched TV together: local news, The Simpsons, America's Funniest Home Videos. There was no concept of "prestige" television back then, but just like at any point in TV history, there was a mixture of quality from the insipid (early reality shows) to the great (Freaks and Geeks).
What we didn't have was an option to continuously indulge in the stupid, mindless stuff. The closest I came to that was watching Nick at Nite marathons of old sitcoms like The Brady Bunch, which came to a distinct end every night. We couldn't continue the marathons in our bedrooms on our personal devices. Our single TV was in the living room, shared among family members with different preferences, and our single family computer was connected to dial-up Internet with no concept of livestreaming. We were all bewitched by the possibilities of the new World Wide Web, but they were limited by both the technological capabilities of AOL and my parents' willingness to pay an hourly fee to clog up the phone line. As a result, my brain could reach only a certain level of rot before I needed—and frankly wanted—to log off.
Sure, I whiled away some of my free hours in ways that could be considered wasted time, like shopping at the mall or driving around aimlessly with friends. Suburban life included long stretches of boredom that could inspire less well-behaved kids to cause trouble. The worst thing my teenage friends and I did was get kicked out of an antiques store for making silly videos with my dad's camcorder. We weren't aspiring YouTubers or TikTok creators because those things didn't exist; we made videos just to entertain ourselves. We camped out in my backyard, listened to music on CD, and played with a Ouija board. We went to the drugstore by ourselves to buy ice cream sandwiches.
I wanted to be a writer or a photographer, and pledged to start a magazine with my friend Sharon when we grew up. I read magazines (Utne Reader, Seventeen) and books. I laid back to look at the ceiling or the sky while contemplating my feelings. I wrote with a pen in one hardback journal after another. I went Rollerblading in my neighborhood and jumped bikes over dirt piles in an undeveloped field.
Do we still live in a world that allows that kind of Nineties summer?
The strongest link between then and now is my son's love of America's Funniest Videos, which we watch on the 24/7 dedicated Samsung TV channel. He has only the most tenuous understanding that not all videos or songs can be played on demand. He also has trouble occupying himself without outside stimulation. Even I, as an adult who does a decent job self-regulating, feel a perverse sense of relief when I grab my phone after spending a stretch of time without it. I can barely comprehend how, as a young person, I kept myself occupied for whole days. I think an obvious answer is that my mind was relatively unfettered, and it was unfettered because Internet-enabled tech platforms were not advanced enough to reach into my brain, wiggle things around, and install their poisonous dopamine drippers. My peers and I were capable of being present with each other and engaging in hobbies, however silly they were.
I have only a narrow view of what life is like for kids nowadays. My son is only seven. I have nieces between the ages of nine and twenty-one, but they live far away, so I only get glimpses into how they spend their time and what they care about. I have no doubt that true friendships and strong family relationships still abound; humans are made to form social attachments. But I do think that connections—from person to person, person to community, person to the natural environment—are threatened. I worry about private interactions being mined for content. About people being unfairly judged against standards that propagate mindlessly through social media. About children growing up to believe that anything, from takeout food to AI-generated artwork, can be retrieved with the touch of a button, and that it's their right to be served in that way.
I worry a lot about all of us being squeezed into an unsustainable American lifestyle that has been greenwashed, whitewashed, and sane-washed by the oligarchs who run the place. The profit motive that rules us has never encouraged the perpetuation of simple pleasures, like buying a single Nintendo cartridge for your kids to enjoy playing over and over until its motherboard is fried. Or producing art for its own sake. Or gathering in front of the TV at a scheduled time to watch a show that you may never get to see again. Or basically doing any damn thing that doesn't expose your data points, produce subscription revenue for a big corporation, or let a piece of software feed you targeted advertisements.
We are moving so fast that we don't even know what we're breaking. On the other hand, my husband just told me that he ordered a Tamagotchi for our kid. My understanding is that those are fairly indestructible.