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orangesodauk · 4 years

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Saved by the 90s! Why are we obsessed?

I thought that being a 90s child had magnified my perception of the decade being so well-loved. Surely, it goes without saying that individuals are likely to romanticise the period in which they experienced childhood. A time when we enjoyed the absence of responsibility, peak health and the opportunity to spend more of our time with loved ones is always going to be looked back on fondly.

However, I was interested to find that a survey conducted by YouGov revealed that 61% of the UK felt very or fairly positive towards the decade that brought us the Internet, Britpop and HRH Britney Spears, more than any other time period. Music being noted as one of the main reasons for our warm feelings towards this particular period.

While we know that the Spice Girls, Take That and Oasis top trump many of those that have come before and after, I can’t help but consider that the appeal goes beyond the music.

As discussed in my previous post ‘The End of The World As We Know It’, the 90s was the last decade before a series of rapid societal and technological changes would go on to transform the world forever. A big welcome to the modern world.

And it is safe to say that since the beginning of the 00s things haven’t been so peachy. Just over a year into the new millennium, the 9/11 terrorist attacks shook the world and a controversial war soon followed. Since then, a variety of challenges have proceeded to affect our feeling toward the past 20 years. A rise in living costs, a broadening gap between rich and poor, growing tensions between nations, Brexit, further terror activity, a mental health crisis and a global pandemic have done little to inspire positivity.

Studies show that “People become nostalgic in response to adversity or psychologically negative states,” Juhl says. “Nostalgia helps restore people to a psychological equilibrium.”

Of course, it would be reductive to say that the generations before us haven’t endured pain. For thousands of years, humanity has suffered in a variety of different ways. However, the news didn’t travel half as fast, which may explain why the 90s seem to be the place of solace for so many.

It can be argued that the introduction of the Internet and smartphones have helped position the 90s as a particularly poignant period in time. Firstly, the decade was the closest reference we have to the way things used to be, before such radical change – times less driven by capitalism and technological advances. Life seemed slower and much more manageable because our consumption of images and information was relatively limited in comparison. There weren’t as many avenues to compare ourselves to others and view negative news stories 24 hours a day.

The impression I get from those who lived through the 90s is that they yearn to revisit ‘the good old days’ because it offered the many perks of modernity but not to the point where it is was as intrusive as it is today. Dial-up Internet made it impossible to stay online all day, especially when your mum would insist on calling your aunt on the landline. You could engage in conversation without the distraction of a mobile phone’s presence. It was that bit harder to cancel plans last minute or arrive late. You couldn’t log into an app and be presented with thousands upon thousands of people smiling back at your from ear to ear, with even tans, white teeth, solid abs in a setting to die for! How things have changed!

Thanks to the multiple studies spent on the effects of social media, we know that becoming connected in this way has, in fact, left us feeling even more alone. The 90s were full of shared experiences. Gigs and raves enjoyed in the moment, not through the screen of an iPhone, enough technology to stay connected without it replacing the human experience, the opportunity to experience nice things and consume them without the options being so dizzying.

But is all lost? Have current events and our further reliance on tech become too much? Are we going to steer back to where we began? It can be argued that that the pandemic has made us feel even more fond of a time when video calls weren’t the Saturday night event when we could dance with your friends together in a vibrant space and we weren’t slaves to all-consuming comparison anxiety. Maybe ‘the good old days’ are not as far away as we thought!

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