What was your favorite part of growing up in the ’90s? Maybe you spent hours playing video games or checking on your Tamagotchi. Perhaps you loved the fashion, from simple slip dresses to oversized denim.
The decade also gave us unforgettable boy bands, a huge era for hip-hop, and plenty of movies that people still rewatch today. Whatever you miss most, hopefully it made an appearance somewhere in this collection and briefly took you back.
So why are people still so attached to the ’90s today? Anyone who remembers the decade might say it was simply the best time to be a kid, and maybe they are right.
There is more to it than that, though. Our love for the era is also connected to the way old trends return and how nostalgia changes the way we remember the past.
Cultural trends in music, fashion, and entertainment often follow a cycle of around 20 years. Something that was popular in the ’70s might return during the ’90s, before coming back around once again a couple of decades later.
The ’90s ended more than 25 years ago, so their influence has already made its way back into the mainstream. Now, styles from the early 2000s are having their own comeback too.
The reason this cycle tends to last around 20 years is that it gives a new generation enough time to grow up and become adults. By then, they usually have more cultural influence and money to spend, so they start bringing back the things they loved when they were younger.
Teenagers discover those same trends for the first time and see them as something new. Before long, the cycle begins again.
The ’90s also stand for many of the things people miss today. As Vice explains, we often remember the decade as a slower and more analog time, before the internet became such a big part of everyday life.
Now that we have constant access to huge amounts of information and spend hours scrolling through social media, those years can seem much simpler.
Of course, the ’90s had plenty of problems too. Many countries faced economic uncertainty, while conflicts such as the Gulf War and the wars in the former Yugoslavia dominated the news. The HIV/AIDS crisis was also still taking a devastating toll.
Yet as licensed therapist Hailey Perez of the therapy practice Octave told Vice, people tend to hold on to positive memories and block out the negative ones. That is why nostalgia can make us look back on the decade through rose-colored glasses.
