A Bad Case of Nostalgia

Sega Genesis. All That. The Backstreet Boys. These are all representations of nostalgic figures in our past. Whether it's your favorite video gaming system, a television show, or your adolescent years jam from back in the day, Generation Y--roughly ranging from ages six to twenty-nine--is definitely a sucker for the "pop culture of the late '90s and early 2000s that makes them wistful." Though it has been a proven trend for nostalgia to hit generations towards their older years, authors like David Browne--a New York Times writer--theorize that the September 11 attacks forced our generation to grow up faster, and in turn sparked a frenzy for us to desperately clutch onto any menial form of identity we can get our paws on. Although I do admit the September 11 attacks did trigger a shock wave whose reverberations can still be felt today, I don’t think that it would be equitable to pin our early case of nostalgia on those attacks alone. In contemporary society, we have done away with an exuberant amount of traditions that we once held dear for centuries such as the downslide from the extended family to the nuclear family to the divorced/separated family. Since our generation has made such radical shifts in the little time we’ve been here, it’s no wonder why nostalgia has crept up on us in our early years.