Generation Z longs for the 1990s: Idealizing a time when technology didn’t have a grip on young people

In Canto XX of Inferno, the first part of The Divine Comedy, Dante bursts into tears upon encountering the magicians, astrologers, and soothsayers. They have been condemned for wanting to know the future, for seeing too far ahead, and now they wander eternally with their faces turned backward, so that their tears fall down their backs.

Emily Segal, author of the novel Mercury Retrograde (2020) and a trend forecaster for major corporations, uses this scene to describe the current nostalgic viewpoint of Generation Z. According to the expert, young people have stopped looking to the future. Like the lost souls in Dante’s Inferno, they seem condemned to look backward. The products they consume — remakes, revivals, sequels, and reboots — are stitched together from the scraps of the 20th century, especially those from the late 1990s and early 2000s. Everything new feels familiar.

“Disruption and innovation capable of changing the world still exist,” Segal argues over the phone, “but the dominant cultural landscape is saturated with nostalgic remakes.” She cites as examples the fascination with vinyl records, Walkmans, VHS tapes, Polaroids, and the recurring use of archive or vintage fashion on the red carpet, noting that philosopher Mark Fisher already identified this “cultural strangulation” a decade ago, as he explained in his concept “The Slow Cancellation of the Future.” “His maxim that ‘nothing dies’ remains valid 11 years later: we are still surrounded by the same zombie-like forms as back then,” Segal maintains.

Nostalgia fluctuates. Some generations are more nostalgic than others. And not all generations are nostalgic in the same way. Psychologist Clay Routledge, author of Past Forward: How Nostalgia Can Help You Live a More Meaningful Life (2023), has been studying this phenomenon for years. According to his survey of 2,000 Americans, 60% of Generation Z would like to return to a time before they were “connected,” even if that time predates their own lives; 68% feel nostalgic for eras before they were born; 73% are drawn to media, hobbies, or styles from those times; and 78% think that current technology should incorporate design elements from the past.

For Routledge, what’s curious about young people is that “they aren’t nostalgic for past moments that belong to their own lives, but for a historical era they didn’t live through.” He explains that the key lies in observing that the time they yearn for coincides with the period just before the emergence of new technologies. “They maintain an ambivalent relationship with technology: in surveys, many say they enjoy its benefits, but at the same time express concern about its consequences. Hence their connection to the pre-digital age,” he notes via video call.

There’s a very illustrative example of this particular kind of nostalgia. It’s a series of viral videos, some real and others AI-generated, showing groups of teenagers from the 1990s leaving an American high school. They’re not doing anything particularly interesting or funny. However, watching them interact without a cell phone has an almost hypnotic effect. This feeling of longing is reflected in the comments: “I’m 20, I wasn’t even born when this video was filmed, but it leaves me with a feeling of emptiness. My high school experience wasn’t like this.” Another user writes: “I graduated in 2015. This seems like a good time. There’s not a phone in sight. People are actually talking face-to-face. I wish I could have grown up in a time like this.”

More and more initiatives are emerging that seek to counteract technology’s dominance over our lives. For years, the European Union has funded Youth Exchange programs, some of which incorporate “digital detox” experiences. In the United States, there has recently been talk of the “dumbphone boom” to describe the popularity of basic phones, like Nokias, among Generation Z. Offline parties, where cell phones are prohibited, have also become fashionable. And some are even talking about the return of the slow internet, the blogosphere of the pre-social media era.

The young philosophy communicator Leo Espluga, with over 80,000 followers on TikTok, explained in one of his latest videos that he’s been trying to minimize his digital presence for some time. He recommended going outside and walking without a phone, trying to get to places without looking at Google Maps. “It’s incredible how much energy you have, how many hours suddenly open up for doing things, how fired up your brain is,” he said.

The danger of idealizing the past

This phenomenon, which includes a déjà vu industry with thousands of young people intent on reviving the codes of the past, offers various interpretations. The philosopher Diego Garrocho, author of Sobre la nostalgia (in English, On Nostalgia, Alianza, 2019), points out that feeling out of step with one’s own time can have two effects: opening up new possibilities for the future or fueling a nostalgic view of the past. “There are judicious, balanced, and realistic ways of looking at the past, and others that border on the mythological.”

Data shows that Generation Z, especially men, is leaning toward more conservative positions. A study by Ipsos and King’s College London reveals that 60% of men in this generation across 31 countries believe that “gender equality has gone too far.” Democratic dissatisfaction is also growing: according to a 2025 survey by Circle (a private university in Tufts, Massachusetts), only 36% of young Americans trust that democracy can solve the country’s problems, and a mere 16% believe it “works well for young people.”

For Mario Ríos, a political analyst and associate professor at the University of Girona in Spain, youthful nostalgia is a symptom of its reactionary shift. “Radical right-wing parties are always nostalgic because they appeal to a mythical past,” he explains over the phone. In his opinion, it is a circumstantial reaction to a lack of direction. “They live in an increasingly complex and uncertain world. They look to the past trying to undo the decisions that, in their view, have torn us apart as a society. They idealize the nineties, when neoliberalism promised continuous progress as long as the markets kept growing.” Routledge clarifies that nostalgia is not always a sign of regression. Properly understood, it can be the opposite of stagnation: a form of creativity and drive. “Generation Z looks to a pre-digital past in search of what it perceives as valuable in order to reshape its present,” he explains.

Garrocho defends the inspirational potential of nostalgia. He argues that the fact that all political communities are based on a founding myth — always false, to a greater or lesser degree — demonstrates its usefulness. “Dreaming of a bucolic past, of a time when we were better, or of a history populated by heroes, can fuel reasonable and fertile hopes for imagining a better world. If we were better (or if we at least dreamed that we were), we are more likely to believe in the possibility of embracing excellence again.”

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