Cassette tapes, reunion shows and lots of denim: There's a reason retro trends are back

Cassette-tape copies of Gen Z pop star Olivia Rodrigo’s debut album, “Sour,” sold out on the singer’s website. The casts of "The Nanny," "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" and "Mean Girls" each reunited last year to reminisce. Vogue put out a guide in May dedicated to finding the best pair of high-waisted jeans.

All these throwbacks may leave some double-checking their calendars, but the year is still 2021.

There’s a “hard-wired” tendency for pop culture to be recycled in 20-year intervals, but millennials — adults in their mid-20s to about 40 years old — and Gen Zers — who are in their early 20s and younger — may be driving a retro wave that's more powerful than previous ones, Gage Averill, a professor of ethnomusicology at the University of British Columbia, told USA TODAY.

These generations, facing a world marked by lingering uncertainties, are taking a unique solace in nostalgia, aided by an unprecedented access to pop culture of previous decades.

“The ’90s certainly bring light to people in really dark times,” says Jax (aka Jackie Miskanic), 25, a former “American Idol” contestant whose single “90s Kids” is an indulgence in 1990s nostalgia, peppering in references to Tamagotchis, Rachel and Ross from “Friends” and pop icon Britney Spears.

“It’s a really big information era right now. Everybody’s super-overstimulated, so taking it back to simple things definitely brings some joy to people. ”

The coming of age of millennials and Gen Z has been shaped by societal-shifting life events: 9/11, the Great Recession, climate change and the coronavirus pandemic. The uncertainties produced by such events take place against a concerning health backdrop for both generations, including poorer mental health and a faster decline in overall health.

“Major societal events – wars, national traumas, pandemics – that are experienced during the formative years of adolescence and early adulthood are going to have a particularly strong effect on generational memory,” says Hajar Yazdiha, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Southern California.

“In times of collective crisis, we try to make sense of the present by looking to the past,” Yazdiha adds.

More: Millennials are quitting jobs to become crypto day traders. Here's the risk, reward.

Americans have a long history of turning to nostalgia for comfort in times of crisis.

The drawn-out Vietnam War polarized Americans in the 1970s. In 1972, TV's "M*A*S*H" put a comedic spin on the horrors of war through its fictionalized portrayal of the 1950s Korean War.

Two years later, the Watergate scandal and President Richard Nixon's resignation put the nation in a state of political turmoil. In 1974, the sitcom "Happy Days" offered American viewers a return to the idyllic 1950s.

“Nostalgia is really cyclical,” says Kathryn Pallister, author of the book “Netflix Nostalgia: Streaming the Past on Demand.” “It becomes really popular in darker, more difficult times, and then as society has more positive experiences, it often fades to the background and then it resurges again when another negative or really challenging time happens.”

Millennials and Gen Zers have a lot to process

Millennials and Gen Zers have pressing social issues "hanging over them," such as climate change and other forms of environmental degradation, creating two "serious" and "very anxious" generations, Averill says. This existential uncertainty is unique and partially accounts for millennials' and Gen Zers' escapist "fascination with the past."

“Previous generations could always count on or believed deeply that the future was going to be much better, maybe not for them but for their kids and their grandkids,” Averill says.

Jannine D. Lasaleta, an associate professor of marketing at Yeshiva University, says millennials and Gen Zers are also affected by a unique “day-to-day anxiety” when it comes to their social media usage that may push them toward consuming nostalgic content.

“I don’t think there have been any generations before millennials and Gen Z that face so much ... anxiety about posting things or if people are liking their pictures,” Lasaleta told USA TODAY.

Millennials' and Gen Zers' tech time machine

For Gen Zer Courtney Nunes, nostalgia has been a lifelong love affair, especially during her teenage years.

"I remember being 16 and feeling hopeless and listening to bands like Rage Against the Machine (that) really captured my emotions in a way I couldn’t find in pop culture today," Nunes told USA TODAY.

Nunes, now 23, runs the nostalgic Instagram page 90smilk, which has almost half a million followers. Nunes says social media allows her to create a digital access to the pasts of pre-smartphone eras and share this nostalgia with others.

Millennials' and Gen Z’s sense of nostalgia has been impacted not only by the rise of social media but also their access to decades worth of entertainment on streaming platforms.

In particular, Pallister says streaming television has been “absolutely instrumental” in making millennials' and Gen Zers’ nostalgia more wide-ranging.

“It allows them to not only find (media) texts that are old like watching ‘Friends’… it also allows them to access a sort of contemporary text like ‘Stranger Things’ that has really strong nostalgic content,” Pallister says.

More: From 'Friends' to 'Gilmore Girls': Shows we love that make us cringe in 2021

In the case of "Friends," the continuing interest in the show led to a long-anticipated reunion on HBO Max in May, something fans had been clamoring for since the show ended in 2004.

But millennials and Gen Zers aren't letting the past get a pass. They're quick to criticize when their values aren't reflected in the era's media.

The enduring appeal of the '90s sitcom "Friends", for example, has inspired critique after critique for the show's use of fatphobia for comic relief, among other things.

Pallister says millennials and Gen Zers value diversity and social equality, and this informs how they relate to pop culture of the past, including new media representations of the past.

“Gen Z and millennials are very focused on diversity and equality and inclusion, and so they don’t always have an appetite for nostalgic content that doesn’t appropriately address diversity,” Pallister says. “So they will still watch it, but they will critique it and they also demand in contemporary shows ... or films that have a nostalgic element an almost better representation of diversity.”

Why retro trends may be here to stay

For today's youth and young adults, the challenges they're most worried about are unlikely to resolve anytime soon, so experts suggest retro trends may stick around longer than they have in the past.

“A lot of people don’t have a lot of optimism right now for the future with (the) environment and pandemic and all those things," Pallister says. "That kind of lingering pessimism may actually fuel a continued appetite for nostalgia. It may not ebb and flow as it has for boomers and for Gen Xers."

The most-watched regular season MLB game in 16 years featured a nostalgic reenactment of the 1989 Kevin Costner film “Field of Dreams,” with Costner and players emerging from the Iowa cornfields where the film was originally shot. LeVar Burton, who formerly hosted the children's program "Reading Rainbow," ignited the passion of "Jeopardy!" fans when he campaigned to replace host Alex Trebek. Vinyl album sales in the U.S. increased for the 15th year in a row in 2020, with 27.5 million LPs sold, according to Statista.

More: 'Field of Dreams' game draws MLB's highest ratings for regular season contest in 16 years

Bella Yusuf, 32, is the creator of Nostalgia Cosmetics, a makeup line centered on capturing pop culture nostalgia. Yusuf says nostalgia will be around for decades to come, as generational boundaries blur, because it allows millennials and Gen Zers to reexperience lost parts of their youth in a way that’s “comforting” and “soothing.”

“We never got to experience it fully because of the trauma ” says Yusuf, referring to societal changes such as 9/11 and the Great Recession. “Now, you could wear whatever you want. You could wear it as long as you want, (even) as society keeps moving fast.”

Yazdiha says there’s “something creative and forward-looking at play” when it comes to how the younger generations, particularly Gen Z, use nostalgia to roadmap their futures and reevaluate the course of society.

“The ways Gen Z is using nostalgia to rethink our collective societal future ought to give us hope,” Yazdiha says. “The kids are alright – we just need to get out of their way.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: '90s, 2000s trends are back. There's a reason for that, experts say