Nostalgia

Welcome to the age of nostalgia. From live-action remakes of our
favorite Disney films to Saturday morning cartoons streaming on
Netflix to a renewed interest in everybody’s favorite neighbor,
Mister Rogers, it seems like millennials don’t want to grow up.


Nostalgia — the “wistful or excessively sentimental yearning” for
the past — is not unique to millennials. But this seeming
obsession with all things ’90s looks to some like a failure to
launch. Are millennials just stuck in some kind of nostalgic
holding pattern? Or is there something else going on here?


Millennials straddle a technological divide that our parents’
generation — or their parents’ generation for that matter —
simply didn’t. We remember what it was like before the internet
made everything — even the past — readily accessible at the push
of a button. We know what it is to lose touch with friends, say,
and have no way of finding them again. Or to lose our favorite
toy and not know where to go to get another. For most of us,
things like computers, iPhones, and social media entered our
lives when we were old enough to notice. We remember a time
without those things, but we were introduced to them early enough
that they are now fully integrated into our lives. This is the
Tings and Things take on all things Nostalgia.