Freya of GIRLS, one of my favorite substackers, just posted an article on one of my favorite book-authors’ substack called “A Time We Never Knew”, on the wistfulness that Gen-Zers can experience when seeing videos of high school in the 1990s and very early 2000s, back when humanity had not been reduced by its own devices into stoop-necked mental cases. I don’t think it’s paywalled, so click away. Here are some quotes, though.
But God, that loss—that feeling. I am grieving something I never knew. I am grieving that giddy excitement over waiting for and playing a new vinyl for the first time, when now we instantly stream songs on YouTube, use Spotify with no waiting, and skip impatiently through new albums. I am grieving the anticipation of going to the movies, when all I’ve ever known is Netflix on demand and spoilers, and struggling to sit through a entire film. I am grieving simple joys—reading a magazine; playing a board game; hitting a swing-ball for hours—where now even split-screen TikToks, where two videos play at the same time, don’t satisfy our insatiable, miserable need to be entertained. [Emphasis added] I even have a sense of loss for experiencing tragic news––a moment in world history––without being drenched in endless opinions online. I am homesick for a time when something horrific happened in the world, and instead of immediately opening Twitter, people held each other. A time of more shared feeling, and less frantic analyzing. A time of being both disconnected but supremely connected. […]
Maybe all generations look back with nostalgia. But my sense is [Gen-Zers] don’t do it for a time they never knew. They feel a longing for their youth; their childhood. My parents might flick through black-and-white photos and hear stories from my grandparents and feel intrigued, but not so much grief. I think there is something distinctly different and deserving of our attention about online forums filled with Zoomers wishing that they lived before social media. Wishing it didn’t exist. These are children grieving their youth while they are still children. These are teens mourning childhoods they wasted on the internet, writing laments such as “I know I’m still young (14F), and I have so many years to make up for that, but I can’t help but hate myself for those years I wasted doing nothing all day but go on my stupid phone.” […]
But we have to remember what has been lost. When we are grieving record stores, mixtapes, old-school romance, and friends goofing around in ‘90s high schools, what are we actually grieving? Delayed gratification. Deeper connection. Play and fun. Risk and thrill. Life with less obsessive self-scrutiny. These are things we can reclaim—if we remember what they are worth and roll back the phone-based world that degraded them.
We have to start somewhere. I suppose what I’m asking for here is some sympathy and a little more grace. It’s easy to mock Gen Z and Gen Alpha for their soaring screen time, to roll your eyes at teenagers wasting their youth in their rooms, ruminating about themselves, and feeling hopeless about the future. But they are trying their best to keep up with a world so agonizingly different from any before it—and it is the only one they have ever known.
So please. Next time you cringe at Gen Z for not coping, for not feeling cut out for this world, remember how painful it is to think that the good times are over. Then imagine how much more painful it would be to realize you never knew them.
