How climate anxiety is fueling â90s nostalgia
How climate anxiety is fueling â90s nostalgia
Vinyl record and CD sales are through the roof, telecom companies are recreating dumbphones, and lo-fi digital and disposable cameras are making a comeback, along with , , and Bratzâthe latter thanks to Kylie Jennerâs a couple of years ago.
As many are finding joy and entertainment in the rebooted toys of their childhood, the climate crisis rages on. Thatâs no coincidence. In 2022, The Atlantic proclaimed nostalgia as the , and just a couple of years earlier, The New York Times assured readers that nostalgia is .
âWe are in need of comfort and ways to engage in self-care because we know that the cards are stacked up against us right now,â says Britt Wray, author of the climate-mental health newsletter Gen Dread and director of the CIRCLE initiative at Stanford Psychiatry, which stands for Community-minded Interventions for Resilience, Climate Leadership and Emotional Wellbeing. âNostalgia, as an increasingly popular phenomenon amongst youth, makes sense once you start thinking about the chronic insecurity many people are feeling in this age of climate crisis, political turmoil and polarization, increasing inequality, an affordability crisis and so on. Itâs a very human reaction to want to crawl under the covers and ignore it all.â
Enter nostalgiacore, a trend thatâs taken the internet by storm by tapping into the emotional allure of the past, characterized by the revival of clothing styles, toys, and tech from the 1990s and early 2000s. But some experts say nostalgiacore is much more than just an aesthetic: Itâs a cultural coping mechanism for climate anxiety and doomism. After all, nostalgia is comforting; it soothes by evoking memories of supposedly simpler, more stable timesâan advantage thatâs been leveraged by politicians, who have turned nostalgic language into a .
But can harking back to a time of mindless overconsumption offer meaningful ways of coping in an age defined by climate collapse? The answer is not so straightforward. As Professor Lawrence Quill, author of âNostalgia and Political Theory,â cautions: âThinking carefully about nostalgia shows us just how easily we can be tripped up by views or ideas about the past that arenât really terribly accurate.â
The Rise of Nostalgiacore
Generation Z is the most climate-anxious demographic. Itâs also very nostalgic.
Eighty-five percent of Gen Z-ers , according to a 2023 survey by Cint, while another survey from GWI conducted the same year found that 15% . Gen Z, alongside Millennials, are also by far the biggest consumers of nostalgiacore, which is driven in large part by social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram; has more than 20 million posts on TikTok, many harking back to gadgets and games from the 1990s and 2000s, and #Y2kAesthetic and #Y2kFashion have accumulated over 500 million views. There are also dedicated accounts like and on Instagram with hundreds of thousands of followers.
Itâs no surprise that people who feel overwhelmed by climate anxiety may turn to objects evoking stability, longevity, and familiarity. âInteracting with nostalgic items offers comforting, tactile sensory experiences where things appear to be not so complicatedâand that provides associated feelings of safety and belonging,â Wray says. âWhether people are doing it consciously or unconsciously, [nostalgiacore] is partly a form of yearning for temporary relief from the affective experience of living in dangerous and complicated times where we are struggling with things like the climate crisis.â
There is some historical evidence to back this up: The rise of collective nostalgia has time and again emerged during periods of social upheaval. Historians note that in the years after the French Revolution, for example, people reported feeling a collective longing for the âgood old daysâ of the pre-revolutionary Ancien RĂ©gime. More recently, streaming companies during the COVID-19 pandemic reported a spike in classic sitcoms like âFriendsâ and âThe Officeâ as people took refuge in familiar TV shows to help cope with global uncertainty.
Quill describes nostalgia during disorienting times as a âlifelineââa way for people to anchor themselves during collective distress. But when nostalgia is on the rise, he says, itâs also important to ask: âWhat is it about the modern world that is so deeply unsatisfying or alarming that many young people look for solace in their past or the past of othersâor displaced nostalgia? It is clearly a yearning for a better time, especially when faith in the future has been shaken.â
Buying and Selling an Emotion
That faith in the future has been shaken is no understatement. In the past year alone, the world failed to meet critical climate targets, endured wildfires that devastated ecosystems across continents, and grappled with escalating geopolitical tensions that deepened global inequality.
Nostalgia is hardly a new emotional response to crisis, but the pace and scale of its commodification today are unprecedented. Nostalgia has very quickly become a marketable productâand brands have jumped on the bandwagon. From Y2K-inspired fast fashion to old toy reboots to , products that evoke times past have become a hot commodity.
Social media plays a pivotal role in amplifying and monetizing nostalgia by turning personal memories into marketable moments. Platforms like Instagram and TikTok thrive on curated nostalgia thatâs also a fertile ground for targeted advertising. âFacebook introduced its timeline a little while ago along with Throwback Thursdays,â says Quill. âWhat is being consumed here, of course, are images, not products. But, what is being gathered during the nostalgic process is user data, which is then shared with advertisers. So, commodities will be sold to users as a kind of nostalgic totem.â
Itâs a serious issue that raises questions about the ethics of repackaging and selling our intimate emotions as commodities to maximize corporate profits. While nostalgiacore might seem like a harmless manifestation of our collective yearning, it paradoxically also risks perpetuating the very systems of environmental harm that have driven us to the brink in the first place.
So, where do we go from here? Justin Lawson, a lecturer in health ecology and planetary health at Deakin University, says itâs key that we reclaim the future by critically evaluating and amendingârather than pining forâthe past. To Lawson, the first step is practicing environmental kinship. âMy view is that to be aware of [nature], we need to immerse ourselves in it,â he says. âBut granted, not everyone can and not everyone has the capability or capacity to immerse themselves, so we need to find ways that can bring nature to those who arenât able to access nature, or have certain trepidations about it.â
The reality is that thereâs a lot to learn about the power of movement-building by looking backward. âWe [can use the rise of nostalgiacore as an opportunity] to return to those old values of reduce-reuse-recycle,â Lawson says. âRemember, the 3Rs [reduce, reuse, and recycle] was first promoted back in the 1970s, which gained traction in the 1980s and â90s so itâs only fitting that we look to those eras for inspiration and develop the themes further to make a better impact and carry the flame.â
While Lawson urges an analytical reflection on history, Wray frames nostalgia used this way as a form of self-soothing, but stresses the importance of pairing it with tangible action. Thatâs the only way, she says, of effectively working with the anxiety and discomfort nostalgiacore is trying to alleviate.
âI donât want to write it off as being only some kind of retreat from reality or escapism because thereâs certainly a place and a time for this kind of comfort-seeking,â Wray says. âItâs just that we cannot hang out under the covers forever. We need to find ways of breeding up more hardcore existential resilience so that we can actually engage in transformative actions with others to build a better world rather than just hide away from the scary system in which weâre living.â
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