In the digital age we live in today, recycling old trends is very ‘in’. We are living in a “Great Remix”- from physical media such as CDs and records to early 2000s low-rise jeans, history is everywhere.

That begs the question, why is the past back now? The truth is, it always has been. Our society has been circling back even to the Renaissance era, with popular shows such as Dawson’s Creek and Never Have I Ever using the ‘love triangle’ trope, which was popularized in Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

“I think it’s so cool that we can bring in little tidbits from other eras and make a big mixture of all sorts of different things.” Sarrinah Asim, a junior at Tompkins High School, said. “Especially with Stranger Things, everyone’s really into the 80s right now, including me. It’s awesome.”

In the mid-2000s, the “Twenty Year Rule” was very much the standard; it took about two decades for a trend to cycle from “trendy” to “out of style” to “vintage” and finally back to being “trendy” again. However, with the introduction of social media and fast fashion, the once predictable loop was thrown into a chaotic spiral.

“Social media and phones definitely cause a wedge between us and the past,” Asim said. 

especially now because we have access to older media and have the world at our fingertips. We don’t really know what’s going to be popular next, because it’s really random.”

Though the cycle of trends is not cultivated as predictably, adopting elements from the past helps to build a younger generation’s identity. With the world at our fingertips with the click of a web browser, it’s not exactly about living in the past; it’s about using the past as a toolkit for a personal present, unique to each adolescent who can find themselves connecting with past ideas and elements.

“Just seeing old photos of my parents makes me want to share who I am with people,” Charlotte Andrews, a sophomore at Tompkins High School, said. “It makes me want to share my identity and who I am online with my friends.”

Critics often argue that, as a generation, we suffer from a lack of originality. This is primarily due to the culture that social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram have fostered, where trends come and go quickly.

Andrews voiced this when she expressed that “One post saying, ‘Oh, does anyone else think this is ugly?’ can completely turn everyone else against it, and then it’s out of style again.”

With the irregular turns fashion, media, and music trends have taken, it’s hard to say what will come next for the younger generation or what will be trendy for them.

Andrews believes that the constant is Converse- the trendy shoes that everyone seems to own a pair of. “For the past decades, everyone has always worn them,” She said. “I feel like that trend is going to carry on into the future.”

Whether the next trend is Converse, 70s music, or even Renaissance-style doublets and gowns, the digital age has proven one thing: that trends from the past never die. They only wait for their next reupload.