Why Are Social Marketers Stuck in the 90s?

Photo Credit: Elliott Brown

Setting aside Left Shark for the moment, so many of today’s viral videos and shares on social media are a call back to the 90s.

• Jimmy Fallon’s epic Saved By The Bell reunion• #Throwback hashtag memes on Twitter• “Stuff only 90s kids would understand” Facebook pages• The remake of popular movies

We’re getting old!

It’s time to face facts. The early adopters of social media are getting older. We were still young pups when we set up our Facebook and Twitter accounts back in the early 2000s. More than decade later we swap pictures of our kids and lawn mowers instead of images of concert tickets and 4:00 a.m. pizza binges.

In our hearts, we’ll always be fresh-faced 20-somethings even if our faces have a few more wrinkles. Bonding over the shared memories of the Backstreet Boys or episodes of Blossom reminds us of where we’ve been and how far we’ve come.

We love nostalgia!

It may seem like 90s kids are a little obsessed with fond remembrances of days gone by, but previous generations behaved the same way. Remember the popularity of Happy Days and M*A*S*H? Our parents and grandparents like to frolic down memory lane just as much as we do, they just used a different medium -- television -- to do it.

“There seems to have been this kind of history of recycling of styles, especially since the Second World War. Once you get into youth culture and baby boomers, that’s really where it’s taken off,” says Scott Henderson, associate professor in the department of communication, popular culture and film at Brock University.

We love validation!

For many, the 90s were fraught with social anxiety, early dating minefields, and the general unease that comes with being a teenager. We don’t necessarily lose the desire for acceptance and validation as we get older, we just become more at ease with it. When a childhood memory we share gets liked, shared, or retweeted on social media it lets us know we’re still one of the crowd.

Thanks to the internet, our pop culture memories are never more than a few clicks away. Just about every popular song, television show, movie clip, or image you can think of is a simple search away. The internet makes it easier than ever to effortlessly share whatever nugget of nostalgia crosses our mind.

We can access everything!

However, maybe some things are better left forgotten.