Opinion
At 16, my younger daughter taught me a new word. It was the first time she’d done that, apart from text abbreviations like “idk” (I don’t know) or “nvm” (nevermind) that I had to search up.
We’d been wishing for the before times and she called it “saudade”. I Googled that too and it describes an almost enjoyable longing for something missing. It’s a Portuguese thing apparently, bittersweet and shaped by loss. American writer John Koenig, in his Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, came up with “anemoia” to describe a similar emotion – a kind of imaginative nostalgia for something never experienced.
Both my kids tell me they wish they’d grown up when I did, with no phones or social media, ’90s fashion and dance floors. Back then our locations couldn’t be tracked. Our necks weren’t ever craned over devices, except the odd Walkman or Gameboy. We did not feel longing for what our parents grew up with. Sure, I enjoyed the retro hits on The Wanderers soundtrack and a winged eyeliner. But I knew my lot was better than my mother’s, mostly due to the freedom to make more choices for my body and career. Although I still wish I could pull off tailored shift dresses and shiny patent stilettos.
But fetishising fashion is not the same as wanting to live in yesteryear, and I don’t think my teenagers are the only ones feeling nostalgic for the decade I came of age in. Just when our kids should be breaking new ground they seem to be wishing for the past, rewatching Friends re-runs and smoking cigarettes. Perhaps ravenous progress has forced them into reverse – or, unlike the kids after them, they are just old enough to have a sense of what they missed out on.
Once upon a time, we could all rely on some grounding constants: school would not be closed for longer than a day or two outside the holidays; bullies would not win; love would always prevail. Those times seem golden now, with promises of safe travel, home comforts, warm friendship and perhaps romance set to a soundtrack you could dance to in the rain.
When school stopped happening, my daughter found solace in the classics. She read every book in the Lord of the Rings series and listened to Silverchair and Evanescence songs. Now, like many of her peers, she’s moved through the ’90s and into the early 2000s – combining op-shopped Juicy Couture with real and pretend piercings.
We watch The Matrix together and it seems quaint rather than nightmarish. “Don’t be a Matrix baby,” I tell her when she’s rotting and scrolling. Invoking the plugged-in people – fuelling industry with their extracted life force – works for a while. She puts the phone away and turns outward again. But it isn’t long before she’s donating days of attention and lost opportunities to a never-ending data stream again.
So I try to appeal to her anarchic bent. “Those arseholes,” I say, referring to the cabal of social media moguls. “They want to keep you just busy enough to do nothing else. Not to create or explore. They just want your eyeballs and a tiny bit of your brain.” She agrees wholeheartedly but keeps scrolling.
I read about two fresh Stanford University studies: one that confirms AI chatbots are sycophants who will agree with you far more often than a human friend would, and another about how this can drive a delusional feedback loop. We know many young people are turning to AI for friendship and connection.
A chatbot friend would never call you a Matrix baby. A digital confidant could get ready with you (even if it can’t layer on product and make up) before spending time together and watching someone watch someone else playing a video game. You might even snuggle. All plugged-in, all without leaving bed.
And a chatbot would not have watched too much porn and expect you to act it out. AI won’t fat shame you, or skinny shame you, or slut shame you. Although it might depend on what the person in charge of it is selling.
The student protests against One Nation show young people are angry too, about the lot they are both saddled with and blamed for. My daughter joined the climate marches back in the Greta era but didn’t go this time, fearing she’d feel overwhelmed by the crowds and noise.
Instead, I hear snippets of her conversations with friends. When they visit, they pick up one of the guitars in her room that she rarely plays any more. They play the old songs that match the posters on her wall. Sometimes she sings or they sing together. There is so much talking – and not just shouting meme phrases at each other either. The golden hum of meandering conversation is music to my ears and makes me wonder if nostalgia is such a bad thing.
Lucy Beaumont is assistant opinion editor.
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