By Megan Montgomery
In the past year or so, teenagers on social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube have all been wanting the same thing back: their childhood.
Endless TikToks and YouTube videos using the iconic music from C418’s Minecraft soundtrack have racked up thousands of views and hundreds of comments. Most of the commenters yearn to go back to the early 2010s, when things were “simpler”.
Wanting to compare childhoods and reminisce on the old days has been a constant trend, but why?
Nostalgia can be defined as “a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition,” according to Merriam-Webster. It can also be put into two categories: restorative and reflective.
Reflective nostalgia is when someone accepts the past as behind them, but still wants to feel the emotions they felt. The person knows they can’t experience the past again, but instead wants to mimic it.
Restorative nostalgia is, quite literally, the opposite. Instead of just feeling the same as they did before, the person experiencing this wants to rebuild the memories and relive the past.
While both ways of feeling nostalgic can be applied to this situation, it seems like it can be generally categorized into restorative nostalgia. This is simply because not only do people want to feel that glee when they first played the game, but they want to experience it all over again.
“We all played it when we were younger, but also the game is kind of limitless. You can always go back and there’s something new to do”
Junior Ben Ratico
When Minecraft blew up again, the general want for the memories and experiences we had in our childhood was felt by everyone.
“I felt like my old self, I guess. I mean, it wasn’t that drastic of a change but like something that was a fun part of my life that I missed out on”
Sophomore Alexandra Stumpf
While the newness of the game’s updates helps it to not get old or burnt out, some think that if the game keeps adding new things extremely frequently, it won’t stay “cool” for long.
“I think it’s going to be cool for a while, but once more updates come out it’ll just be overwhelming with the stuff you can do. It might just die out,” said Stumpf.
Even if Minecraft might be on the decline as it goes through the natural flow of trends, all kids who played Minecraft when they were younger can agree that being able to dwell on the feelings related to this game felt better than ever.
“It reminds me of the good old days, playing Minecraft with the boys,”
Sophomore Howie Marshall
No one can be a child forever, but going back to feel or experience those older pastimes makes us think about the world in a much different way. We didn’t think about it twice then because we didn’t have as many responsibilities, but now that we have more things to worry about, the good things we remember about the past stick in our brains.
Nostalgia can be a complicated feeling, but as we get older, it can be summed up as the time we had back then that we wish we had the time to now.
