As our years of adolescence have continued on, we often look back at those precious childhood memories that we hold so near and dear to our hearts.
Sometimes it's an episode of "Kenan & Kel", or an old Green Day song, maybe even a championship win from an iconic sports team. We associate certain memories, looks, phrases, and pop culture figures with the 1990s. We reminiscence over the days of no social media, and the effort it took for us to get ahold of friends and family that has seemingly disappeared amidst the technological advancements of the 2000s. There's no shame in any of us either; we're 90s kids.
But what defines a "90s kid"? Does it come down to being born anytime between 1990 and 1999? Or is it much more than that? For many, it comes down to how well you remember the decade itself. I've met people who can easily recall watching Ken Griffey Jr. take the field for the Seattle Mariners and catching new episodes of Full House on TV, declaring their childhood the typical one of a kid born in the 1990s. But then there's the late bloomers, myself included, who were born after 1995. Our memories are more rooted in the early years of the 2000s, where 90s pop culture took a transition to a brand new millennium. We witnessed Justin Timberlake achieve solo success while the kids a few years older than us remembered him best in NSYNC. Playstation 2 was our Playstation. The Red Sox were a team that won and did nothing less, at least from what we saw. For being born in the same decade, it's hard to find the line between the kids laughing at Kevin McCallister's antics versus the ones laughing at Malcolm in the Middle.
The truth is, the ideology of being a 90s kid has nothing to do with the decade itself at all. Our generation would be discrediting the character and lessons we learned at such a young and fragile age if we felt we owed it all to the years of our youth. The times were different, not only because of the lack of technology or social media, but because of our perception of the world around us. When we look back fondly on our childhoods, thinking about how great it is and how lucky we are to be 90s kids, we are giving props to a time where we found happiness and enjoyment in beautiful simplicity. We didn't have Twitter or Instagram or Facebook, and we really didn't need it. There was no need to display our moments over the internet because we were too caught up in living them, and creating more. Today's technology and ways of life have many benefits, especially for the children being born in 2010 and on. We don't know how they think, but we can only hope that they one day look back and cherish the memories of their childhoods like we do.
