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The different periods of American culture have been defined by generations through style, color, aesthetics and music. But lately, it appears that college-aged students, many of whom are members of Generation Z, are lacking in cultivating our own defining style.

This indicates a need for the fostering of creativity and the development of our own generational identity – one that does not rely on the success or nostalgia of the past.

The culture we have tried to make for ourselves is chasing the aesthetics of a previous era of pop culture we appear to be stuck in. In college bars and house parties, the music doesn’t feel up to date with the current cultural progressions that have occurred since 2014. Kesha’s “Die Young,” Icona Pop‘s “I Love It,” Kid Cudi’s “Pursuit of Happiness” and “The Spins” by Mac Miller, all came out before we knew how to do long division, yet we’ve clung to them.

Even now, artists like The Dare and Charli XCX, whose music has risen in popularity with college students, are heavily influenced by artists like LCD Soundsystem and SOPHIE, who reached their peak in popularity in the late 2000s and early 2010s.

Cole Ross | Digital Design Director

Outside of party culture, we still rely on music from our childhoods to form our aesthetic vision of college. Indie rock bands like Vampire Weekend, The Strokes and Phoenix have all become anthemic of the college experience. Although indie rock still exists, those bands are still what social media uses as the soundtrack of what a college campus is like. Our generation’s college experience bears many differences from that of students from the 2000s or early 2010s, but we don’t seem eager to channel those experiences into something new.

Instead, we feel more comfortable reviving the same aesthetic created by generations before us, despite not aligning with modern experiences. This stunts our growth as a generation by allowing us to linger in the past. We will have hollow experiences if we continue to fail to produce new stylistic developments unique to our generation. We must reconsider the culture we view as representative of our current college experience to keep up with how that, and the creative products within it, have changed over the last several years.

Our day-to-day lives and music taste has evolved past the era of 2000s music, but when it comes to experiences that have been historically attributed to the college experience like parties, tailgates and bars, we choose to dress them up with outdated aesthetics. This nostalgic music aligns with the resurgence of digital cameras, both of which recall a cultural landscape that doesn’t exist anymore, and doesn’t accurately or uniquely represent our generation.

The 2020s saw a 52% rise in people searching “refurbished digital camera” on eBay and a 13% rise in the search, “vintage digital camera.” Despite now living in an era where everybody already has a camera built into the object they use most in life, people have been aching to return to the visual aesthetics of a time before then. College students aren’t just buying and using digital cameras, they’re intentionally seeking out old digitals that could produce an image that has the same filter as film from 2009.

We’ve also lost the popularity of television series and films made about the contemporary college experience. Shows like “Gilmore Girls” and “Gossip Girl” give glimpses of academia in the late 2000s and early 2010s, and now our generation continues to look back on them to shape our vision of college life. Not to mention that “Pitch Perfect” and “The Social Network” are the two movies that have most shaped how we view college, though they were released in 2012 and 2010, respectively.

It may seem like this is all pretty harmless, that it’s merely nostalgia for a time that appeared simpler than ours now. But if we lose ourselves chasing the past, then we will stunt our own cultural self’s development. When people look back at our generation, what do we want them to see? What legacy do we want to leave?

The British Invasion and the Vietnam War brought a counter-cultural revolution characterized by youthful rebellion and rock music. John Hughes’s movies and the distinct sounds of 80s synth wave created a distinct youth culture for Ronald Reagan’s America. The rise of indie rock and nihilism gave the 1990s its own version of youth culture. That brings us to the 2000s and 2010s, where culture started to slow down. The internet unlocked the past for us a little too much. We forgot to forge our own cultural identity because so many pieces of what came before are so readily available to us.

What our generation needs to do is start embracing new aesthetics and come together to understand what the sights and sounds of this time really are. When people look back on what it was like to be 18 years old in 2024, they should see a distinct and unreplicable experience that our generation holds exclusively, not an imitation of a time that came before us.

Ben Newman is a freshman at Syracuse University. His column appears bi-weekly. He can be reached at ibnewman@syr.edu.

Published on November 18, 2024 at 1:37 am