Seven years ago may feel like yesterday for many, but teenagers who were children in 2014 are already nostalgic for the era and are taking to TikTok for praise their love for the fashion, music and style of the 2010s.
The bizarre trend sees teenagers playing music from the era, with hits from Lana Del Ray, Five Seconds of Summer, Arctic Monkeys and One Direction among the big hitters.
In dozens of clips, Gen Zers show videos and pictures of styles and images from the time including thigh high socks, tennis skirts, ripped tights and over-saturated photos.
Some are also dressing up in the trends with matte lipstick, American Apparel clothes and posing with cigarettes and multicoloured Starbucks drinks.
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Seven years ago may feel like yesterday for many, but teenagers who were children in 2014 are already nostalgic for the era and are taking to TikTok for praise their love for the fashion, music and style of the 2010s. Pictured: A TikTok users tribute to 2014
The bizarre new trend sees teenagers playing music from the era, with the favourites including Lana Del Ray, Five Seconds of Summer, Arctic Monkeys and One Direction. They show images from the era such as colourful Starbucks (right)
Those in their mid-twenties have also joined the trend, with many reactivating their Tumblr profiles to show what they wore as teens, while others have joked the era shouldn’t be romanticised as they cringe at their own fashion choices from the era.
Many have pointed to the social networking site Tumblr -‘and cult of Tumblr girls’ – to glorify the aesthetic – with #2014tumblr racking up more than 47 million views on TikTok, while #2014 has more than five million views and #2014aesthetic has a further 1.5 million.
The term Tumblr girls refers to women who often became ‘famous’ on the website – and usually considered attractive and interested in fashion, particularity hipster and alternative dressing.
They were characterised by posting many photographs of themselves, and having a grungy look.
Those in their mid-twenties have also joined the trend, with many reactivating their Tumblr profiles to show what they wore as teens, while others have joked the era shouldn’t be romanticised as they cringe at their own fashion choices from the era. Pictured: A TikTok tribute to the era
In one video, 27-year-old Simone Murphy from London jokes ‘going to 2014 anyone need anything’ as she sports a leather jacket, black creeper shoes and a mini skirt.
‘Eternally jealous of anyone that was tumble famous tbh,’ she captioned the video, which has more than 330,000 views.
Another video shows a teenager complaining how she ‘missed 2014’ by a couple of years, and how great it would have been to be a teenager in 2012-2015.
Another video shows a teenager complaining how she ‘missed 2014’ by a couple of years, and how great it would have been to be a teenager in 2012-2015.
People are commenting on videos saying they miss the era, referencing Lana Del Ray
Other items that feature heavily in videos are cigarettes, Polaroid cameras, and iPhone 6s.
While many of the items aren’t specific to the teen culture of 2014 and existed for years before, it appears lots of teenagers and twenty-somethings are nostalgic in lockdown.
Many University students – who would have been teenagers in the Tumblr-era have moved back to their childhood bedrooms, sparking another wave of nostalgia, after rifling through cupboards to find their old clothes.
Tumblr was arguably at it’s peak in the early 2010s, and was sold to Yahoo for $1.1billion in 2014.
Ripped tights and converse shoes are also a mainstay of the era, with many showing pictures of it in their posts
Other trends that are being associated with the era were big in the early noughties and nineties, including tennis skirts and grunge.
Krystine Batcho, a professor of psychology who studies nostalgia at Le Moyne College told Vox last year that the surge in use of Tumblr and the rise of the 2014 aesthetic may be down to people feeling nostalgic in lockdown.
‘Life as we knew it might never return in the same form. We really do yearn to, if nothing else, be able to visit that past,’ she said.
Even Tumblr itself has seen a surge in old content, Cortney Kerans, the head of communications at Tumblr, added to Vox that they’ve seen a surge in posts from ten years ago throughout 2020.