Why can’t we move past 2014?

I was 14 years old in 2014. Embroiled in the discomfort of puberty and the general rage and confusion that comes with being a teenager, it didn’t feel like a year that was particularly important or life-changing to me. One of the most significant memories I have from that year was performing Lorde’s “Royals” at my school’s talent show with my best friends (we were robbed and came second place). The night before, I had pulled an all-nighter, as I would often do, copying the likes of Orion Carloto and Sam Fazz, some of the coolest girls on YouTube who would frequently discuss their self-induced insomnia as they’d stay up all night reinventing themselves on Tumblr. Most nights, I would do the same, reblogging pictures of clothes I’d like to wear, people I had crushes on and girls I wished I looked like. It felt like an invaluable use of my time, even though it left me exhausted the next day.

While I look fondly at these memories, I don’t think about them often. Yet, over the last few years, the internet has made a habit of continuously reminding those of us who were teenagers in 2014 just how lucky we were to have had our “teen era” during that period.

This longing for 2014 started in 2021, only seven years after it passed. Those born after 2005 have been, and I quote, “crying, screaming and throwing up” looking at the Reading and Leeds lineup for that year, which had performances from Paramore, Arctic Monkeys, Jake Bugg, Vampire Weekend, Peace, The 1975, and more. When they’re not frothing over the indie music and softcore grunge aesthetic that dominated the period, young girls on TikTok have been romanticising 2014 teen girl culture, declaring it “the best era for girls”. They accompany their declarations with fan cam-esque videos – all accented with pink – of Gigi Hadid, Victoria Secret (models and the outside of the store), Starbucks drinks, Ariana Grande, EOS lip balms and Maybelline Baby Lips Moisturiser.

In 2022, Vogue caught wind of this desperation for the past, especially off the back of the indie sleaze revival discourse, and asserted that the 2014 Tumblr girl style is back. Maria Santa Poggi wrote that the 2014 Tumblr girl style “materialised through music and girlish rebellion” and has been ushered in by characters like Maeve Wiley from Sex Education or teen pop stars like Olivia Rodrigo. Marta Langston, a style content creator, said on TikTok that if you “had a 2014 Tumblr phrase, you probably never grew out of it. I think that ‘grunge’ style in a broader sense will always exist, and Tumblr was the first place to widely romanticise the edgy, mysterious soft-grunge girl”.

As we enter 2024, nostalgia for 2014 has reached a fever pitch. As the clock struck midnight, hundreds of viral TikToks emerged, with texts that read “me waking up in 2014 instead of 2024” or “mentally I’m still in 2014”. As 2024 marks ten years since 2014, young people have been making commemorative videos to honour the period highlighting key cultural moments that happened then, such as: Solange and Jay-Z’s fight in the elevator, that awful Oscar selfie that Ellen DeGeneres posted on Twitter, Charli XCX and Iggy Azalea’s iconic song “Fancy”, the film adaptation of John Green’s The Fault In Our Stars, the creation of Musical.ly (the foremother of TikTok), the release of 1989 by Taylor Swift, Kim and Kanye’s wedding, as well as Kim’s notorious butt Paper magazine cover that #BrokeTheInternet and so much more.

Being that 2014 was now a decade ago, it makes sense that we are in a period of reflection. This may be the first time Gen Z can recall their past clearly, a testament to the fact that we are well and truly becoming adults. However, this period of reflection, which has been in the making over the last few years, also brings into question whether 2014 was really that special or whether we’re a society entirely fixated on nostalgia. In her latest piece for Dazed, Haaniyah Angus argues that we are “nearing a snake-eating-its-own tail level of nostalgia” with the copious amounts of remakes, reboots and revamps that came out in 2023 alone. “Stunted adulthood, age regression, feeding your inner child – whatever you choose to call it – we have entered an age where the main currency is a cultural yearning for the past and a refusal to confront our present,” she writes.

Risa, who was 14 in 2014, agrees, telling Dazed that this is similarly why she longs for the return of 2014. “I do look fondly on that time, but not because I had a great 2014, more because I’m older now, have more responsibilities and a lot more to think about (career, buying a home, etc). I didn’t have to think of anything other than my GCSEs in 2014. I felt like I could live and do things that wouldn’t have big repercussions.”

@kiisshorowitz i wish i was a teenager in 2014. 💓 #patricinha #hotgirl #pink #fypシ #fy #fyp #aesthetic #2014 ♬ som original - .

Even though, as Angus reminds us, the nostalgia economy is used to politically stagnate us, stunting our transition from adolescence to adulthood, many believe that the cultural significance of 2014 is so much more than that. “I always think about 2014,” explains Alanah, a London-based illustrator. “I have a weird connection specifically to 14-year-old Alanah. I refer back to her all the time. It’s crazy. It’s like I’m doing this all for her.”

Danielle, a stylist who was 15 in 2014, believes that it was the year she “found” who she was. “I had no clue who I was before then. Then Arctic Monkeys released AM, Haim brought out their first album, Lana released Ultraviolence, The 1975 brought out their self-titled album.” Danielle is who Langston was referring to in her TikTok, an individual who never really grew out of her 2014 Tumblr aesthetic. “I would say I’ve mostly taken the music and fashion with me. I’m still my 2014 self, just a more mature version. I still collect Kate Moss Topshop collection pieces because I have my own money now and can afford them. Treating my 15-year-old self is a form of self-care for me.”

The ages of 14 to 17, known as middle adolescence, are pivotal times for teenage development. Teenagers are not only adjusting to a new physical sense of self through puberty, but are also developing their unique identities simultaneously. It’s one of the reasons 2014 feels like such an important year to individuals like Danielle and Alanah.

Yet Danielle contends that 2014 didn’t just feel special to her because of her age, but because of what our social media landscape looked like back then: “I think 2014 was one of the last times we could be ourselves online, especially on Instagram.” By 2014, Instagram was still in its infancy, having only come out in 2010. It was an app that people were still figuring out, experimenting with and posting on freely. Now, as Danielle remarks, “it’s all just paid ads and fake lives” – a curated perfection that has made the app an exhausting place to be on, rather than an exciting one.

In contrast, Ione Gamble, who was 20 years old in 2014 and had just started her feminist publication Polyester Zine, doesn’t believe there was anything extraordinary about 2014 as a period. “Instagram wasn’t commercialised yet, so it felt like there was more freedom and possibilities in online spaces,” she says. “However, we are literally talking about platform changes, which I do not think signals much about culture.” Gamble believes that much of our romanticisation of that period comes from the fact that 2014 was the last period before Brexit, and the Conservative Party’s more blatant lurch to the right. “It was also pre-Trump, pre-Brexit and pre-pussy hats, so feminism wasn’t as commodified, and the possibilities seemed infinite. I don’t think 2014 was particularly special. Life just became grim in 2016.”

It’s unclear whether 2014 was an exceptional year or whether we’ve overdramatised the period as a whole (it’s probably a bit of both). However, our cultural fixation with the period speaks to our dissatisfaction with the state of the world and our general unhappiness with adult life. Writer and editor Sihaam Naik told Dazed that 2014 was the last time she felt alive: “especially because the world did not end in 2012. It just got better.” This line of speech is all over the internet, from Twitter to the comment section of TikToks; many believe that 2014 was the last year they felt truly alive. There are a few reasons for this. Sihaam, for example, was a teenager in 2014, and when we’re teenagers, our brains experience dopamine spikes at a much higher rate than adults. This means that any thrill or new experience you have, like hearing a really good song for the first time, going to a party or falling in love, may never feel as exciting as it did when you were a teen.

Another reason for this is our cultural belief that we experience a type of death when we reach adulthood. Film critic Maia, best known online as Broey Deschanel, remarked on this phenomenon in her recent video essay on Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla. In the film, we follow Priscilla from when she first meets Elvis at 14 to when she divorces him at 27. When she leaves Graceland after the divorce is finalised, we watch Priscilla drive out of the estate in a similar fashion to how Princess Diana drives out of Buckingham Palace at the end of Pablo Larrain’s 2021 movie Spencer. Both films end as Priscilla and Diana’s independent lives, unattached from their ex-husbands, are about to begin. Maia describes this as a filmic type of death, one that often occurs in film once a female character is no longer a teenager. Maia’s researcher, Sarah, called it the “foreclosure of adulthood”. It’s the belief that one’s life is no longer interesting, important or desirable once you are past adolescence.

This is a truly miserable way to think about adulthood. While we’re not entirely to blame for this pessimistic point of view (just look at the state of the world), we do have a collective responsibility to not give up on our lives before they’ve even properly started. While we may never feel the same joy or excitement that our teenage selves once felt, that doesn’t mean that joy and excitement do not exist in adulthood. Maybe, if we were to let go of the past, even just a little bit, we could learn that adulthood is not the end of our lives but just the beginning.