Things now, that 90's kid would have mocked?

[H202too]

This is light hearted. Working in a school it is interesting to see how trends change. Sure some of this is regional, but what things do kids do now that just wasn't the done thing in the nineties?
I have noticed

1. Double strappers. This was so uncool at the time. I am sure I still get shoulder pain now from carrying mountains of books on one shoulder. Single strap now is a bad thing. ( Good!)

2. The star spot patches. Some kids wear about 6. Not seen any adults do this yet.

3. Boys with massive brushes in their pockets which they whip out and swish their fringe. They even borrow each others and swish each others fringe. It is actually quite cute. My mind chuckles when I think of the 90s boys spiking their hair with pointy hair gel. But absolutely no to carrying a brush about.

4. Water bottles. I once got in trouble for taking a drink from my water in 1998 in a lecture. In 1991 it just wouldn't have been a thing to have a watsr bottle.

I am sure there is more. AIBU to think most new trends are probably better but to miss the 90s nostalgia.

Kids of today would rip us for backing our books in wrapping paper.

I met my bloke online in 1998.

I'm a university lecturer and happily I can say I only found out these were a thing through my own DCs. Never seen one on a student!

I would have laughed at secondary children not able to tie their own ties (and 7 year olds their own shoe laces). I started secondary in a stubby wide tie era and ended it in a shoestring longest bit almost down to the bottom of your skirt era.
I also found it weird when almost every primary school we looked at for the DCs had uniform. It wasn't compulsory in the 70s at all, unless you went to a fancy private school with straw hats.

Every year I do an exercise in mental time travel with my students. I've been lecturing since 2000 and every year they tell me "primary school and preschool children these days all have their own devices and too much screen time. Not like us".

I think in 2000 they may have said "toys that make noises" TBF.

Haven't read whole thread but has anyone mentioned teeth braces? My kids could have had the invisible ones but opted for the train tracks with coloured elastic. It seems to be a status symbol these days.

So what? It’s true

Yes, it's a good job we learned so much in the intervening years isn't it!

I keep seeing older high school kids in ankle grazers and feel sorry that they obviously need new trousers and maybe their parents can't afford them. Turns out, they're just cool! 🤣

Mmm. I was a 70's rather than a 90's kid, but I used to know a girl (posh family) who cut the labels out of her father's Christian Dior/Yves St Laurent ties and sewed them onto her jeans. I admired that.

Charity shop shopping.

I worked in TK Maxx when it first came to the UK. People use to hide the things they bought in bags from different shops because they didnt want people knowing they shopped there. Nowadays, it's a brag when you find something in TK Maxx. 🤣

This weirdly happened this morning . We had to tell some year 11 boys off today for whipping their hairbrushes put and mirrors in the middle of a mock exam.
🤦‍♀️

Are short hairstyles for boys going out of fashion then? My sons were always moaning about needing their hair cut every time it was more than an inch long and now they're brushing it in front of the mirror every morning making themselves look like David Sylvian.

Everyone was mocked all the time in the 90's, here's a funny Kevin Bridges sketch about it that's so true!

Take a look at this video, 'kevin bridges taking a shaming' https://share.google/pLyU314A3qHaJwno8

90's kids would mock the long socks, socks and sandals, trigger warnings, talk of safe spaces, short trousers would be met with a 'has your cat died?', kappa was seen as tacky and so was gola.
Parents dropping off at school after primary age was not the done thing and neither was parents generally interfering in their older teens social lives,

Kappa popper pants with the bottom third the poppers undone. Worn with a puffa jacket. Girls were called Kappa Slappas. Boys - Wiggas. These names were used where I live

Knock off stuff. If people realised you had a knock off item, you'd be crucified. Dd, however, will happily have fakes.

Agree with the double strap thing but also backpacks in general were very uncool - it had to be a Nike (not Adidas, not Puma, but Nike) drawstring bag either on one shoulder only if you were a girl, or crossbody if you were a boy.

PE kit in a Jane Norman bag if you were a girl, and a JD sports bag with the drawstrings if a boy.

Anything else was desperately uncool!

Lots of kids seem to wear perspex framed glasses now. You'd only seem them on old ladies back in the day.

I saw a crotchet cardigan in a shop the other day and thought it would make me look like a granny, and also like I'm trying to look like a quirky teenager at the same time, which was a bit strange.

I remember stomping through the school gates with my rucksack laden with lever arch files, hefty text books and literature novels, and my headteacher on duty said "you're the only person who wears their bag properly"
I'd long since accepted that I was not cool.

I went years without wearing a coat rather than risking being seen dead in the "perfectly good" M&S coat that DM bought when I was 12 that I unfortunately never grew out of. Current teens are much more pragmatic. I was cool briefly when North Face had their moment and my old hiking coat was in.

The mullet & mustache revial reminds me of East Germany. 90s facial was about goatees and sideburns.
Bushy beards were relics of the 70s and the Open University.

I'm struggling with a lot of fashion such as the glasses, or midi floral dresses having been very middle aged and "frumpy" in my teen years.

Is it frumpy to now to embrace fashion cycles and wear it at the dawning of my middle age, or should I shun it?
Good job I tend to do my own thing anyway.

Visible white socks (or any white socks for that matter)
Birkenstock bostons (for hippies and German tourists only) even worse if worn with said white socks
music - I would never listen to “parent” music that was so uncool, now my 19 yo happily listens to all kinds of music like Billy Joel and Coldplay along with more current music.

The mullet & mustache revial reminds me of East Germany. 90s facial was about goatees and sideburns

This, plus the 'old man' clothes (cardigans, tank tops, flowery shirt, slacks). I live in Leeds, which is famous for the Otley Run, an all day pub crawl especially popular with students, often done in fancy dress.

I saw a group of them one day and I genuinely couldn't tell whether they were cool young men in their normal clothes or in 'dress like Grandad's 1980s wedding photo' fancy dress.

I umpire netball at weekends, and when the teenagers (dozens of them) walk away from the court afterwards, it's a true montage of what 90s kids would have mocked. The moment the game is over, they change out of their expensive netball trainers, and into Crocs, sliders, Birkenstock Bostons, or Uggs, all with white socks.

Anxiety about everything.

Going in a shop, going to school, talking to an adult, going out without a parent.

Any teenager who was afraid of doing any of the above would have been mocked ceaselessly when I was at school. Especially wanting your Mum to drop you off everywhere. Now it's the norm.

On a more positive note, it's now acceptable to be as gender-non-conformist as your heart desires.

Oh, are the stars a thing?
I said to a young woman working in the pharmacy "Do you know you've got stars on your face?" I didn't even know they were for spots. It was Christmas week so I thought someone had been joking about and put stickers on her at break time. Lol.

The mullet & mustache revial reminds me of East Germany. 90s facial was about goatees and sideburns.
Bushy beards were relics of the 70s and the Open University.

This has just made me think of the sketches from the Mary Whitehouse Experience and the 2 crusty 'History Today' professors ponderously descending into insulting each other with "That's You, That Is"! Can there be a more full-circle illustration of '90s mocking?

I was in high school a bit later than the 90s but I keep seeing the electric scooter crowd about my area and thinking the would have had the absolute piss ripped out them when I was in high school

Just thought of something else but more about late teens than school kids.

I still live my university town, which used to be a mess every Friday and Saturday with students making full use of the bars and clubs.

Just recently, DS had an accident and we had to take him to hospital in that town. It happened to be a Friday night on freshers week so I braced for the worst. I expected A&E to be a mess and I expected town to be heaving with drunk students. But no! I didn't see one drunk teen in A&E and when we nipped into town for petrol after DS had been stitched up, everything was looking disturbingly sedate. Very weird to somebody of my vintage (late 30s).