A striking share of young Americans say they would rather live in a previous era than face the present, according to new polling that underscores deep anxieties about technology, the future, and the state of the country.
Nearly half of adults ages 18-29 responded affirmatively when asked if they would choose to live in the past, according to an NBC News Decision Desk Poll. One-third said they'd prefer a time period less than 50 years ago, while 14% said they'd go back more than 50 years. By contrast, only 38% said they'd rather stay in the present, with just 15% choosing any point in the future.
The results held relatively steady across gender and party lines, though racial differences emerged in the data. Young Black adults were significantly less likely to express a preference for the past at 33%, compared to 52% of young white adults and 47% of young Hispanic adults.
The desire to reverse time reflects a darker picture of how Gen Z sees their prospects. Sixty-two percent expect life will be worse for them than it was for previous generations, while 80% believe the United States is headed in the wrong direction. That pessimism about national trajectory ranked highest among all age groups surveyed.
Technology and constant internet connectivity emerged as primary culprits in interviews with young adults. Many spoke of yearning for an era before smartphones mediated daily life and before being perpetually online became the norm.
Ben Isaacs, a 20-year-old student in Colorado, selected the 1990s as his ideal time period. He cited the lack of ubiquitous phones as enabling more authentic interaction. "A smartphone draws away from people's ability to just look at each other, have a conversation, and exist outside of the realm of the phone," Isaacs said.
Skyler Barnett, a 28-year-old construction worker in Missouri, echoed similar frustrations. He blamed the sheer volume of internet content and noise for creating mental clutter, particularly among younger people dealing with information irrelevant to their daily lives.
The trend reflects a growing cultural movement among Gen Z toward retro aesthetics and analog technologies. Claw clips, baggy jeans, cassette tapes, and vintage iPods have experienced unexpected resurges in popularity. A wave of nostalgia for 1990s figures like John F. Kennedy Jr. swept through social media, partly fueled by the FX series "Love Story."
Clay Routledge, a nostalgia researcher and existential psychologist, explained that Gen Z's backward gaze targets specifically the era "right before social media and computers mediated life." Going back further risks sacrificing the genuine benefits of modern society, he noted, but the 1990s and early 2000s present an appealing sweet spot.
Routledge observed that cultural nostalgia intensifies during periods of disruption. Political division, anxiety about artificial intelligence, and rapid technological change push people toward romanticized versions of more stable times. "If there's this fear that it's going in a direction that's unhealthy or that they can't control, then you could imagine it being like, 'I'd rather take the time machine to the time before it got to that place,"" he said.
Yet Routledge also noted that many Gen Z members are taking steps to reclaim agency over their relationship with technology rather than simply abandoning it. They're not necessarily rejecting smartphones wholesale but rather resisting the idea that devices should control their lives.
Alex Abernathy, a 25-year-old part-time student in Michigan, advocated for a return to single-purpose devices. "I think it's important to get back to technology being made for one thing at a time, not people having a supercomputer that you walk around with," she said.
Abernathy herself chose to live slightly into the future rather than the past, motivated by hope for social and political progress. But she emphasized that her excitement centers on offline community gathering and reducing phone dependency. She recently connected with a 67-year-old woman at a political protest and was struck by how much they shared in common, challenging the assumption that different generations are simply divided.
The poll surveyed 32,433 adults online between March 30 and April 13, with 3,009 respondents ages 18-29. The Gen Z subgroup carries a margin of error of plus or minus 2.4 percentage points.
Author Sarah Mitchell: "The fact that young people are yearning for the pre-smartphone era tells us something important: nostalgia has become a political statement, and technology fatigue is real enough to reshape how an entire generation thinks about their future."
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