This Viral ’90s Throwback Trend Taking Over Instagram Is the Ultimate Nostalgia Trip
If you’ve been scrolling through Instagram or TikTok lately and suddenly felt like you were 14 again, sitting cross-legged on your bedroom floor with a landline phone cord wrapped around your finger, you’re not alone. A trend sweeping social media right now has Gen Xers and elder millennials deep in their feelings.
It’s called the “What Were You Like in the ’90s” trend, and the formula is simple: Famous ’90s stars post nostalgic photos of themselves from roughly 30 years ago, all set to The Goo Goo Dolls’ “Iris.” Yes, that “Iris.” The one that soundtracked every slow dance, every end-of-movie credit roll, and every dramatic journal entry you ever wrote. Fans are absolutely loving it.
The list of celebrities who’ve jumped on this trend reads like the TV Guide from your childhood. Just some of the famous stars to partake? Reba, Drew Barrymore, Scott Wolf, Brooke Shields, Marla Sokoloff from Home Improvement and Boy Meets World, Sex and the City’s Kristin Davis, Kevin Bacon and Joe Mantegna.
Tiffani Thiessen — who played Kelly Kapowski on ’90s sitcom Saved by the Bell and Valerie Malone on Beverly Hills, 90210 — posted the trend on Instagram, writing as the caption: “Did someone say 90’s? 👋🏻”
Speaking of Beverly Hills, 90210 — Sharna Burgess, wife of Brian Austin Green, best known for his roles in Beverly Hills and 90210, posted one for her own husband who was quite the ’90s heartthrob. She wrote as the Instagram caption: “You were never gonna make this for yourself @brianaustingreen so I (gladly) did it for you 😘 and DAMNNNNNNN 🤤”
Sometimes the people who were the coolest in the ’90s need a little nudge from their partners to remind the world — and themselves — just how iconic they were.
Drew posted hers on February 24, writing: “Oh the 90s! I went down memory lane looking at these photographs.”
The response in her comments was immediate and effusive. SZA wrote, “Blueprint ✨” and another rightly wrote: “Literally the original ‘it girl’”
If there’s one post from this trend that deserves its own chapter in the ’90s nostalgia hall of fame, it might be Melissa Joan Hart’s. Best known for starring as the titular character in Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Clarissa Explains It All, Hart also took part in the trend, commenting on the fashion while also posting several photos of her own unique ’90s fashion choices. “The fashion was wild,” she wrote as the Instagram caption.
The comments underneath her post were the kind of love letter a whole generation needed to write. They included: “She WAS the 90s ✨✨,” “An entire generation of women wanted to be you. Icon,” and “Loved Clarissa BUT SABRINA!!!! ✨✨✨ THAT WAS MY GWORL!!”
Hart’s participation in the trend also comes with a candid behind-the-scenes detail. While chatting with People earlier this year, Hart revealed the last time she watched one of her old shows was “a few years ago.”
“I’ve never watched the shows, really, ever, except Melissa and Joey, because I had to live-tweet them. So I did watch those,” she shares at the Feb. 1 event. “But I recently watched, like a few years ago, when I had my podcast, I would watch an episode here and there for whoever was coming on, just to refresh my memory about certain things.”
There’s something about seeing these familiar faces — now grown, now with families and careers and laugh lines just like yours — posting their old photos to a song that once made you feel every emotion at once. For a whole generation now raising kids, driving carpools, and sneaking in screen time after bedtime, these throwbacks are a small, joyful portal back to who we were before all of that.
Production of this article included the use of AI. It was reviewed and edited by a team of content specialists.
