Millions of Teenagers Infected with "Nostalgia Virus"

INTERNATIONAL—According to a report from the World Health Organization, over 10 million teenagers across the world have been inexplicably afflicted with some form of “nostalgia” over the past year.

Nostalgia, an ailment which causes an unrelenting fondness for the past, typically only afflicts the elderly or at very least people who actually have a “past” but has recently mysteriously affected humans as young as 13 years old.

The evidence for this affliction has come from a number of social media outlets including teenager’s twitter and Facebook pages where countless teens have been reported posting nostalgic statements about a world that existed less than 15 years ago.

The nostalgia has flared up all over the internet with twitter hashtags like #only90skidsknow and the likes of “fuckyeah1990s” tumblrs intended for people who would more likely be born in the eighties or very early nineties being reposted by people who only existed in the decade as barely aware infants.

A variety of symbols and images from the decade have also made the online rounds with teens expressing sentiments as if things like Pokémon cards and Spongebob Squarepants cartoons are part of some sort of bygone era.

Other even more serious symptoms of the virus have been observed, including teens persistent bouts of nostalgia for things they actually have no memory of.

Evidence of this phenomenon was exemplified in the case of 18 year old Tyler Stevens, a young rap music fan who was noted to have posted an image of Tupac Shakur, who died in 1996, on his Facebook wall with the caption “Remember who this is?” as if he not only recalls the rapper but was indeed a fan of West Coast Hip-Hop when he was a toddler.

Even more severe cases of nostalgia have occurred in teenagers trying to harken back to the days of their parent’s generations believing themselves to be “born in the wrong era” because they like bands like Led Zeppelin and The Who after only discovering their music through YouTube.

Despite the virus being quite widespread amongst teenagers, none of the cases have been shown to have the negative effects that are prevalent in older generations. While other eras have held on to their nostalgia so much that they reject modern technologies by acting like they don’t “get” the internet and refuse to enjoy modern culture by pretending that TV will never get better than “Gilligan’s Island”, teenagers haven’t had any problem simultaneously keeping up with modern society.

In fact, most teenagers express their nostalgia exclusively through modern communication tools and otherwise live completely normally, making their nostalgia in no way limiting but simply extremely annoying.

The percentages for nostalgia have also shown a very obvious correlation between nostalgia and their region of the world with noted decreases in 90s nostalgic feelings in places like Bosnia and Rwanda.

Although researchers have not yet discovered a cure for teenage nostalgia, they are hoping they can quickly put an end to the virus by knocking the love for the 90s out of them either through experimental brain surgery or forcing them to actually watch a full episode of the Power Rangers.