As a member of Gen Z (I was just barely born in the 1990s), I was admittedly quite fascinated when I saw people debating whether or not my generation knows ‘90s movies. That’s because, admittedly, I don’t know them that well. I know the best movies of the 2000s, and I’m up on current TV hits. However, when it comes to the throwbacks from the decade I was born in, I’ve had to put in an effort to watch them. So, why is that the case? Well, some people on Reddit put a lot of thought into this.
The common consensus on this generationology Reddit thread about why “Millennials and Gen X know more about pop culture that was before they were born than Gen Z” seemed to surround how various generations grew up watching TV (and movies on TV). As Wooden-Muffin-3981 wrote:
Someone actually did a good analysis of this and the main reason is because we grew up with TV and syndication. We were force fed a lot of things from before our time because when we had free time we only had a few options to choose from on TV, and a lot of them were old TV shows and movies. Kids today don’t watch cable, they can watch whatever they want.
This is true, for a long time, I haven't watched movies on a TV channel, and no, I didn't spend my childhood watching films like Shawshank Redemption and My Cousin Vinny because they were casually on. I've had to make an effort to watch flicks like Fight Club, The Silence of the Lambs, Fargo and more on streaming in my 20s. There's no casual cable watching for me anymore; it's an active choice to watch '90s movies.
Article continues belowPlus, when I use my Netflix subscription or click into my Hulu subscription to watch something, almost always it's new titles flooding my screen. So, if I’m casually surfing for something to watch, I’m more likely to pick a project on the 2026 movie schedule because it’s what’s being advertised. On top of that, ultimately, while these services push programming, I’m the one who decides to watch something. It's not up to the TV Guide. So, as riotalk wrote:
Millennials and GenXers are the last TV generations. Many people literally raised by TV. You didn’t get to tailor TV to your liking, you just watched what was on. Many times, what was on was reruns of shows or movies from past generations. I watched many things just because they were on, not because they are what I would have chosen to watch.
Riotalk went on to say that newer generations “have the ability to choose and tailor” what they watch thanks to streaming. Therefore, that could explain why it seems like they aren’t exposed to more movies from the past. To put this statement in a shorter form, crew_hour posted:
Channel surfing my dude. Without a youtube algorithm, we just had to sift through lots of older media to find anything we found interesting.
As someone who spent a lot of my childhood channel surfing, I did grow up on certain movies and shows that ran in syndication, like Friends – yeah, that’s right, I watched it on Nick at Nite, not with an HBO Max subscription. However, I almost always chose to watch Disney Channel or Nickelodeon over an old movie. That plays into the point FedoraPG made, as they wrote:
Gen z kids grew up watching kids TV shows and movies. Disney movies and SpongeBob are their frame of reference for everything. I think child-focused programming became much more popular in the 90s and 00s, and parents exposed their children to less adult content as a result.
I watched my fair share of Hannah Montana, High School Musical and iCarly growing up. Disney Channel and Nickelodeon defined my childhood watching habits.
However, since my parents grew up in the 1980s, I also was schooled in the best ‘80s movies (we’re talking Top Gun, Back to the Future, The Princess Bride and more). So, that explains why I haven’t seen some ‘90s movies, and proves that maybe all generations do get exposed to what their parents love, which is something brokemillionaire572 wrote about:
Because as children we didn't have cable, internet, or cell phones, and there was only one television in the house. We got to watch what mom wanted to watch, which usually happened to be older stuff.
Now, these days, I’m admittedly backtracking to catch the best movies of the ‘90s. However, it is an active mission I’m on; it’s not something I’m just casually doing when I turn on the TV and start channel surfing.
So, I see the points here, and I can point to myself as an example of this happening. However, have no fear, Gen Xers, Millennials and the generations who came before, there are members of Gen Z who still love movies and are doing the good work to watch the classics (myself included).
