Video of high school students from the 1980s has everyone asking why teenagers look so old

When we stumble upon videos and pictures from the 1980s, many things seem different from now - the dressing sense, the lifestyle, and the gadgets people used at that time. However, after a video of students from 1987 went viral on Twitter, people on the internet have been questioning why everyone is looking so mature. It is captioned, "High school in 1987."

The video was uploaded by a Twitter account @LIHpics. It has shots of students from a classroom and then of students moving out of their class. Some of them can be seen giving funny facial expressions. The audio in the video says, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” There is also a song playing in the background, "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" by Tears for Fears. The video already has more than 5 million views.

Many Twitter users couldn't believe that these students were from high school. @berner41668312 commented, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” @somefunandjames commented, "It truly never makes sense to me how teenagers in any decade before Y2K, always looked VASTLY older than what we looked like growing up. Like we(born in the early 90s)looked like kids. These people are adults. I’m sure their faces look the same today. We went thru stages, and still are." @pennytweets97 commented, "I think it's mainly the hairstyles. and they wanted to look older I think ppl weren't trying to look young." @ShinMadero commented, "Why do they all look at least 27 years old?" @jbrower73 commented, "I was a freshman in 1987. Our makeup was different. We didn’t use concealer/bronzer/highlighter/etc. It was basically a liquid foundation, pressed powder, blush, eye shadow, eyeliner, and mascara. No blending, primer, etc, or YT videos to teach us how ;)"

Talking about students and the old times, in a video interview from May 20, 1977, Carl Sagan, on the show, "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson," spoke about children, which even stands true now. He said, "But the thing that I find striking is the enormous remarkable capability of virtually every small child for learning. They start out eager, intellectually wide-eyed asking extremely clever questions about the world."

He says that often "something happens which discourages them." "Tremendous waste of natural resources, for example, a kid asks mommy why is the grass green and very often you get an answer, 'Don't ask dumb questions or who knows.' When the fact is that it is an extremely profound question."

He adds, "How much better would it be to say to the child that's a good question, I don't know the answer, maybe we can look it up or nobody knows maybe you will be the person to find out." Sagan also says that kids who get discouraged end up learning the wrong lessons. "I think kids who are discouraged from asking those questions, wind up learning the lesson that there is something wrong in using the mind we lose those resources and we need those intellectual resources because we are in very perilous times."

So it is pivotal to encourage children. "And I think the complex and subtle problems that we face can only have complex and simple solutions and we need people able to think complex and subtle thoughts. I believe that many children have that capability if only they are encouraged."

Editor's note: This article was originally published on March 9, 2023. It has since been updated.