23 August 2013

If you could travel back in time...

When asked "If you could travel back in time, which decade of the 20th century would you most like to see?", Americans most popular choice is the 1950s, which was selected by 18% of Americans...

Americans' time travel preferences relate strongly with their age. 35% of those over 65 would want to return to the 1950s and 18% would want to go back to the 1960s, the decades when they would have experienced their adolescence and early adulthood...

For those 18-29 years-old, the top two choices are a mix of personal and societal nostalgia. 19% would choose the 1990s - when most of those in the age demographic were kids. 19% also would select the 1920s - a time well before they were born, but celebrated in American culture, most recently by this year's film adaptation of the Great Gatsby.
Text and graphs from YouGov, via The Dish.

6 comments:

  1. I'm not sure how I would answer. I have plenty of time travel fantasies, but I rarely consider any part of the 20th century as a destination. If it's allowed, I suppose I would try to think of some famous person I wouldn't mind having a casual chat with. It's not where you go; it's what you do there that matters.

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  2. I'd definitely go with the 1910s. See my granny when she was a young woman. See my house when it was bright shiny new. The last gasp of a whole era, about to disappear into the Great War, after which everything changes forever.

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  3. I'd want to see some decade I wasn't alive in if it was a sight-seeing vacation.
    But if I was collectibles hunting I'd have to carefully research eras and ability to stash goods for retrieval and resale later.

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  4. Interesting, though I guess unsurprising: we want to either capture a by-gone youth and a time we see through the rose-coloured glasses of memory, or we are responding to a Hollywood/marketing crafted representation of a time far enough back we have no knowledge of what it was really like.

    This isn't, though maybe it sounds that way, a criticism, just a (shallow) analysis.

    For me, true to form, the 60's (by-gone youth). Next would be very late 1800's/early 1900's because what I see in pictures and read intrigues me; I guess like Zhoen.

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  5. I'm not sure what to make of 5% of the 18-29s choosing the 30s. The Great Depression doesn't seem like a laugh-a-minute destination (or anything but profoundly depressing.)

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  6. I'd go back to Atlantis. Just to see what it was like.

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