TikTok can add a new skill to its resume: Disco Time Machine.
The social platform is typically home to an endless stream of Gen Z dance videos (mostly short, practiced and perfected choreography), but lately it’s been injecting energy from an unlikely generation: Gen X parents.
In the viral videos, parents are asked by their adult children to dance the way they used to to “Small Town Boy,” the 1984 hit by British synth-pop band Bronski Beat. Most of the posts are tagged with “#momdancechallenge,” “#daddancechallenge” or “#80sdancechallenge” and have garnered tens of millions of views.
The reaction was perhaps unexpected. Instead of laughter, The video is cool, really cool, and acts as a portal to another era: a time when dance was more improvisational and spontaneous, when people felt the beat and found rhythm naturally, moving without the constraints of horizontal aspect ratios.
When Valerie Martinez, 23, asked her mother, Yenne Velazquez, 58, to join the challenge, it was before the topic was trending and the two were completely unprepared. “I hadn’t even played her the song,” Martinez said in a phone interview this week, accompanied by her mother. But Martinez was confident Velazquez would do it, because her mother everytime Dancing, she said.
For Velazquez, it was nostalgic: She said she was about 19 when the song was popular and would go out dancing at one or two clubs in Puerto Rico, where she lived and where she and her daughter now live in Florida.
Velazquez said she’s been heartened by all the positive comments she’s received on her daughter’s post, which has been viewed more than 12 million times and has nearly a million likes. Perhaps what makes this trend stand out is that the response on TikTok and Instagram has been overwhelmingly encouraging.
It’s a welcome departure from the tired tradition of online ridicule for the over-40 demographic, epitomized by arguments ranging from “OK Baby Boomers” to “Millennials are boring.”
“But I had no idea they could actually dance!” one commenter wrote. “For a second, I think I saw a glimpse of youth in their smiles. So heartwarming.”
“I don’t know if I prefer watching my parents teleport or watching other humans dance,” said another.
Many in the comments section also requested to see photos of their parents from times gone by, and several people responded, including Velazquez, who said she had no qualms about sharing the photos.
When asked if these trends help build bridges between generations online, Martinez said, “1,000 percent.”
Giselle Delaney, 28, and her mother, Sandy Cervantes, 51, said they decided to take part on a whim and were amazed by the reception this week. Cervantes’ video has been viewed more than 15 million times on TikTok and has about 1.5 million likes.
“It was just a happy moment for both of us,” says Delaney, who had given birth to her first child just a few days earlier and filmed the video while her mother was visiting her in Maryland from Florida. The circumstances made the reception especially special and, in Delaney’s words, “brought a lot of positivity to our family.”
“You look at their faces and all of a sudden they’re back to having fun when they were younger and living their best lives,” she said of the parents in the video.
Social media, especially Instagram and TikTok, is of course thought of as the domain of young people, so these viral videos and other popular senior-focused accounts serve as a poignant reminder that we all did young things once, and that, with any luck, we’ll all get old (yes, even you).
A video posted to the account cindeemindy late last year saw her dancing to the beat of Struff’s 1980s song “Set It Off,” which has garnered millions of views and been shared on TikTok and Instagram to enthusiasm and cheers. The account “The Old Gays,” a group of four longtime friends, men over 65 who live in the California desert, have amassed 11 million followers, making them unlikely influencers (or “grand influencers,” as they’re sometimes called). They also do a lot of dancing on their pages, and share photos from their younger years.
Perhaps decades from now, today’s TikTok dancers will revive the sophisticated moves that kids will post on the social networks of the day.
“When I look back at videos of myself dancing, or when my kids dance, it’s like I’m coming back to life,” Delaney says. “I think, ‘Okay, this is who I was, and this is who I am now.’ And when someone asks me in 20 years, I’ll be a different person, but I’ll remember who I was.”
