Despite being the It Girl of the ’80s and ’90s and being a part of a majorly popular show, Winona Ryder doesn’t really keep up with current pop culture trends. She doesn’t use social media. She doesn’t like Wikipedia. She probably doesn’t know what Brat Summer is, and that’s fine, she doesn’t shame people who do! But this is what sets her apart from her Stranger Things co-stars who, at the time of season one, were barely teenagers when they all met.
In a new interview with Esquire while promoting Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Ryder spoke of her love for old-fashioned things and her mild hatred for more modern technology. This must be why she chose to do Stranger Things, which takes place in the ’80s. But when she first met the rest of the cast, which consisted of Millie Bobby Brown and Finn Wolfhard, she was shocked to learn they didn’t know what a vinyl record was. “I cried,” she joked to the magazine. Ryder then said that the sound of a record needle dropping is the greatest sound in the world.
Even though she’s not against social media per se, she does think it has drastically altered how people view the world. “I just think that social media has changed everything, and I know I sound old. I’m very aware of that,” she began. “But I just think there was such an abundance: the history of film, the history of photography, it’s so rich, and there’s so much there, and I don’t mean we should go backwards, but I wish and I hope that the younger generation will study that.”
On the other hand, with the internet, there is so much more accessible information out there. But Ryder says that younger people seem to only use the internet for engagement, “If you try to find out what they are into…it’s this idea of followers and how many you have. That’s all that matters, that you’re rich and famous,” she explained.
It’s nice that Ryder found a co-star in Jenna Ortega, who has a similar approach to social media by not approaching it at all anymore.