Social Media Revives Roller Skating Trend
Many of us thought that 2020 was going to be a great year—boy, were we wrong.
The coronavirus pandemic has forced us to live with fear, safety measures, event cancellations and confinement.
Although it feels like the end of time, being at home has paved the way for an old trend, roller skating, to come back.
The trend resurfaced after multiple influencers on Tik Tok, a video sharing social networking service, began sharing videos of themselves strolling around in flashy roller skates with upbeat music playing in the background.
One of those popular figures is Ana Coto. On April 28, the Los Angeles actress and dancer uploaded a video of her rolling around her neighborhood in blue and red skates to Jennifer Lopez’s 2002 hit, Jenny from the Block. The video has received more than 2 million likes.
Users fell in love with her carefree and positive spirit. Today, Coto boasts a total of 1.4 million followers.
The trend has followed suit on the Internet. Google reported—on a scale of 0-100, with 100 being the most popular search term—that the term “roller skates” was the 20th most popular search term in mid-March. By mid-May, it was the most popular search term.
Social media has also turned into a skating frenzy. During quarantine, roller skating has become one of the funnest activities to do. Instagram and TikTok are being flooded with roller skating challenges, tips, tricks and how-to videos.
On Instagram, there are more than 1.1 million posts with “rollerskating” as a hashtag.
While rollerblading is a trend, it’s not new to the game.
It was popular with women in the 1930s. Roller derby—a contact sport where two teams skate counterclockwise around a track—went against common stereotypes of womanhood and femininity.
It peaked in popularity in the ‘70s. The combination of roller rinks and disco music created the perfect ambiance for anyone who enjoyed roller disco nights.
The activity got another boom in the ’90s, when inline roller skates became a thing. What seemed to be an old fashioned sport was reinvented.
Today, we see models strutting the runway on skates—like Charlotte Free did for Moschino’s Barbie-themed show in 2014—and social media influencers cruising down the streets without a care in the world.
Despite its peaks and valleys, roller skating remains an old school classic and although 2020 might not be our year, it’s definitely proven to be the year of the roller skater.
