Basic Trope: A Long Runner series starts out with fashion and technology of the time period in which it began broadcast, and later seasons feature more current technology and fashion even though it's supposedly still the original time period.
- Straight: ''Teenz'' begins in The '90s, with Alice playing No, You Hang Up First with her boyfriend and irritating her father (who wants to get online and check his email.) Several seasons later, Alice is playing No, You Hang Up First with her boyfriend on a smartphone, and her father has tabs open on his browser for his email, a Viral Video on ViewTube, and FaceSpace all at the same time, even though it's still the nineties.
- Exaggerated: Teenz begins in the time of cavepeople using Bamboo Technology and Alice wearing a Fur Bikini and playing "No You Put Out Your Fire First" with her boyfriend. Several seasons later, Alice is still living in a cave, but she has a fully-modern computer and sends text messages rather than smoke signals.
- Downplayed: Teenz started fairly recently. The only visible upgrade is that the characters now use smartphones.
- Justified:
- Technology Marches On
- The series is or involves Speculative Fiction about teen life in the future (drawing on experience from the era in which the series is written).
- The new series is a sequel or Spin-Off that takes place 20 Minutes into the Future from the original series.
- While filming, the technology of The '90s became more and more obsolete every hour. As time went on it was much easier to find a newer Apple computer and set that up than it was to find an older model that ran the same Mac OS that Alice probably would have actually used at school that still worked.
- Inverted: Teenz begins in the modern era, and although it's still allegedly The New '10s, the technology regresses back to that of The '90s.
- Subverted:
- Alice has a cellphone in Season 9, but it's neither a smartphone nor a brick phone; it's a small flip-phone with little or no ability to access the Internet, more like something from the Turn of the Millennium.
- The early seasons weren't specific about the current time period, just letting the viewers assume it's "the modern day". But the later seasons decide to turn the show from an Unintentional Period Piece to an intentional one by explicitly having a character mention that it's currently 1997.
- Double Subverted:
- But she listens to music on an iFroot, including Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, and Katy Perry. (Or any Expies thereof.)
- The show, either by mistake or out of necessity, shows Alice using something that wasn't invented yet in 1997 in a late-season episode anyway.
- Parodied: Later seasons characterize Alice as a Disco Dan for having done what was normal at the start of the show's run.
- The show starts out in the Stone Age and every episode a new piece of technology appears in the order that humanity invented it, without explanation.
- Zig Zagged: Alice uses older and newer technology with roughly equal frequency.
- Averted:
- See "Reconstructed"
- The series does not run on Comic-Book Time
- Enforced:
- Fad Super, Very Special Episode, Two Decades Behind.
- The series was supposed to end after only 3 or 4 seasons, but the producers were forced to do more and more seasons, with every year the technology of the actual time period getting harder to find.
- The show is made for a younger audience, and tech that was normal at the start of the show's run is determined to be unrelatable to the current demographicnote .
- Lampshaded: "This is The '90s; nobody uses floppy disks anymore!"
- Invoked: Alice lusts after a new, state-of-the-art computer.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: Alice gets a new computer...for that time period.
- Discussed: "Check out Alice's new computer! I wish mine were that fast!"
- Conversed: "How is Alice using an iComp in The '90s? iComps weren't even invented yet!"
- Deconstructed:
- It breaks the audience's Willing Suspension of Disbelief. As a result, the series may enter Seasonal Rot, an Audience-Alienating Era or Jump the Shark altogether.
- The technological disparity is noticed by the characters, indicating to them that something isn't right.
- Reconstructed: The series keeps to technology appropriate to the era it's set in.
- Played For Laughs: Alice's dad is kvetching about setting the DVR after kvetching about programming the VCR.
- Played For Drama: It's part of a Very Special Episode.
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