To anyone over age 35, what I'm able to tell you may feel unsettling and confusing: Hacky sacks are back in a big way with Gen Z.
Across high school cafeterias, playing fields, and college quads, small groups of mostly men are gathering in circles to kick around a small, bean-bag-like sphere best associated with college campuses in the 1990s.
Something happened just in the last few weeks — about when the air started to warm: Suddenly, high school students went all in on the footbag.
Noah Lewis, a high schooler in Delaware, started playing about two weeks ago with his friends after seeing some baseball players do it. He and his friends created a TikTok account, @scsackers2026, just for their new hobby.
The trend started in high schools a few weeks ago
"I think it's a very high school thing right now, and you'll see it sneak into the mainstream in a month or so," said Henry De Tolla, who, as the viral account "H00pify" on TikTok, is kind of a Stephen A. Smith for youth sport memes, cataloging trends online.
"I think a small part of it is kids starting to want to get off social media and do stuff in real life," De Tolla said. And while most of the play is offline, there's also an irony-tinged social media world around the trend. TikTok and Instagram accounts have popped up in the last two weeks for school "teams" or clubs, and kids will post as if it's a real sport.
One TikTok account I saw was a teenage boy in New Jersey sharing a bit about his journey to make his school's "varsity" team.
The Boston Globe reported on the trend as something blowing up with Massachusetts teens, giving an example of an Instagram account @MIAAhackysack that pretends to be the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association, the body that organizes the state's high school sports leagues and tournaments, and gives updated rankings of schools.
So far, the trend seems to have started in the Northeast, just after spring break.
The Labubu effect: stores are selling out
Nina Clarke, a parent of two teens at a private school in Connecticut, said her son, in the 11th grade, and all his friends are suddenly into it, much to her amusement as a Gen Xer who played it in college. In some ways, it reminds me of the Labubu trend.
One hitch to the sudden popularity: It's hard to find hacky sacks — also called footbags — in stores now. Clarke said she went to Dick's Sporting Goods and some other local stores, but they had all been completely wiped out of stock in the last week. Finally, she found one at a specialty soccer store.
Hacky Sack — capital "H," capital "S" — is actually trademarked by the company that owns the Wham-O line of toys. It's become so common that people use the name as a generic term, like Band-Aid or Q-tip. Wham-o had six, 12- and 15-packs of "Premium Suede Hacky Sacks" on its site (six for $39.99), but they were sold out.
I've also seen a few new online sellers of generic footbags. I talked to someone who opened an online store just five days ago. He said he's selling 1,000 to 2,000 per day, but I couldn't verify that.
As for Clarke, she said she is thrilled that her kids are into hacky sacks.
"They're outside, they're off their devices, they're socializing, they're connecting with their friends. To me, that is such a win," she told me. "I applaud that so much as a parent who is dealing with parenting in this digital age. It's so refreshing to see, and I love it."