Gen Alpha students are not rocking with classic hits by Queen and Avril Lavigne, according to a teacher's viral videos

• A popular trend on TikTok involves teachers playing older music for their young students.
• Piper Zinn's fourth-grade class enjoyed Sean Paul, but not so much Queen and Avril Lavigne.

A fourth-grade teacher has the internet obsessed with videos of her students' reactions to classic hits, from Avril Lavigne's "Sk8er Boi" to Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now." In every video, the teacher shows a bunch of notecards from her students giving their impressions. Some left extremely harsh and bruising reviews.

Piper Zinn's "Flashback Friday" series is the latest in a TikTok trend that features teachers introducing their Gen Alpha students to old hits and soliciting their often hilarious reactions. Zinn told Insider she was inspired after seeing clips by the account @7thGradeChronicles — which is run by a seventh-grade English Language Aarts teacher — that uploads similar content.

Two of Zinn's most popular music videos feature reactions to Sean Paul's bouncy 2005 track, "Temperature," and Kelly Clarkson's melodramatic power ballad "Since U Been Gone" released a year prior. The handwritten note card responses to the latter ran the gamut from "Emo! YUCK" to "Don't know this song but it's fire."

Zinn said she was confused by how many students called Clarkson "emo" since she wouldn't have thought to categorize the singer in that genre. One note card for "Temperature" asked Zinn to play the song every day, as another student said it was "super super good."

Zinn's first clip, a reaction to the Jonas Brothers' "Year 3000," released in 2006, has been viewed over 2.7 million times. Her students unanimously hated it: they called it "so cringe" and sternly asked, "What?"

Some viewers were startled that Zinn's class didn't immediately take to the kid-friendly song; one person jokingly told her to "get new students."

"I feel so old right now cuz I really just thought "kids these days are so disrespectful" AND I MEANT IT!!!" a top comment with 12,000 likes said.

Reviews of Queen's beloved 1979 anthem "Don't Stop Me Now" were similarly unenthused. "I'm not having a good time," one student wrote plainly. "Come on," another person said, scribbling a drawing of what looked like a jaded and unmoved bat creature beneath.

One commenter joked that these students can't appreciate the majesty of the song because all they listen to is "Skibidi Toilet," a gloriously goofy mashup that some have declared Generation Alpha's first viral meme. An annoyed viewer quipped that Zinn should "give the ones who don't like it a bad grade," and over 2,000 people jokingly agreed.

People are now suggesting an array of songs for Zinn to cull her student's reactions — everything from B-52's 1979 track "Rock Lobster" to "old Drake" and whatever "divorced dad rock" is.

Zinn said she initially decided to record her students because she always heard them humming or singing, and never expected the videos to gain traction like they have. She said her students were "beyond ecstatic" when the first Jonas Brothers reaction video blew up and made her swear to "give them a cut" of whatever she earns with her newfound TikTok celebrity.

"It has been a wonderful bonding experience for us and they look forward to Fridays!" she said.

In the last few months, TikTok has become a wellspring for content related to Generation Alpha, a category used to describe kids born around or after 2010. Older generations have made videos trying to unpack the surrealist nature of Gen Alpha humor, and several videos have gone viral theorizing why these kids should be called "honey badgers" because of their authority-defying nature.

Zinn noted she's noticed that her students are "habitually behind" in education and interpersonal skills because of the years they missed during the pandemic. But, also due to lockdowns, they've grown incredibly proficient with technology.

"They are the COVID kids so their childhood has been anything but normal," she told Insider.