Student journalists and graduating high school seniors clockwise from front left, Ashley Hocking, Lawrence High, Bret Watson, Free State, Hannah Moran, Free State, and Gage Nelson, Lawrence High, are pictured on Wednesday, May 14, 2014 at South Park.

If you ask anyone over age 30 to name the top stories or trends of the last few years, they might mention the resignation of a pope, revolutions in the Middle East, or the sudden explosion in popularity of social media like Twitter and Facebook.

But if you ask people from the high school Class of 2014, they would likely tell you that Facebook and Twitter are passe and the place to be online is now Snapchat or Vine. They might also talk about “twerking,” or the coach who was fired, if only briefly, or the student who got suspended for posting an offensive tweet.

High school students are the products of the times and the culture in which they grow up. But high school is also a time when children become young adults and start inventing their own culture, starting with the unique experiences they share and the personal bonds they form among themselves.

Four student journalists who chronicled those experiences for their school newspapers and yearbooks took time this week to reflect on what made their time in school special, and what specific things they and their classmates are most likely to remember in years to come.

“In the future, I will always look back on my years at Lawrence High fondly,” said Ashley Hocking, co-editor in chief of The Budget, LHS’s student paper.

Asked about the big stories she remembers the paper covering, Hocking immediately recalled a feature in October about “twerking” — that provocative dance form made famous, or infamous, by Miley Cyrus during the Video Music Awards.

“One of our opinion writers noticed that our pom squad, or the dance team at one time had been twerking as well, and that made it newsworthy,” she said. “And the pom squad was not too happy with that article being written.”

Hocking also recalled a February story about the growing use of electronic cigarettes among teenagers, and a discussion about why LHS’s unique mascot, the “Chesty Lions,” has never been trademarked.

But Gage Nelson, design editor for the LHS yearbook who also contributed to the Budget, said the biggest news story of the year, by far, was the firing of boys basketball coach Mike Lewis.

“That was a huge deal,” he said of the coach, who was eventually reinstated after scores of students and parents packed into a Lawrence school board meeting to protest the decision.

At Free State High School, Free Press editor Hannah Moran said one of the biggest stories of the year was that of a student who was suspended after posting a photograph of one of the school’s vice principals on Twitter.

That incident came on the heels of several students being ejected from a basketball game for rowdiness, Moran said. And it might also help explain why “old school” social media like Twitter and Facebook began falling out of favor among teenagers.

“Snapchat was bigger than ever,” Moran said, referring to the new photo messaging system in which the photos are deleted off of the servers after a specified period of time.

Bret Watson, who edited the Free State yearbook, said she was struck by the growing intensity of the rivalry between Free State and Lawrence High.

“I think it got particularly heated this year,” she said.

Beyond the daily news and events that shaped their experience, the Class of 2014 also had its own set of music and fashion trends.

Moran noted that in addition to twerking, “the Harlem Shake” will be remembered as one of the more interesting dance crazes.

And Nelson from LHS said students may look back on these years as the time when web-based services like Pandora replaced FM radio as the dominant medium through which young people learn about and experience new music.

“Anywhere people go, they have Pandora playing on their phone or their computer,” Nelson said.

But Watson said the thing she’ll remember most is the personal bonds formed among her classmates.

“We were all sort of surprised at the number of friends we made outside our friend group,” she said. “It was like the whole senior class was kind of one big friend group.”