Nostalgia will be the death of us. It is both the gentlest and the cruelest of emotions. As much as it is comforting to look back on positive happy memories, it also feels torturous to yearn so desperately for a time we can never get back.
It brings us back to a version of ourselves that no longer exists and a world that has already moved on. It is a strange kind of grief, mourning a time we survived through.
Psychologically, nostalgia has been defined as a positive emotion. It is a sentimental longing for the past that can boost mood, deepen connection and offer comfort, even while feeling bittersweet. The name even comes from Greek roots meaning “return home” and “pain.”
Pain — that’s the real effect it has on me. If nostalgia is supposed to come with psychological benefits, then why does it feel so destructive? In the current world we live in, nostalgia feels like a serious issue for mental health.
My TikTok for you page is always being overrun with “nostalgia bait,” and I know most of my fellow Gen Z users can probably relate.
Recently, I’ve had endless edits of Barack Obama’s presidential years and the joy of 2000s globalism, back when the world felt more hopeful. Bright, hyper-saturated colors from my childhood flashing across the screen, always paired with some sweet, melancholic sound.
I will forever crave the feeling I had playing the Nintendo Wii with my sisters in my old basement, eating Flavor Blasted Goldfish and fighting over who gets to be player one. We would watch Vevo music videos and Vines, making IMovies and Musical.lys.
My algorithm is feeding me a version of the past that feels safer than anything we have now, forcing us to miss a world we didn’t even fully understand at the time. Comments fill these types of videos, all with a deep sadness expressed. Our hearts ache for a time we all wish we could relive, even just for one day.
The real irony is, that world we envisioned was never real. Every era has its hardships, but the main thing is that we all got through it.
Most of us have had social media since we were at least tweens, giving us full visual access to our childhoods with Snapchat memories, old YouTube channels we grew up on and everything in between. There are constant “On This Day” reminders and endless throwback content. Sometimes, I even find myself becoming nostalgic over times I never lived through.
Social media is the biggest time capsule of our generation, and the ability to constantly compare our present to our past feels almost cruel. There are so many apps that people associate with specific times, like Tumblr, MySpace and VSCO, that have been put to rest but still hold such a cultural impact on us.
Even my friends and I find ourselves missing 2020-2021. A year when we were all miserable and trapped inside, probably the most depressed we’ve ever been. Yet, there’s something strangely comforting about the pandemic. The little bubble we built for ourselves during that time somehow feels safer than the world we are facing now.
We all lived on social media during those times, and I see plenty of videos reminiscing on those old habits, like staying up all night watching Twitch streamers, talking to friends on Discord or going on Omegle to talk to strangers for fun.
Nostalgia is often triggered during hard times, when we are facing challenges or transitions we can’t see a positive way out of. So we look back, reaching for a version of the past we know we survived.
The AI boom, President Donald Trump’s America, global wars, the impending recession, the collapsing job market, nearly everything about today feels like a punch in the face compared to the future my generation imagined when we were kids. Instead of stepping into a world full of possibilities, we’re entering one we already feel hopeless in.
We’re all constantly longing for a better time in the past because the future feels so uncertain. It feels like we stopped dreaming about building something new, and now we just dream of recreating what once was.
Nostalgia is everywhere in the media: movies, music, fashion and even memes. Everything is recycled, and it makes me wonder if the psychological need for familiarity and predictability will continue to just get more and more painful.
It feels like a sort of coping mechanism that can really perpetuate unhealthy mental health issues like severe anxiety. Nostalgia hurts when it becomes a prison instead of a comfort.
Social media has created a generation full of pessimists — me included — and I think it’s very bittersweet knowing how hopeful we were when we were kids. I guess that’s just adulthood, though.
We need nostalgia. It motivates us, it comforts us. Sometimes, though, I just wish it didn’t exist at all because I can’t stand seeing one more video of “2019 core,” calling it the “xandemic era” and seeing teens today romanticize the exact years I was simply trying to survive in high school.
