We contacted the authors of the account and they agreed to tell us more about it. "Our content comes from various internet image sources and social media sites where we can find the particular memory we wish to share with our audience," the people behind Insta80s90s told Bored Panda.
They're trying to keep the feed fresh. "We like to provide our followers with a mixture of memes, questions, and simple pictures of things related to era," they said.
"This makes our page special as we don't focus entirely on comedy. We think the reason for our success is we try to cater to everyone's taste. Some prefer polls and questions that encourage high commenting, and some prefer a childhood meme."
However, some of the posts do seem to receive slightly more engagement than others. "We have certainly noticed our followers tend to prefer the posts that ask them to answer questions about their personal experiences, for example: 'What 90’s song will you always turn up when you hear it on your car radio?'" the people in charge of the account added.
"Also, our followers like posts that highlight how today's kids don't know the struggle we had with things like portable CD players and having phones that only had the game Snake on it."
Reminiscence of this sort can serve several functions. "Our everyday is humdrum, often even absurd," psychiatrist and philosopher Neel Burton, M.D., writes.
"Nostalgia can lend us much-needed context, perspective, and direction, reminding and reassuring us that our life is not as banal as it may seem, that it is rooted in a narrative, and that there have been, and will once again be meaningful moments and experiences."
Perhaps it's no surprise then that nostalgia often visits us at times of change or uncertainty.
"It could be argued that nostalgia is a form of self-deception in that it invariably involves distortion and idealization of the past, not least because the bad or boring bits are erased from our memory, leaving only the peak experiences." Burton continues.
"The Romans had a tag for this phenomenon that modern psychologists have come to call ‘rosy retrospection’: memoria præteritorum bonorum, ‘the past is always well remembered.’"
The folks behind Insta80s90s agree that nostalgia is a very powerful emotion. "To us, it creates a happy feeling about the good times that we have experienced, and allows us to look back on the past with fond memories."
"Whilst we can't turn back time, we see our account sort of like a time machine for people that belong to these generations and wish to do the same."
