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In small doses, nostalgia can be motivating. It reminds you of some of the best times in your life. And it gives you a source of resilience for when times are tough in the present. As the BBC notes, nostalgia can help you fight feelings of loneliness or existential anxiety.
However, there’s another side to this. If you spend all of your time reminiscing and ruminating about the past, you’ll miss out on opportunities in the present.
And whether or not the world really was simpler in decades past, you can still carve out a quality life, full of positive relationships and experiences, in modern times.
Interestingly enough, you can feel nostalgic about periods of time that you never actually personally experienced. This yearning is known as ‘anemoia’ and can refer to imagined positive past experiences, influenced by stories… as well as propaganda.
“It’s quite likely that you’ve read or heard rose-tinted accounts of historical periods or places. Based on those accounts, your mind creates a simulation of what those places or times would have been like and you then feel a yearning to experience them for yourself,” the BBC explains, adding that this is especially true if you’re dissatisfied with your current situation.
Nostalgia means big business, and many companies are trying to capitalize on people’s yearning for the past to sell their products and services.
As Forbes points out, nostalgia has become “an inescapable feature of the 2020s,” from the resurgence of Y2K fashion to flip-phones, a return to using old (analog or digital) cameras, and watching reruns of the old TV shows like Friends, The Office, and Gilmore Girls, just to name a few.
According to Forbes, young people seek refuge in the past because the future feels like a scary place. “For what could be the first time in human history, young people are more excited about the past than the future. Global research shows that young people are less happy than older generations. Contributing factors include economic uncertainty, planetary destruction and loss of social connections. In short, the future feels scary and unpromising. This is evident in the unprecedented decline in birth rates.”
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That being said, such a powerful focus on the past’s cultural legacy isn’t without its drawbacks. For one, Forbes notes that nostalgia can romanticize the past. This essentially means that viewing the past through rose-colored glasses can mean “editing out the hardships and complexities associated with history.”
What’s more, too much nostalgia can mean blocking “the path toward future progress.”
As Forbes stresses, “The danger with recycling old narratives is that brands end up getting stuck in the past instead of shaping the future.”
Originally founded back in April 2020, the “‘90s and 2000s Nostalgia” subreddit does exactly what it says on the tin. It’s a place for nostalgic internet users to talk about past decades.
The subreddit continues to be quite popular. At the time of writing, it has 32k weekly visitors who make just under a thousand contributions on the community every week.
