Or maybe I was so anxious about not feeling nostalgic that I let that worry overpower my natural urge to remember the past. Maybe I was so hopped up on digital nostalgia that my ability to appreciate the analog version atrophied. Perhaps that’s what happened to me when I arrived at my childhood home. “Then the future-orientation that nostalgia evokes might never be realized.” “When much of the day is focused on reliving the past and basking in the emotions that these memories bring up,” Zegel cautions. Ironically, findings from a 2012 study suggest that people who worry about experiencing nostalgia often spend more time worrying about not feeling it than actually feeling it, minimizing its positive effects. In 2015, one of the first studies on nostalgia and social media concluded that nostalgic posts tended to be more reflective, emotional, and occasionally bittersweet than average.Īt the same time, the prevalence of such images online means that this generation feels more pressure than previous generations to experience (and share) nostalgia. And digital displays of nostalgia have also changed how we experience and share that elusive emotion. Access to digital images that evoke nostalgia for other people’s memories-think of anything with an inkwell instagram filter-have made videos and blogs that feature such images increasingly popular among teenage girls, one study suggests. While the digital nostalgia theory has yet to be thoroughly explored, the preliminary research suggests that it may influence how future generations process nostalgia. “The always-available digital medium could tune them in so much to their past that other reminders, like real physical items, could be harder to part with.” Perhaps digital photos make people more nostalgic.
Then again, she says, the research is in its infancy. “People could be so focused and content with the digital reminders of the past they feel nostalgic about that the actual items have less value for them,” Bettina Zengel, a nostalgia expert at the Southampton School of Psychology told Fatherly. In the digital age, some studies suggest nostalgia has shifted from items that evoke memorize to images snapped with our smartphones. Utilizing Southampton Nostalgia Scale dozens of social psychologists have produced studies that suggest nostalgia can foster creativity, improve relationships, and bolster motivation. But is it evolving? Am I less likely to feel nostalgic than my parents, and one day when my kids go through their childhood possessions, will they care even less than I do? Modern experts are not sure. The term nostalgia was coined in 1688 by Johannes Hoffer, a Swiss doctor who defined it as a “neurological disease of essentially demonic cause.” By the 19th and 20th centuries, nostalgia continued to be negatively associated with “immigrant psychosis,” and “mentally repressive compulsive disorder,” until Constantine Sedikides, a psychologist at Southampton University, pioneered a new field of study over a decade research that said otherwise and concluded nostalgia is essentially healthy. There, I felt my first pang of nostalgia. Until I came across my parents’ old love letters. And indeed, when I arrived at my childhood home and rifled through my baby clothes and toys, I felt nothing. My memorizes are exclusively of the TimeHop variety. I live in a tiny New York City apartment. Not that I thought I would be nostalgic about all that crap. “One of them is a detective!” Naturally, I booked the first flight home-in part, to explain to him why telling the story that way wasn’t as progressive as he thought and, in part, to go through my childhood belongings. “Lauren, we sold the house…and to some really nice lesbians,” my dad told me with pride. When my father called in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday, I assumed something terrible had happened.įortunately, it wasn’t bad news.
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