A #TBT post a day keeps the loneliness at bay.
Scrolling through social media is a tirade of #TBT posts from childhood to high school. In 2019, the 10-Year Challenge became popular where people posted an image of themselves from 2009 next to a current photo.
Millennials always seem to be at the tail end of some kind of critical conversation. They’re broke, depressed, addicted to the internet, addicted to nicotine, deathly afraid to talk on the phone and the list goes on.
More recently, our generation is seen as one that is stuck in the past or unable to live in the present. The increase in old photos and memories being shared on platforms like Instagram and Timehop suggest an obsession with rehashing old memories. From Buzzfeed posts talking about our favorite childhood memories, to remake culture, to fashion, there’s no doubting this generation enjoys throwing it back.
Why are people obsessed with throwback posts? Well, a lot of this happens to be psychologically driven.
According to Heather Mangelsdorf, visiting assistant professor of psychology, traditional nostalgia was actually viewed as a disease or a psychological disorder. It was a negative thing to always be thinking about the past. Now, however, it is viewed as a really useful psychological tool that helps with mental health.
“It offers us a sense of security and concrete realness at a time that we are bombarded with data and articles and social media and even fake news,” said Mangelsdorf. “People are on the edge about what’s real and what evidence can we test versus what we remember like those Nickelodeon TV shows that no one can give us evidence against. It is a concrete part of our past experience.”
So, sharing old memories or past interests keeps us mentally positive and socially connected. There’s something pure and undamaged about the happiness of the past. Nostalgic memories give social support and make the individual into the center of the show.
But is it a problem to be too stuck in the past and does it tell us something about the present?
“Looking into the past too much makes you less connected to your current social experience. It can keep you from making new friends and creating even more positive experiences for the future,” said Mangelsdorf.
An article from Fortune titled “Throwback Thursday: The psychology behind its success,” said that more than 228 million photos are tagged with #ThrowbackThursday. The continued increase in shareable platforms such as blogs, Facebook and Twitter has created a platform that on its own makes people yearn for the past.
The past is a symbol of happiness and for many, the only tool to counteracting loneliness. And millennials might be the loneliest group of all.
According to the 2018 U.S. Loneliness Index, those in Generation Z scored a loneliness rate of 48.3 out of 80 and millennials 45.3 out of 80. This makes them the loneliest age groups. Part of this has to do with wanting real-life connections and an overall solution to poor mental health amongst younger generations.
College means starting an independent and fresh slate where the comfort of high school friends and concrete schedules are extinct. Nostalgia at this point becomes more than a post on Facebook — it becomes a connection.
“[Nostalgic posts] can counteract loneliness. There’s lots of science on what it means to be lonely,” said Mangelsdorf. “It’s not objectively how many people you interact with but its a perception of feeling lonely… by using nostalgia and thinking back when they did have this support it can help reduce loneliness.”
On top of being lonely and depressed, millennials seem to have seen it all. A 2008 financial crisis that made getting jobs difficult, a transition to more technology and experiences in political divisiveness that is all vastly unfamiliar.
Often times it seems like the present and the future are too unsure.
“It feels like we are in a state of turmoil, especially these last couple of years. I don’t think I’m alone in that perception. We are in a time that feels more insecure and more of that existential threat idea… if we are more nostalgic than other generations in the past then maybe that’s why. We need that positive boost from nostalgia, that sense of groundedness,” said Mangelsdorf.
Whether nostalgic social media usage is viewed as a psychological release or a failure to live in the moment, it often seems unavoidable.
Discussions around social media often suggest that it makes people less grounded in the present conversation. Despite the link between nostalgia and social media being a mostly positive one, social media is still a tool with a lot of negative connotations.
A study that was published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology from 2018 measured the link between time spent on social media and the participants overall fear of missing out, anxiety, depression and loneliness.
Social media makes people compare themselves to each other and this can increase the risk of developing symptoms of depression or anxiety, especially if low self-esteem is already a factor.
So, while #TBT posts are seen as a positive tool for psychological well-being, social media is a victim of increasingly fake portrayals of day to day life. A nostalgic post, while beneficial for one person, could cause the person viewing it to experience unhappy and lonely thoughts.
While social media is flooded with “friends,” a celebrity throwback posts, the media and entertainment groups continue to poke us with the nostalgia stick.
According to, “Why nostalgia marketing works so well with millennials, and how your brand can benefit” from Forbes, nostalgia is a powerful emotional marketing strategy.
Nostalgic marketing involves tapping into cultural memories from previous decades in a way that helps with modern campaigns, especially targeted at millennials. The obsession with #TBT is partially forced upon millennials.
“Associating brand messaging with positive references from the ’90s,’80s 一 and even the ’70s 一 humanizes brands, forging meaningful connections between the past and present,” said Friedman.
From classic TV reboots like “Full House” and “Gilmore Girls,” to Lucky Charms, new Nintendo consoles, Legos, Converse, Coca-Cola, nearly every product or media has one foot in the past and one in the present.
As brands continue to showcase their history and target the past to move forward, it brings up the question of whether or not its a healthy pattern or if its a failure for people to move on and accept society as it is.
In many ways, #ThrowbackThursday has become an everyday habit.
Xiaoye Chen, associate professor of marketing, said that while it seems like older people would be more nostalgic, that may not be the case. Younger generations have a different pace of development they’ve had to experience.
“We all tend to romanticize the good times. At the time you probably don’t remember feeling that happy. But at the same time, you didn’t have the same amount of stress because one of the largest issues with the younger generation is anxiety and depression… we tend to rely on the past to comfort ourselves,” said Chen.
This generation’s obsession with nostalgically-driven social media has a lot to do with the creation of social media itself. People crave what’s comfortable, and even more so, what’s familiar.
Chen said that a company like Patagonia urges people to use social media to show the durability of their past products by creating a side-by-side comparison. It shows that the product is still serving the user well and forces people to see the importance of connecting the past and the present. Nostalgic marketing is a really intense emotional appeal that will continue to be embraced by marketers with the hopes it won’t permanently drag people back, but only from time to time.
“Our technology development and our cultural movement has all moved so fast, we want to go back to when we were young and things were stable,” said Chen.
Can consumers and the everyday person ever move on from the past if it’s integrated into every part of the future?
