Much of GenZ says they miss their childhood, but when looking at the big picture many other past generations also say the same. In this article, you'll read about how nostalgia and psychology intertwine and make us miss our past.
Ah yes, the early 2000’s-- a time of simplicity, happiness, and nostalgia. Everything seemed absolutely perfect. Listening to the “Aye aye aye, I’m your little butterfly” ringtone on Barbie flip phone toys, stepping on LiteBrite pieces (and you thought Legos were bad?!), eating on Zoopals, playing Club Penguin as you hear Jackson and Miley bicker in the background about a party, making MTV music videos with your friends in the dining room... I could go on and on. Life was so colorful and you wanted to explore the world. Why don’t we feel so happy about life now? Is it simply because the era itself is different-- or is it ourselves as a person and the possible melancholy of growing out of our childhood along with some tricky psychology? Or even both?
We all hear our parents, grandparents, and great grandparents say the same phrases that we say now. “I miss those times. They were a more simple time.” or “It was better back then.” It is a phrase cycle used in every generation in history and continues with Generation Z. This is because we look back at our past better than we remember. You could have had a traumatic childhood and you will still most likely look back on your childhood thinking it was better than now. This is a psychological effect that happens with our past because we feel emotions from our past less intensely than when we are in the present moment. That is why, typically, you look back at bad memories and may think they were not that big of a deal. Then you may wonder, “Well then why do we feel the good memories so strongly?” This is because nostalgia has a very strong effect on our memories, and if it is something we hold dearly to us, our euphoric emotions tend to take over those memories. When your present seems bad, the past looks better because of the fact we feel emotions more strongly in the moment.
When looking back at the past, you knew what happened next. According to PsychReg, when you look back at your past, it gives you a sense of certainty-- something that the present does not really provide most of the time. Though, in those moments when it was the present, they might have been just as stressful or even more stressful than then your present. In life, we crave having a sense of stability and certainty. We would love to know what the next step in life is. In the present, we don’t know things, like if we are going to be with our significant other forever or if we will live in the same place for the next year, we expect these things even if deep down we know they may not be that way forever.
We admire children for their naivety and innocence with everything surrounding them. Not to mention the extreme emotions children feel. We experience all these new things in the beginnings of our life, so it is harder to satisfy our “wow factor” towards things in our life. Things do not impress us as much as they did as children. When thinking about if we’re enjoying the moment or not, we compare to other previous memories we’ve had.
A lot has changed and evolved from the 2000’s to present (R.I.P. Club Penguin and Pixie Hollow, you will be missed). Technology has impacted us a lot, too. Flip phones turned into waterproof touch screen phones that are as thin as a paper, MySpace is not even MySpace anymore, Facebook is getting its butt kicked by Instagram and Snapchat, it used to be low rise jeans and now it is high rise jeans, Disney is not the same, modern and dark was popular but now everyone is obsessed with white and farmhouse style. A lot of online things do not exist anymore (like Club Penguin and Pixie Hollow. I shall forever hold a grudge against Disney). Other factors could be personal that changed like someone passing away or moving to a different place also may make you miss the past.
Overall, our outlook on our past is both a normal psychological cycle that all generations deal with and nostalgia plays a part at the same time. Missing things from that era triggers the cycle of the nostalgic and melancholy feelings we get from our past which, in reality, we just remember that time being different and more positive. So to answer the question, we miss the era and our childhood all at the same time.
