Consumer trends suggest that many Gen Zers yearn for a taste of the pre-digital era. Photo / Getty Images
Longing for the past can be good news for the future, writes social psychologist Clay Routledge.
The idea that young people today have a damaging relationship with digital technology – a relationship that leaves them insufficiently grounded in the real world and psychologically and socially undeveloped – is not just an old person’s lament. Young people also express those concerns.
A 2023 survey conducted by the Harris Poll in partnership with my research team found that 80% of Gen Z adults – that is, those born after 1997 – were worried that their generation was too dependent on technology. Seventy-five per cent were concerned about social media’s impact on young people’s mental health, and 58% said that new technologies were more likely to drive people apart than bring them together.
As a researcher who specialises in the psychology of nostalgia, I was struck by one finding in particular: 60% of Gen Z adults said that they wished they could return to a time before everyone was “plugged in”.
That, of course, would involve returning to a time that largely predates their own lives.
Most of my research on nostalgia has focused on the sentimental engagement with cherished memories from one’s own life. But people can also feel nostalgic for a past that predates them, which is known as historical nostalgia.
Consumer trends suggest that many members of Gen Z yearn for a taste of the pre-digital era. The oft-noted increase in sales of vinyl records, CDs, physical books and board games is driven only in part by older adults looking to revisit their youth. Young people who grew up on digital entertainments are also a major force behind this retro resurgence.
This preliminary evidence was intriguing. But is Gen Z really in the grip of historical nostalgia – and if so, is that a good or bad thing? I wanted to find out.
Nostalgia gets a bad rap. It is often characterised as an unproductive fixation on an idealised past, one that prevents people from living in the present and planning for the future.
In reality, though, nostalgia helps people thrive in the present and build a better future. I and many other scholars have come to this conclusion after conducting a wide range of studies, including laboratory experiments and quantitative and qualitative surveys involving a large variety of people from all around the world.
This body of research has found that nostalgic memories are often a source of comfort, guidance and inspiration. Even spending a few minutes reflecting on a fond memory or listening to an old familiar song can improve your mood, increase feelings of belonging and instil a sense of meaning in life.
In other words, nostalgia is, counterintuitively, a future-oriented endeavour. We draw on it to resolve our dissatisfactions in the present and to move forward with hope and determination. Yes, nostalgia can be indulged. But for most people, most of the time, it is a stabilising and energising force.
Given that members of Gen Z are worried about their relationships with the digital technologies that have saturated their lives, perhaps they are productively focusing their nostalgia on a technological era before they were alive.
To begin investigating this possibility, my research team worked with a commercial company called Discover.ai, which helps consumer brands better understand cultural trends by analysing online conversations. The agency uses artificial intelligence to distil large amounts of internet discourse – on blogs, websites, social media and more traditional journalism outlets – about popular attitudes.
Working together, we explored Gen Z’s views of predigital cultural products, media, hobbies and traditions. The resulting analysis, done last year, found that members of Gen Z appear to be mining the past to enrich their present lives – especially by fostering a greater appreciation for offline living.
One social media user, for example, described being inspired to buy “a large photo album and high-quality photo printer” because the user was emotionally moved that previous generations created physical photo albums and shared them with visitors to their homes.
To bolster our analysis, my research team also conducted a representative survey this year of more than 2000 adults in the United States. We found that most Gen Z adults – 68% – reported feeling nostalgic for eras before their lifetime. Seventy-three per cent were drawn to media, styles, hobbies or traditions from those eras, and 78% said they believed that new technologies and products should incorporate ideas and design elements from these periods. Moreover, roughly two-thirds reported that exploring eras that predate their lives helped them when they were stressed out about modern life or anxious about the future.
Gen Z hardly has a monopoly on historical nostalgia. Our research team found that millennials and Gen X-ers also experienced high levels of historical nostalgia compared with baby boomers and the silent generation.
But what makes historical nostalgia among members of Gen Z notable, I think, is that they are specifically captivated by what life was like in the analog past – a gulf that is greater than the one that separates, say, Gen X-ers and their boomer parents.
I often hear people wonder if today’s young adults were born too late to reap the benefits of the pre-internet world. Our research gives me hope that the answer is no, because historical nostalgia is helping them to do just that.
For example, the practice of listening to an entire vinyl record is a valuable exercise in sustained focus, since you can’t toggle away on Spotify to another album or song or click on a YouTube video halfway through. But the practice may also be teaching young people broader lessons – say, that they can take a long walk in nature without having to check their phones until they return. Even something as simple as a board game night with friends may help them feel more comfortable and confident in professional social settings.
There is no reason to think that members of Gen Z are turning against modern technology. By many metrics, they appear to be enthusiastic about the latest innovations. And in other research, my lab has found that most of them have positive feelings about many aspects of their online lives.
But progress always involves reaction and revision. Historical nostalgia may be helping a younger generation to harness the benefits of new technology while preserving the virtues of the tangible, physical experiences that remain essential to human flourishing.
With the rise of artificial intelligence, all eyes are on the future. But it is worth looking to the past, as Gen Z appears to be doing, to reveal the future we actually want.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Clay Routledge
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