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We often don't know how nice a period of our lives actually is until it ends. However, there are a few things we can do to help bring back the memories of those precious times. Smelling a familiar scent, putting on a beloved song, or taking out the family photo album are all perfect options. But scrolling through online posts created specifically to induce nostalgia is also an effective one. This is where the Instagram account My Good Old Days comes in. Its pictures help us look back on the games we played, the clothes we wore, the technology we used, and so much more!
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For hundreds of years, this type of reminiscence was considered unhealthy. In the 17th century, a Swiss medical student named Johannes Hofer studied mercenaries in the Italian and French lowlands who longed desperately for their mountain homelands.
Witnessing their weeping and despondency, he coined the term nostalgia and attributed it to a brain disease. Other thinkers of the time echoed this view, and it persisted through the 18th and 19th centuries as well.
#4
Yrral Spavit 4 months ago
Yes, very different in a lot of ways from my younger days. New information and experiences and a willingness to have a look at myself and beliefs.
However, according to Dr. Chelsea Reid, an associate professor of psychology at the College of Charleston, United States, it's a mistake to assume that nostalgia leads to entirely dreadful symptoms.
In fact, "Unpleasant experiences, such as loneliness and grief, can arouse nostalgia, which can then help people cope more effectively with these hardships," she writes.
#6
Janet Sparrow 4 months ago
Agreed. I’m a boomer and raised three great kids (mostly with mutual sarcasm 😘) but children cry out for boundaries. You are doing them a disservice if you let them wander about with no boundaries because they’re insecure when they don’t know where the end is.
#8
Thanks to scientific research, we now know that nostalgia also provides many benefits.
"It enhances feelings of optimism and inspiration and makes people view themselves more positively," Reid says.
"When people feel nostalgic, they feel a greater sense that their lives are meaningful."
Social benefits of nostalgia are especially well supported. It increases empathy and the willingness of people to give to those around them, such as volunteering for community events and donating to charities.
So in a way, creating and sharing posts like these is a form of public service. I know it sounds like a stretch, but the evidence is there!
#13
Olive Moon 4 months ago
OK, yes, this one is huge. It really was exciting picking up the pictures developed from film. Complete anticipation, excitement, and pleasure.
#14
Nostalgia also makes people feel more connected by reassuring them that they are loved by, connected to, and protected by their loved ones.
It also helps us to feel more secure in our close relationships and enhances relationship satisfaction.
#17
#18
Olive Moon 4 months ago
Staying in one position on the couch too long. Getting up and walking like a newborn foal for 3 meters.
#20
Rebecca Hager 4 months ago
"this is a collect call from "i'mreadycomegetme" will you accept the charges?"
Dr. Krystine Batcho, who is a professor of psychology at LeMoyne College in the US, says the beauty about trying to "pass on" and "infect" each other with nostalgia is that even if it doesn't work, it's not a negative experience.
"I never saw that [reminiscing about the past with in a group] can actually alienate other people because people don't necessarily want to hear about your nostalgic memories. They want to share their own," she explains.
#21
Coffeetime2 4 months ago
The walk to my middle school was about a mile. On a section of road without a sidewalk, a car slid on the icy road right in to me. Thankfully it had been moving very slowly, and I was only startled, not hurt.
#22
liam newton-harding 4 months ago
Written by someone who hasn’t popped the hood of a car on 20 years. I triple-dog-dare them to point out a single valve in the black box tech that are modern engines.
"That's why I say I wish it were a little more open because we have so much to learn from one another's nostalgic memories," Batcho adds. "That's why I encourage people when they find themselves in a situation such as you're reminiscing about your past and other people start drifting away because they're bored, you might start asking them about theirs and start a conversation, a dialogue. In that sense, you can broaden it out a little more."
It's like sending your friends memes—even if they don't get every one, they'll send some back, and the fun chat just keeps going.
#26
Rick Murray 4 months ago
Can't help but think that somebody massively missed the point here. 🤦🏻♀️
#29
Olive Moon 4 months ago
I’m there. But honestly, when my guy and I are flossing and brushing, we often joke about how at the same time 40 years ago we would be getting ready to go out clubbing. We miss those days. Don’t take them for granted!
#31
Olive Moon 4 months ago
I was a stay at home Mom. My children were born in the early 80s. Still lots of us back then. I feel so incredibly fortunate that I had that opportunity. I see what’s happening today, and I see the challenges my daughter is facing while BOTH she and her husband have to work. The wealthy are sucking the middle class dry.
#33
liam newton-harding 4 months ago
You. You are the parents now. It’s you sending the kids off with all the things you are complaining about, ffs.
#35
#36
Olive Moon 4 months ago
It reads like poetry to me. It’s someone looking back in time, and seeing the differences in language from the past to now. And the final line is probably true: that’s when we had a lot of time for family and friends. We DID have more time for family and friends before personal computers and cellular phones. They’re not attacking anyone, they’re making an observation.
#37
Stephanie Did It 4 months ago
Just as bad: your roller skate clamps came off your shoe, so you rolled an ankle and did a face plant on the pavement. Almost. Every. Time.
#38
hardrad2009 4 months ago
It will be demolished in a few years and my heart will be broken again, but in a different way.
Khavrinen 4 months ago
Fifty years ago the city told us we had to cut down a row of poplar trees along one side of our property, because the roots were starting to infiltrate the sewer pipe under them. ( That's when I got my "cut my hand with a chainsaw" story. ) When I looked up that house on street-view just now, I saw that there is a row of evergreens in the same place that look 20+ years old. Wonder if I should write the current owners a letter to warn them.
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KazzaHazza 4 months ago
I live in my childhood home. It was passed to me after my parents died. I could have sold it but I couldn’t imagine anyone else living here. We’ve renovated it to our taste but it will always be my childhood home.
Don Adams 4 months ago
Yeah, live not far from it. Color changed from avocado green (it was built in the 70's), and now a dark blue. What stings is my father and I planted 4 pine trees on the 4th of July weekend. They grew well, probably 30-35 feet tall. New owner cut them down not too long ago. I get why, but still sucks a bit.
Auntriarch 4 months ago
Ah don't, I drove past our old house from the 70s, my mother had grown two lovely jacaranda trees from seed, they had been cut down. I didn't tell her.
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Kalon Suszko 4 months ago
I just did that last month after ordering a pizza near the area. drove and parked ate my pizza and let the old memories flood into my brain.....
Auntriarch 4 months ago
Mr Auntriarch and I have driven each other to see our old houses and schools.
Janet Sparrow 4 months ago
I did this and I knew the lady who bought our house and I asked to go in. My house was so tiny! I think the whole thing would’ve fit in my present living room but to me it was a palace.
Stephanie Did It 4 months ago
Yes. Found it empty with a ragged yard and a For Sale sign. I'd give a lot to buy it back, but I'm down to Social Security income these days and that doesn't buy houses. 😢😢😢
Michael Largey 4 months ago
The happiness I had back then is the basis of the happiness I have now.
nut nibbler 4 months ago
It was demolished years, the street where my partner grew up was demolished years ago, the place we first met also demolished years ago.
Celtic Pirate Queen 4 months ago
My youngest sister & I did, when I found it was on the market. D**N! So much smaller than we remembered. Still just a shabby little house, but so many wonderful memories. It was sad to see they'd parceled off the back yard - it used to be about 1/2 acre and led down to Longfellow Creek (West Seattle).
T'Mar of Vulcan 4 months ago
I drive past mine on the way to work every day. It looks fine. I hope the people who moved in are happy there. (We moved out in the '70s, and they built the highway that passes it in 1982.)
nottheactualphoto 4 months ago
I did. The trees on that street were never so huge! And some new owner painted the front door. And I looked it up on one of the real estate websites, and it had sold for 100 times what my parents paid in 1967.
StrangeOne 4 months ago
I've scoped them out on Google Maps. One home and school doesn't exist anymore. The whole street looks unfamiliar. I've seen a few others. One apartment block is now a condo.
Kathleen Diamond 4 months ago
I went back and it was awful! The house itself was just like when I lived there. They had sold off some property and they had put trailers there and were not kept up. My Granny had a beautiful flower bed that ran beside the driveway. I loved working in it with her. They had torn it out that broke my heart. But they are a lot of work and not everyone has the time.
Jean Dogmom 4 months ago
My house was bulldozed back in the 90s to make a softball field for kids.
Lady Eowyn 4 months ago
I did, once, but they'd cut down the plum tree in the front yard. The whole area was so run down from what I remembered that when I got home I took out my old photo album and looked at the photos of how it looked back then.
Rick Murray 4 months ago
I look it up on Google Maps (as I now live in a different country) and I'm like "WTaF?". Woodland torn down for housing, the old quarry that we played around in fenced off and turned into an exclusive golf course, the supermarket looks like it's about to collapse, the petrol station abandoned and fenced off because it did collapse, the main road full of potholes, the village green where they did the maypole dancing has cars parked on it... I could go on but it's just depressing.
Huddo's sister 4 months ago
Mine has been demolished after mum sold it in 2020. Still drive past every so often though.
#39
#42
Michael Largey 4 months ago
My parents went out for drives so my dad could teach my mom how to drive. Fortunately they loved each other.
#46
#47
DM Bossert 4 months ago
Daughter Judy Jetson complained as she stood there and the laundry machine did everything, including folding. Every generation hates doing laundry.
#49
Olive Moon 4 months ago
This is a good one, too. We played a lot of games outside. Hide-and-go-Seek, Kick-the-Can, Scrub, etc. I recently read something quite sentimental: "There was a time that you went out to play with your friends, and you didn’t realize it was the last time.”
#50
Olive Moon 4 months ago
And in the back of pickups. And small children were on their Mother’s laps in the front seat. Héll, we didn’t even have seatbelts! Lots of things have definitely improved.
#53
StrangeOne 4 months ago
Ah, the tinsel on the tree. Just going by the amount of tinsel on this tree, it was put there a few years ago and left on. Eventually most of it will fall off and be sucked up by the vacuum.
#54
Annik Perrot 4 months ago
Oh yes, I remember. Except that when they came out I was 12, old enough to do it to myself. Hard on the knuckles!
#55
Beak Hookage 4 months ago
I lived through the 80s and have absolutely no interest in going back.
#56
nut nibbler 4 months ago
I dislike that sounds from flat screen TVs is worse. Solution, buy yet another power consuming device, a sound bar, just to hear the d**n broadcast. Then you get told "have your hearing checked" but you are the one that can hear the clock has stopped in the other room or the electronic buzz from the fridge.
#62
QuincyForrest 4 months ago
No. Sorry. I'm seventy and I'm still traumatized by how he treated me at times when I was a kid.
#63
Janet Sparrow 4 months ago
My dad had 8 living brothers and sisters. We would get together for holidays, pot luck, kids running all over the place. I’m not sure I would even recognize some of my cousins today. 😢
#65
Beak Hookage 4 months ago
It's a weird feeling, knowing that I now have no grandparents at all. The last one died earlier this year.
#70
Rose Stewart 4 months ago
People did NOT have compassion back then. Do you know what they did to civil rights activists?
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What do you think ?
Gavin Johnson 4 months ago
Cold War anyone? Duck and cover? Maybe less rights for the marginalised? How about women as a lower class? Lower life expectancy? Oh the good old days. Vietnam maybe? How’s about cancer killing way more people? Mutually assured destruction globally if two crazy nations decide to cross swords? Happier times! Children growing up knowing all about the four minute warning? Strikes and four day weeks? Stock market collapses? U.S. and NATO bases dotted all over Europe, ready to send forces across the borders to repel Soviet tanks. Such a peaceful and calmer time. The rose-tinted 20/20 hindsight bifocals are awesome! PS Children do still play out, get skinned knees, play in mud, climb trees, enjoy simple lives and they’ll surprise you, but that’s no fun for the generation that thinks it did it best is it?
Rick Murray 4 months ago
You might want to read through all you've written and realise that...not a lot has changed really. 😳
Load More Replies...
nut nibbler 4 months ago
Ok if I include vacuum cleaners with dust bags? When it was full you would open the front, as you grabbed the bag the thing would seal the opening and you'd dump it without dust going everywhere, now it's press a button, the bottom springs open, dust goes everywhere with a slightest of breeze.
Forrest Hobbs 4 months ago
Vaccum cleaners with dust bags? I remember them. Unzip the cover and dust flew everywhere because those old paper bags were terrible at trapping fine dust and loads of dust got trapped in the fabric cover. Remove the bag from the tube and dust flew everywhere. Wrap the end of the bag over to "seal" it and dust flew everywhere. Horrible, horrible things. Now, you just hold the dust cylinder in the wheelie bin, press the button, and the dust lands neatly in the bin with a tiny flurry escaping. Less than 1% of the dust exposure compared to the bad old days of hoovers with dust bags - *and* the modern vacuum cleaners do a far better job of cleaning in the first place.
Load More Replies...
Panda McPandaface 4 months ago
"Which method best helps you relive your '80s childhood memories?" None, I was a child in the 60s.
Yrral Spavit 4 months ago
Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o’clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad would k**l us, and dance about on our graves singing “Hallelujah.” :)
Rick Murray 4 months ago
You had graves? That's dead posh that is. When I were a lad we had shallow ditches covered with leaves and that was enough for us...
Load More Replies...
Mike F 4 months ago
One of the things I miss the most is Top 40 radio. That was before radio stations were devoted to a genre of music, except of course for classical or country. You would hear Iron Butterfly then the next song could be Aretha Franklin. Keener 13 (WKNR) and The Big 8 (CKLW) forever.
Apatheist Account2 4 months ago
In the UK, the top 40 was a single program on TV on a Thursday, then on the radio on a Sunday, with a DJ talking irritatingly over the start or end when one was trying to tape one's favourite tunes onto cassette.
Load More Replies...
Rika 4 months ago
Anyone remembers taking the clips off highlighters and slipping them on your fingers to pretend you have super long flashy nails ? I don't think any of us kids ever expected that thirty years later, it would be considered "normal" to walk around with that kind of super long nails that could puncture your rect*m when you wipe.
MsAnnThrope 4 months ago
You are a jolly little soul aren't you? You have totally missed the point of this post!
Load More Replies... Gavin Johnson 4 months ago
Cold War anyone? Duck and cover? Maybe less rights for the marginalised? How about women as a lower class? Lower life expectancy? Oh the good old days. Vietnam maybe? How’s about cancer killing way more people? Mutually assured destruction globally if two crazy nations decide to cross swords? Happier times! Children growing up knowing all about the four minute warning? Strikes and four day weeks? Stock market collapses? U.S. and NATO bases dotted all over Europe, ready to send forces across the borders to repel Soviet tanks. Such a peaceful and calmer time. The rose-tinted 20/20 hindsight bifocals are awesome! PS Children do still play out, get skinned knees, play in mud, climb trees, enjoy simple lives and they’ll surprise you, but that’s no fun for the generation that thinks it did it best is it?
Rick Murray 4 months ago
You might want to read through all you've written and realise that...not a lot has changed really. 😳
Load More Replies... nut nibbler 4 months ago
Ok if I include vacuum cleaners with dust bags? When it was full you would open the front, as you grabbed the bag the thing would seal the opening and you'd dump it without dust going everywhere, now it's press a button, the bottom springs open, dust goes everywhere with a slightest of breeze.
Forrest Hobbs 4 months ago
Vaccum cleaners with dust bags? I remember them. Unzip the cover and dust flew everywhere because those old paper bags were terrible at trapping fine dust and loads of dust got trapped in the fabric cover. Remove the bag from the tube and dust flew everywhere. Wrap the end of the bag over to "seal" it and dust flew everywhere. Horrible, horrible things. Now, you just hold the dust cylinder in the wheelie bin, press the button, and the dust lands neatly in the bin with a tiny flurry escaping. Less than 1% of the dust exposure compared to the bad old days of hoovers with dust bags - *and* the modern vacuum cleaners do a far better job of cleaning in the first place.
Load More Replies... Panda McPandaface 4 months ago
"Which method best helps you relive your '80s childhood memories?" None, I was a child in the 60s.
Yrral Spavit 4 months ago
Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o’clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad would k**l us, and dance about on our graves singing “Hallelujah.” :)
Rick Murray 4 months ago
You had graves? That's dead posh that is. When I were a lad we had shallow ditches covered with leaves and that was enough for us...
Load More Replies... Mike F 4 months ago
One of the things I miss the most is Top 40 radio. That was before radio stations were devoted to a genre of music, except of course for classical or country. You would hear Iron Butterfly then the next song could be Aretha Franklin. Keener 13 (WKNR) and The Big 8 (CKLW) forever.
Apatheist Account2 4 months ago
In the UK, the top 40 was a single program on TV on a Thursday, then on the radio on a Sunday, with a DJ talking irritatingly over the start or end when one was trying to tape one's favourite tunes onto cassette.
Load More Replies... Rika 4 months ago
Anyone remembers taking the clips off highlighters and slipping them on your fingers to pretend you have super long flashy nails ? I don't think any of us kids ever expected that thirty years later, it would be considered "normal" to walk around with that kind of super long nails that could puncture your rect*m when you wipe.
MsAnnThrope 4 months ago
You are a jolly little soul aren't you? You have totally missed the point of this post!
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