Why Are Young People So Nostalgic for a Time They Never Lived In?

How Nostalgia for the Past Is Shaping Our Present

Over the past few years, aesthetics and objects from bygone eras have returned with surprising intensity. Jim Legxacy didn’t just bring back BBM as Black British Music - he revived BlackBerry Messenger too. YT and his go-to director Lauzza have resurrected the glossy surrealism of the Frutiger Aero aesthetic, meanwhile flip phone searches have surged by nearly 16,000%.

This isn’t happening by accident. Across fashion, music, film, and culture at large, Gen Z has a resounding sense of nostalgia, but for times they never lived through. It’s not a longing for their past, it’s a yearning for lost futures, borrowed histories, and the emotional refuge of eras only known second-hand.

In response to this phenomenon, a new word, ‘anemoia,’ has emerged, meaning “nostalgia for a time you've never known.” It’s not far from nostalgia, defined as “a sentimental longing or wistful affection for a period in the past,” but it distinctly reflects the dislocated and digitised way young people today relate to recent history.

Anemoia, and nostalgia more broadly, doesn’t just come out of nowhere. It’s inherited. Passed down through the people we look up to: parents, older siblings, artists, online icons, or the older kids in the scene. And older people come with stories of better times - more affordable housing, real clubs, real connection, and real rebellion. Over time, that romanticism bleeds into how we see the eras they lived through.

This admiration can soon turn to mimicry. We dig through their playlists, raid their wardrobes, and rewatch their movies, not because we remember these things, but because they’ve become symbolic. Natanya’s closet says something. Jim Legxacy’s samples say something. Unknown T wearing a Lake Elsinore hat says something. Referencing something from the past shows you know your roots, even if those roots aren’t technically yours.

In this sense, Gen Z’s nostalgia isn’t just personal, but performative, and even aspirational. There’s cultural capital in seeming like you remember something you weren’t even alive for. By replicating the references of the people we admire, we start to feel like we belong to something bigger than our own timeline.

A big part of nostalgia’s appeal is the idea that the past was easier. Whether that’s true or not doesn’t really matter - it feels true. For Gen Z, who’ve never known anything but economic and climate collapse and uncertainty, even the recent past can look like a lost paradise.

Not that long ago, people could get a degree, land a job, and eventually afford a home. Now we’re expected to juggle unpaid internships, side hustles, and skyrocketing rent, all while being told to save money by skipping lattes or cancelling Netflix. Of course we romanticise eras gone by, we’re craving a version of the world where stability still seemed possible.

Psychotherapist Kamalyn Kaur puts it well: “we feel nostalgia for a time of possibility.” We don’t long for the past because it was perfect, but because it wasn’t closed off. It still felt open, like things could work out.

Another reason nostalgia hits so hard for Gen Z is because we’ve known too much, too soon. Raised on the internet, we’ve been exposed to global crises and existential threats from the minute we could scroll. We had no buffer or slow introduction to the weight of the world, just algorithm-fed outrage and tragedy, and the pressure to have a take on it all.

It’s not just information overload, but moral overload too. We have to be politically literate, socially aware, emotionally intelligent, and brand-safe at all times, and it’s exhausting. That constant responsibility flattens you, and makes even the near past feel like freedom.

Nostalgia becomes a kind of soft protest against the hyper-awareness we’re forced to carry, a curated illusion of peace, if you will.

The internet didn’t just raise us though, it shaped our sense of self. Social media trained us to see ourselves as brands before we even knew who we were. Every post became a performance, every outfit a reference, every moment a potential TikTok. In a space where everything is high-definition, hyper-curated, and painfully self-aware, the past offers a softness that we don’t have today.

That’s part of why Ruff Sqwad brought a pirate radio aerial onto their DJ AG set, or why Travs Presents record their sets on VHS. There’s an intentional rejection of gloss and algorithmic perfection. We romanticise the messiness of analogue life because it wasn’t always online.

In this way, nostalgia becomes its own filter, both visually and emotionally. We watch old grime sets and spin records not to go back, but to log off and feel real, even if it’s just for a minute.

Not all nostalgia is the same though. There’s two kinds - reflective and restorative. Reflective nostalgia lingers, questions, and mourns what was lost. Restorative nostalgia, on the other hand, tries to rebuild the past and make it real again.

Gen Z’s nostalgia leans toward the restorative. We don’t remember the world before the internet, but we recreate it anyway - through BlackBerry-shot music videos, Risky Roadz-style edits, Forreduci hats, the migraine skank, and archive pages of now-defunct blogs. It’s not about accuracy, but about feeling.

Y2K fashion isn’t really from the 2000s, but a remix of how the 2010s remembered the 2000s. A reference to a reference. And maybe that’s the point. Our nostalgia isn’t about going back, but about feeling real in a world that doesn’t.

This longing for the past also shows up in how we consume. DVD sales have increased. Record players are back in living rooms. Vintage clothes outsell new ones. Blackberrys, DSes, and Avirex jackets are back in circulation. According to Spotify, Gen Z streams more 1980s music than music from the 2020s.

In fact, 15% of Gen Z say they’d rather think about the past than the future, and over half say they actively reminisce about old media. While that might seem odd coming from the most online generation yet, it makes sense. Nostalgia offers comfort, and in a time defined by collapse and overstimulation, comfort carries cultural power.

So, why are we so nostalgic for a time we never lived in?
Maybe because the present doesn’t feel like it belongs to us. The future’s been stolen, the past has been sold back to us, and the now is too fast to hold on to. Nostalgia becomes a coping mechanism, a way to reclaim agency in a world that feels outside of our control.

By remixing the past, we’re rewriting the present. We’re building timelines that never existed, stitching together cultural fragments into something that feels more honest than what’s on offer now. Whether it’s dressing like a reference to a reference, spinning records we never grew up with, or shooting on devices that were obsolete before we could afford them, it’s not about going backwards, but finding a way to feel grounded.

In the end, nostalgia isn’t about memory but meaning. And when meaning feels scarce, the past becomes a place we can use to shape and hold the present, even if we were never there.