Nostalgia can be incredibly lucrative. Lots of businesses and entrepreneurs recognize this and rely on nostalgia marketing. BBC Worklife reports that consumers are more likely to spend money on brands that evoke nostalgia.

There’s a lot of power in people’s emotions and how they think about the past. 

Meanwhile, CNN Business notes that more and more adults are buying toys to relive the past. Known as ‘kidults’ (‘kid adults’), they spent $6.4 billion on toys for themselves in June 2023.

That’s up $1.7 billion from June 2021. Part of this trend can be explained by the COVID-19 pandemic: people tend to be more nostalgic during times of crisis.

The ‘80s and 90s Babies Only’ project can be found on Instagram, where it has 47.7k followers. There’s also an active Facebook group with 26.9k loyal fans, as well as a now-defunct Tumblr account.

The people running the whole show invite everyone who was born between the ‘70s and ‘90s to follow their content. Meanwhile, if you have any suggestions for posts and memes, you can message the curators or share your own content on their Facebook group wall.

Something that the administrators of the project want their followers to focus on is sharing original content.

They want everyone to “relive the good old days, reminiscing about anything and everything that reminds us of those happier times,” however, this doesn’t mean that folks should repost the same few images over and over again. 

Though nostalgia can be a lot of fun and incredibly useful, it’s a bit of a double-edged sword. When used responsibly and in moderation, it can energize us and inspire us to be more optimistic about the future.

However, if all we ever do is live in the past and view the present as a pale shadow of the ‘good old days,’ we’re doing ourselves a disservice.

No matter how you spin things, we still have to live in the present. No matter how amazing your childhood or youth might have been, this does not mean that it’s ‘all downhill’ from there.

You can live very meaningfully no matter how old you are. It all depends on the choices you make, the relationships you build, and your perspective.

For example, thinking that the world’s an incorrigibly messed up place and everything will only ever get worse is going to do more harm than good. Yes, the world is full of problems. These global issues change with every generation. But there’s never been a period of time in history without serious challenges. It’s good to be realistic, but you have to make sure that you’re not being pessimistic, jaded, and cynical.

Positive change is possible. Though, it takes tremendous, sustained effort for it to happen.

On top of that, if you’re constantly mumbling about how swell life used to be decades ago, you’re potentially cutting yourself off from awesome opportunities in the present. There are lots of great people to meet, plenty of interesting activities, and places to travel to here and now.

Yearning for the comforts of the past and your glory days is toxic if all you ever do is daydream about them without taking action. However, if all of that nostalgia spurs you into action to get fit, value your loved ones more, and follow your passions, then embrace that!

However, it’s not necessarily childhood that people are nostalgic about. Broadly speaking, we yearn for the periods in our lives when we felt the happiest, carefree, or driven.

If you had a loving upbringing, that might be your childhood. But for someone else, it might be their early or even late adulthood when they finally started crafting the life they wanted with their own hands.

How many of you Pandas reading this miss the ‘80s and ‘90s? Or maybe there’s a whole different decade you remember even more fondly? What do you miss the most about the past? Real talk: would you like to go back to the past if time machines existed? Why (not)? We’d love to hear your thoughts on this, so if you have a moment, scroll down to the comment section to reminisce.