50 Cringy Childhood Photos That Might Make You Glad Yours Aren’t Online (Best Of All Time)

If you’re an adult now and grew up before the internet was packed with tips on how to dress, perfect your hair, and look your best, there’s a good chance you went through an awkward phase. I certainly did. When I was 14, I decided to cut my hair short, thinking I could pull off the look of one of my favorite female singers. Instead, I ended up with a haircut that earned me the nickname ‘Justin Bieber,’ because, as you might have guessed, it looked just like the iconic style so many teenage boys had between 2009 and 2014. The problem? I was a girl, and while many women can rock a pixie cut, it just wasn’t working for me.

Sometimes I can’t help but grimace when I look back at that short hair phase, but I also try to approach it with kindness and self-acceptance. After all, if you can’t experiment wildly with your look during your teenage years—when can you? I think those cringy experiences are humbling and help build your character and sense of humor.

The followers of the ‘Blunder Years’ subreddit—one of Reddit’s biggest communities with almost a million members—would probably agree with me. They’re all about owning their past selves.

As the group puts it, the photos shared here need to be truly cringe-worthy. “Simply being nerdy just isn’t going to cut it. If you wore your ‘nerd glasses because you thought you were so hipster,’ that’s not enough of a blunder.” And the redditors deliver, offering everything from painfully bright 80s outfits to intense emo and goth phases, and all the questionable trends of the early 2000s. It really feels like going through an archive.

Of course, it’s not always easy to move on from the awkward moments we experienced growing up. To explore why these memories linger and how we can overcome them, Bored Panda spoke with Dr Charlotte Russell, a clinical psychologist and founder of The Travel Psychologist blog.

Often, our tendency to cringe at ourselves stems from our sensitivity to how others perceive us. “Humans are a social species, and our social relationships matter to us,” Russell says. “This can mean we fear or worry about things that other people might judge us for—whether it’s over a bad haircut or following a trend we later find regrettable.”

“It’s important for each of us to learn that we’re not perfect; we all make mistakes and do things that are embarrassing at some point,” Russell encourages. In particular, as we enter our teen years, we often try to understand ourselves better, which can lead to some unusual choices. “When we’re young, we’re especially focused on figuring out who we are, so we experiment with different things to see what fits,” she explains.