Nostalgia is a familiar friend to all of us, and sometimes it feels like the weight of a single memory can paint our past in a light that feels achingly sentimental. Unsurprisingly, many of us yearn for the past, wishing we were anywhere but in the present chaos of 2025. This longing for the past is something shared across generations, as many of us look back on childhood with deep fondness, remembering it as immersive and purposeless in the best of ways.
This sentiment is also being expressed on our social media, with the trend of nostalgia core popping up on our feeds. Nostalgia core is an online aesthetic that romanticizes life through the lens of the early 2000s, characterized by photos of grainy film images, pixelated Nintendo graphics, CD players, VHS tapes, and hazy clips, often accompanied by slowed-down lo-fi remixes. Or even take the stream of posts that roll around every Christmas about the holiday season, missing the ‘magical’ feeling it used to carry.
Thousands of comments on these posts echo the all-too-common sentiment of “I wish I could relive these moments,” or “life will never feel like this again.” There’s something so collective about the way an entire generation seems to be mourning their youth. It’s not just childhood that we yearn for, but something about how we engaged with the world during that time in our lives— and how it felt.
Think back to your childhood summers and how time seemed to stretch forever or how each year of youth felt truly definitive. You may vividly remember core memories, ones that feel monumental in shaping who you are. For me, it’s the joy of booting up a pixelated screen of Nintendo Wii Lego games, riding my bicycle around my childhood neighbourhood until the sun dawned, or middle school sleepovers where we secretly watched horror movies that scared us for the next month straight.
It’s pretty ordinary to romanticize childhood, or to believe that our past was more vibrant because we were in an age of youthful carefreeness! Part of why our generation’s nostalgia is at an all-time high may be due to an increase in the prioritization of digital spaces over physical ones.
As young children, our attention spans and awareness were at their peak, and the world was an unfamiliar environment. So, we engaged with it intentionally as a novelty— cataloging details, sensations, imagination, experiences, and holding our memories as treasured pieces of our identity.
More than nostalgia, nostalgia core is the desire to inhabit time as we once did. As we age, life becomes a routine dance, and our brains often cease to hold onto mundanity with that same fondness. The novelty of life fades, but our perception of time only grows, partly due to a phenomenon known as the Oddball effect.
But the answer to your feelings of nostalgia isn’t to mourn your childhood; it’s to reignite a part of you that immersed itself with the world around you. It boils down to what we did so often as children— noticing our surroundings. If you feel that time is slipping through your fingers and the world has lost its sense of wonder, here are three things you can do to reclaim the childhood ‘spark’ you may be missing.
- Change a Small Detail in your Routine
-
By making a slight adjustment to your daily routine, you can invite the experience of novelty back into your life. It doesn’t need to be a grand cinematic change but rather a small difference in daily choice. You could order a new drink from your favourite cafe, take an alternative route home from work, listen to a different music genre, or even add a new activity to your extracurriculars. Your brain craves change, and when you embrace novelty, it leads to increased dopamine and may even enhance memory encoding ability.
Even a minor change can increase your creativity while sharpening your memory and focus. As kids, everything was brand new to us, which made typical moments feel special, but you can still tap into that feeling as an adult. By making the conscious choice to break out of your typical routine, you may find yourself with a newfound sense of appreciation for your daily experiences.
- Interrupt Auto-Pilot mode
-
Much of our lives is lived on autopilot. We are so used to filling the silence with music on our walks or mindlessly scrolling on our phones to pass the time. While the 9-5 structured routines are a staple of adulthood, they can also desensitize us to our inner mind and how we engage with our surroundings.
As kids, we were fully aware of living in the moment rather than juggling multiple distractions that hindered our awareness of our thought patterns. We rarely pause to notice the tiny details of everyday life or pay attention to our surroundings. By listening to the sounds of your city, savouring each taste of a meal, appreciating a quality in a stranger, or just noticing how the sun spills across the pavement, you have the ability to interrupt autopilot. These small mindful moments help us recognize the small yet beautiful aspects of everyday life while reconnecting with our immersive spirit from childhood.
- Get off your phone, for real!
-
Let’s be honest, many of us are guilty of spending too much time on our phones, but this is the ultimate barrier to living in the present. You’ve probably heard this advice a million times, but in the wise words of Gen Z slang, please, touch grass.
It is essential to acknowledge the negative habits we fall into, such as “doomscrolling” or using our phones to distract us from negative emotions. When you let your brain rest, you give yourself a chance to reconnect with your thoughts, imagination, or be introspective in new ways. Think back to when you were a child, exploring outside, and how engaging the world felt, even without technology.
You obviously don’t have to give up your technology entirely, but rather take moments to disconnect and be present in your own life. As kids, we engaged with the world around us without the burden of technology— letting our minds wander and reflect, which is a huge piece of what we are missing.
The joy and wonder didn’t lie in our youth but rather our presence in all we experienced. Time felt slower because we were active participants in each moment, living within our experiences rather than being just observers. You don’t need to relive your childhood memories to feel that warm, fuzzy feeling, but rather start creating your own magic. When our awareness returns, time starts to expand, and so does the feeling of actually living our life in its most authentic form.