Nostalgia mode (again)

Remember when we all used to be into nostalgia?

Photo by Sylvester Sabo on Unsplash

Reminder: We’re still in Low Power Mode, as I take a few days off. During Low Power Mode, we skip the “7 other things” and revisit some “greatest hits” from the last 5 years of the newsletter. Here’s a great one from before 95% of you were subscribers!

Nostalgia mode

Remember when we all used to be into nostalgia? Oh, how I miss those days.

That's all a joke of course; for one thing, we're perpetually into nostalgia.

Some psychology professionals describe nostalgia as a potent defense against unhappiness. For example, one study found that:

provoking nostalgia in experiments strengthened people's social bonds, boosted their positive feelings about themselves, and improved their mood.

And, in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, a group of scientists wrote last year that "nostalgia's influence on neural activity within multiple brain structures," while not yet fully understood, could eventually lead to "nostalgia-based therapy and treatment" of various "emotional and memory dysfunctions."

Even if you haven't explored the science, I doubt much of this will be a revelation. We all know how nostalgia works, because we've felt it.

That said, I was surprised to learn about a feature on my iPhone that I've come to call Nostalgia Mode (Apple officially calls it Photo Shuffle.)

In short, it's a setting that turns your iPhone's wallpaper (assuming you have an iPhone) into a nonstop cascade of photos to remind you of memories of your friends, your close family, and anyone or anything else you care about, as long as you have relevant images.

Let's quickly explain where to find it on an iPhone:

1. First, go into Settings.

2. Next, tap on the Add New Wallpaper option, and select Photo Shuffle.

3. Next, you'll have options to choose which photos or types of photos you'd like to display. Personally, I have an absurd number of photos on my phone, but I decided simply to display photos of my wife, my daughter, and other family members and close friends. You can also choose to shuffle through photos of pets, nature, cities, or other choices.

4. From there, you'll select the frequency with which you'd like your phone's wallpaper to change: from every time you pick up your phone, to every hour or every day.

There are a few other options, but I'm just going to trust that you can figure it out (or check out this article with more of a tutorial). For me, the point has to do more with the way making this change improves happiness by leveraging nostalgia--and by extension, how working nostalgia into your products can inspire customers to want to see more of them.

Just think: We've been using iPhones and storing digital photos en masse for going on 10 or 15 years now. For most of us, mementos of big swaths of our lives are living digitally in the cloud and on our devices.

There's a lot of emotional punch embedded in those electrons, and yet how often do you actually sit down and go through them?

I suppose that's the power of those on-this-day notifications on social media. Just think how they can sometimes make you feel:

• the way you and your loved ones looked when they were younger,

• the memories of your kids when they were little,

• the amazing experiences you thought enough not just to photograph but to share.

Now, imagine that you've set up the device that goes with you everywhere -- the one you're probably reading this on right now -- so that it gives you that same little shot of nostalgia-laced endorphins, as often as literally every time you pick it up.

That's Nostalgia Mode for you (again, you'll find it under Photo Shuffle.) Actually, let me quote Lauren Sullivan of the New York Times, whose description of the setting was referred to me by multiple readers:

For weeks, opening my phone sparked a sentimental surprise. Sometimes it was a peek at a photo from the thousands I'd never paid attention to, and sometimes it was a milestone--no more training wheels, the tooth fairy's first appearance, landing in Dublin. Sometimes it was a souvenir from the chaos of parenting worth savoring.

...

That's the power of technology. My phone is a source of mental-health woes and privacy concerns, and it can be a distraction from being present in my life. It's also an incredible source of connection and convenience. I'm grateful to be transported, at the top of every hour, to a memory and time that fills me with joy and reflection.

I see only one drawback to this whole thing: It's that whenever I've been somewhere and put my phone down next to other people's, the way I know which one is mine instantly is by the wallpaper photo. But that seems a small price to pay.

I can't tell you if trying out Nostalgia Mode (again, aka Photo Shuffle) will radically improve your life. But if it does, I predict you'll one day look back wistfully at this exact moment, when you learned the trick on Understandably, and set it all in motion.

Because right now is the moment we'll someday look back on with wonder.

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Fun fact: The last time I wrote about this subject was the first day we emerged from Low Power Mode last year! Remember that! Good times. We’ll be back soon, meanwhile I hope everyone is enjoying the end of summer.