Psychology suggests that adults who keep returning to old photos aren't necessarily living in the past; nostalgia can serve as a form of emotional self-regulation

You’re scrolling through your camera roll looking for something completely unrelated, and then you stop. A photo from a birthday party 6 years ago. A blurry photo of you and your college roomies. Throwback vacation pic from what feels like a different lifetime. You weren't looking for any of it, and yet here you are, staring at it longer than you intended.

If that sounds familiar, you are not alone, and according to science, you are not being sentimentally foolish either. According to Wildschut, T. and colleagues, in the 2006 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology study ‘Nostalgia: content, triggers, functions,’ nostalgia is a predominantly positive, self-relevant, and social emotion that serves psychological functions, including generating positive affect and bolstering social connectedness. In other words, looking at old photos isn't a sign that you're stuck. It means your brain is doing exactly what it was built to do.