A Review of Youth Nostalgic Consumption Psychology and Identity in Social Media Environments (2018-2026)

In recent years, retro-style outfits have continued to gain popularity on social media platforms. Clothing styles marked by earlier eras, such as Y2K millennium style, vintage outfits, and retro sportswear, have become widely popular among young people. This phenomenon raises a question worth exploring: why have young people developed such strong interest in “old clothes”? What role does social media play in the transformation of nostalgic emotions into consumption behavior? Taking 2018 to 2026 as the time window, this paper systematically reviews the literature on youth nostalgic consumption in social media environments and discusses it from three dimensions: conceptual definition, activation mechanism, and identity. The review preliminarily reveals the role of social media in the dissemination and diffusion of nostalgic content and also confirms that nostalgic consumption is an important path through which young people respond to identity anxiety and seek group belonging. However, existing studies still have three limitations. First, they lack a systematic explanation of how platform mechanisms promote the transformation of nostalgic emotions into consumption behavior. Second, they pay insufficient attention to how young people continuously construct identity through symbolic practices, community interaction, and consumption choices on social media. Third, the special mechanism of “non-experiential nostalgia” in the digital age has not been fully discussed. Future research may focus on constructing theoretical models that take social media as an intermediary variable and connect the logical path from emotion to behavior and then to identity.