Nostalgia and Online Autobiography: Implications for Global Self-Continuity and Psychological Well-Being

Personal narratives constitute one of the most fundamental means of making sense of one’s experiences. In the digital age, documenting life online has emerged as a new form of personal narrative. However, what contributes to documenting life online and its implications has remained unaddressed. With self-reported scales (Studies 1–2) and the behavioral indicator from social media (i.e., posts on Weibo, a Twitter-like online platform in China; Study 2), we examined the relationship between documenting life online and nostalgia, as well as implications for global self-continuity (i.e., a sense of connectedness among past, present, and future selves) and psychological well-being. We found nostalgia was positively associated with self-reported (Study 1) and behavioral (Study 2) documenting life online. Meanwhile, we also found a sequential mediation model: nostalgia was positively associated with documenting life online. Further, this act of online documentation is sequentially linked to positive impacts on global self-continuity and psychological well-being (Studies 1–2). Theoretical and practical implications were discussed.