TikTokkers are turning Google Street View into a nostalgic time machine

Google has driven Street View cars around the world for almost two decades now And TikTok recently discovered that the image backlog is ripe with nostalgia.

There’s a new trend on the app where people dig up old Google Maps images that show their homes, significant places, or photos from a specific time via Street View to tell a story – this could involve a relative who they have lost, a past relationship, a childhood moment, or any other.

Here’s a TikTok, for example, of a person showing their now-deceased grandparents working on their lawn in 2008.

Here’s another one of a grandmother, this time sitting on her porch.

Here is one of them playing with their childhood dog.

Here’s one that’s the only store in someone’s hometown that has closed.

Many of the comments in these wistful posts are about how nostalgic and sad they are. Some people have also lamented looking for their deceased relatives and no find it on Google Maps.

The trend caught my attention because I wrote about the nostalgia of Street View in 2021long before it became a TikTok trend. At the time, I explored how strange it felt to see your life—your house, your old car—frozen in a specific moment in time.

“The reason why the Google Street thing wasn’t quite… what you were indeed the desire was to relive, to some extent, that small part of your life,” said Dr. Krystine Batcho, a psychologist who has extensively studied nostalgia, told Mashable in 2021. “Now, when I say relive, it may end up being. misunderstood by people. In general, people do not want to return and alive his old life. That’s not what I mean. But it is a little a bit like a visit.”

The people of TikTok seem to have had the same feelings I did. Looking at old images in Street View are a window into an old version of your life, one that you have left but remember with some affection. If you want to look at old images for an address, you need to click “see more dates”, and the backlog with auto-populate at the bottom of your screen.

Credit: Google

Just be warned, if you go down that rabbit hole, pangs of nostalgia will likely follow.