Author: Varun Rockey

From a very young age, we have been taught to view adulthood as a race—the race to chase larger titles, higher credit limits, bigger cars, and even bigger homes. But if you look closely at the daily life of the modern-day young adult, the true reality is one of quiet containment—confined to our corporate cubes and concrete boxes where attendance is not optional but mandatory. Most of us spend our mornings trapped inside the digital glass of our phones, our afternoons navigating the never-ending grids of corporate spreadsheets, and our evenings trying to keep our living spaces looking presentable, organized, and “mature.”

Beneath the aesthetic demands of keeping a home looking proper, a quiet crisis is arising—one where our spatial identity is defined by our peers, our family, or society. For many of us, the dream of an entire dedicated room or a detached backyard studio is locked behind the gatekeepers of modern real estate. The reality is often a desk tucked into a bedroom corner in a shared flat, or a single table carved out of a high-rent apartment in an expensive, concrete jungle we call “the city.”

But the true boundary isn’t measured in sprawling square footage; it is measured in raw, uncompromised autonomy. The human spirit simply requires absolute control over whatever small perimeter it manages to claim.

Key Takeaways

• You don’t need a spare room to have a sanctuary at home; one desk or table that you fully control is enough.
• A personal desk setup isn’t defined by the absence of work but by the presence of you: objects tied to your interests, history, and goals.
• “Kidult” guilt fades once you stop seeking outside approval. It’s a space you contribute to and owe to no one.
• Physical objects such as die-cast cars, model kits, and small figures give your brain a tactile break from weightless digital work.
• Autonomy is contagious: personalizing a desk at the office often encourages colleagues to do the same.

The Reality of the Bedroom Desk Setup: Building Space in a Tight Corner

There is a common misconception that a functional work desk and your deeply personal sanctuary cannot exist on the same piece of wood. We are often sold the idea that a remote workspace must be a sterile laboratory optimized solely for ergonomics, productivity, and how clinical your background looks on a video call. The only exceptions are typically given to YouTubers, influencers, and streamers, while the average corporate or white-collar worker has to stick to a boring desk setup.

But a personal desk setup isn’t defined by the absence of work; it is defined by the presence of you. It is a physical defense system built right into your day.

Whether you are working from a bedroom corner in a shared flat or sitting in a bustling, cubicled corporate office, the psychological necessity remains the same: we require a perimeter where the rules of the rigid adult world are quietly negotiated. The good news is that you don’t need a separate room to achieve this. However, you do need to have the confidence and audacity to claim whatever little space you have to make it your own. There’s some research behind this: in a University of Exeter experiment, people who could arrange their own workspace got roughly 30% more done than people in a bare one (Knight & Haslam, 2010). The hard truth is that the autonomy you want can be claimed in centimeters, right under the nose of a spreadsheet.

Clinical Workstation vs. Personal Desk Setup: The Evolution of the Square Meter

The Clinical Workstation	The Personal Desk Setup
Optimized for corporate productivity, client compliance, and clean video backgrounds.	Carved out for individual autonomy, creative hobbies, and personal history.
Feeds weightless digital stress via metrics, spreadsheets, and emails.	Offers tactile decompression via physical objects you can touch, roll, and feel.
Conceals the self to fit a manufactured mold of what an “adult worker” should look like.	Establishes a subtle anchor—a reminder of who you are before, during, and after the log-in hours.

For me, living and working where I’m constantly observed—whether by flatmates, family, or colleagues behind a Zoom lens—is draining in a very specific way. It keeps me in a kind of “performance mode.”

When I had a conventional office job, I refused to let that clinical energy dictate my sanity. I optimized my desk for comfort and creativity. I brought in a few Hot Wheels cars, some old Happy Meal toys, and a small plant to sit alongside my work monitors.

Initially, I wondered if I should keep my inner world entirely private from colleagues. If you aren’t comfortable revealing that side of yourself to your team, the strategy is simple: keep your personal anchors just outside the camera’s line of sight, or let a soft background blur protect your perimeter during meetings. A tiny die-cast car sitting right below your monitor doesn’t need to be part of the company agenda; it is there entirely for your baseline sanity.

However, I chose to leave my pieces visible, and a quiet magic happened. Not only did my colleagues love the items, but I watched a fascinating shift occur in the office culture. Within a few weeks, the people sitting around me started quietly bringing in their own collectibles, plants, and desk toys. They began personalizing their own spaces simply because someone else had broken the ice. I realized then that when you dare to personalize your space in a corporate environment, you aren’t just decorating—you are signaling. Autonomy is contagious.

Is a Desk Full of Toys “Childish”? Navigating the Kidult Stigma With Intentional Living

Claiming a table as an adult inevitably creates a strange, subtle friction with the domestic world. When you choose to decorate your one square meter of autonomy with a Gundam helmet, action figures, a retro console, or raw consumer electronics instead of minimalist, neutral vases, people notice. Even the most understanding partners, parents, or roommates will occasionally drop a well-meaning joke. They ask when you’re going to “grow out” of the plastic, or laugh gently at the sight of a grown adult carefully unboxing a collectible.

The real issue is that modern households have very little space free to be completely dominated by any single person at all times. Because of this, even silly, harmless jokes can cause you to get into your own head and introduce a layer of “kidult” guilt.

An adult sanctuary isn’t a spatial luxury; it is a vital psychological defense system—one where you use things you are familiar with to give yourself a break from the mundane life while still grounding yourself to reality.

The only way to get over the stigma of having what most consider toys decorating your workspace is to stop seeking external validation and simply do it for yourself. It feels far less guilty when you realize that this is a space you owe to no one. You contribute to the home, you pay the rent, and other people’s opinions of your table are entirely irrelevant regardless of how flashy it looks.

My workspace is a mini-laboratory for my honest, unvarnished interests. It isn’t childish, because a personal desk goes way beyond assembling Lego sets. It can be an art station, a tech layout, a mini workshop, or a toy train setup. The sky is the limit, and how it looks varies entirely based on what grounds your baseline sanity.

Tactile Breaks: Why Physical Objects Matter on a Digital Worktable

When you spend your entire working life staring at a computer screen, your brain undergoes a specific type of weightless exhaustion. The stress of digital work is algorithmic, technical, and empty. You solve a digital problem, and your reward is simply more digital noise. Passive scrolling isn’t much of a break either. In one experiment, people who use Facebook passively felt worse afterwards than those who used it actively (Verduyn et al., 2015), and in my own experience it leaves me both overstimulated and empty.

This exhaustion happens because the digital world lacks friction. In his book Non-things: Upheaval in the Lifeworld, the Korean-born, Berlin-based philosopher Byung-Chul Han notes:

“Today, we are in the transition from the age of things to the age of non-things. It is not things, but information that determines the living world.”

Han argues that when we lose our relationship with physical objects, we lose our anchoring in reality. Information doesn’t possess a body; it floats, demands constant attention, and never truly satisfies the senses.

This is where the physical items resting on my desk graduate from being mere decorations to functioning as literal mental anchors, philosophical reminders, and real-time relief valves. They are what the philosopher Martin Heidegger, in Being and Time (1927), called ready-to-hand—objects that possess a tactile reality that pulls us out of our heads and back into our bodies. When I place raw, tactile materials in my immediate workspace, I give my brain an analog escape hatch:

• The 1:64 Scale Chevy Impala Die-Cast: Keeping a classic muscle car—painted in a deep gloss finish and resting right on the wood grain of your desk—acts as a vital visual bridge. It isn’t just a toy car; it is a physical manifestation of a long-term aspiration, a mechanical piece of history you plan to own in full scale someday. Rolling or simply just looking at the cool, weighted metal across your palm offers an instant, tactile break from a weightless day of spreadsheets, grounding your current labor in a tangible future goal. Furthermore, this is the perfect way to get started on reclaiming your space whether it is at work or home without the inconvenience of losing the limited space on your desk.
• The Master Grade (MG) Gunpla Model Kits: Having a classic Gundam RX-78-2 standing shoulder-to-shoulder with its iconic red rival, the MS-06S Zaku II, introduces a deep layer of creative history to a tight workspace. Because these aren’t just bought—they are painstakingly built, sanded, and snapped together by your own hands—their presence on a small table is a testament to un-optimized, patient craftsmanship. Not to mention the memories such pieces evoke from the cartoons and anime you used to watch in awe as a child.
• The Cubone Figure: A small Pokémon figure sitting quietly beneath your monitor base. In the vast landscape of modern animation subcultures, Cubone stands out as a symbol of resilience, quiet solitude, and carrying one’s history openly. Having this small entity resting on your desk injects a distinct, silent jolt of childhood nostalgia into a dull corporate afternoon slump. It serves as a reminder of who you were before the log-in hours began.

In today’s world, an adult sanctuary isn’t a spatial luxury anymore; it is a vital psychological defense system where a human can freeze their professional duties and personal responsibilities even for a little while. By keeping these objects within arm’s reach, we resist the weightless drift of the digital screen. We remind ourselves that we are creatures of muscle, bone, and memory—not just processors of data.

Frequently Asked Questions About Personal Desk Setups

What is a personal desk setup?

A personal desk setup is a workspace arranged around who you are, not just around productivity. It can hold your work monitor alongside objects tied to your interests and history, such as die-cast cars, model kits, figures, or plants, so the same table works as both a workstation and a small sanctuary.

Can you create a personal sanctuary at home without a spare room?

Yes. Personal space is measured in autonomy, not square footage. A desk in a bedroom corner, a table in a shared flat, or a single surface in a small city apartment can become an adult sanctuary as long as it is genuinely yours to arrange.

Is it childish to keep toys and collectibles on your desk as an adult?

No. Many adults, often called kidults, keep collectibles, figures, and retro items nearby because they ground them. A personal desk can just as easily be an art station, a tech layout, a mini workshop, or a toy train setup. What matters is that it reflects your honest interests rather than other people’s expectations.

How do you personalize a work desk without it showing on video calls?

Keep your personal anchors just outside the camera’s line of sight, such as below the monitor or to one side, or use background blur during meetings. The objects are there for your own baseline sanity, not for the company agenda.

Why do physical objects help with screen fatigue?

Digital work is weightless: it produces information but gives the senses very little to hold on to. Physical objects you can see, touch, or roll in your palm offer a tactile break that pulls you out of your head and back into your body, an idea explored by philosophers Byung-Chul Han and Martin Heidegger.

What is the easiest way to start personalizing a small desk?

Start with one small object that means something to you. A single 1:64-scale die-cast car fits under a monitor, takes up almost no desk space, and works just as well at the office as it does at home.

Sources and Further Reading

• Han, Byung-Chul. Non-things: Upheaval in the Lifeworld. Translated by Daniel Steuer. Polity, 2022 (originally published in German as Undinge, Ullstein, 2021). Library catalogue record
• Han, Byung-Chul. “I Practise Philosophy as Art.” ArtReview. Read the interview
• Whyman, Tom. “Ghost of the Jukebox” (review of Non-things). Literary Review. Read the review
• Wrathall, Mark. “Martin Heidegger.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, first published 31 January 2025 (see section 2.1 on readiness-to-hand). Read the entry
• Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time (1927).
• Knight, Craig, and S. Alexander Haslam. “The Relative Merits of Lean, Enriched, and Empowered Offices.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied 16, no. 2 (2010). Study summary
• Verduyn, Philippe, et al. “Passive Facebook Usage Undermines Affective Well-Being: Experimental and Longitudinal Evidence.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 144, no. 2 (2015): 480–488. Abstract
• Sonnentag, Sabine, and Charlotte Fritz. “The Recovery Experience Questionnaire.” Journal of Occupational Health Psychology 12, no. 3 (2007): 204–221. Record
• Routledge, Clay, et al. “The Past Makes the Present Meaningful: Nostalgia as an Existential Resource.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 101, no. 3 (2011): 638–652. Record

Illustrations generated with AI in the Funcle Yeti house style.

Nostalgic hobbies are not a sign of arrested development. Across six psychology studies of 4,388 adults, recalling a nostalgic memory raised happiness, reduced loneliness and strengthened people’s sense that their life had meaning. The effects are modest and they are real. Here is what the research actually found — and where it stops.

If there is one thing every person in their 30s and 20s hates to hear, it’s the line “Grow up!”, especially if you are someone who enjoys doing something remotely nostalgic.

Sure, people are now more open about peculiar or not-so-mainstream hobbies and pastimes. But as soon as an adult has a HotWheels collection or God forbid, Pokémon cards, people feel the need to jump in and voice their opinion.

And the worst part is the “Grow up!” advice can come from anyone. It can be a girl/boyfriend, a wife, a husband, a parent, or even a colleague.

Who decides what is childish or when a grown-up should stop watching cartoons and anime?

Why is it anyone’s business what you do with your spare time?

Well. We can’t answer those questions for them. But we can tell you what the research actually says — and it is a good deal more interesting than “it’s fine, you do you”.

Is Nostalgia Actually Good for Your Mental Health?

Yes, measurably. Across six studies of 4,388 people in the UK, US and China, psychologists at the University of Southampton found that recalling a nostalgic memory raised happiness and reduced the sting of loneliness — and with a brief reminder, the lift was still detectable two days later. The effects are modest but real, and they replicate.

The research here is better than you would expect for something that sounds this soft.

The paper doing most of the heavy lifting is by Xinyue Zhou, Constantine Sedikides and Tim Wildschut — Sedikides and Wildschut run the nostalgia research group at the University of Southampton, and between them they have spent two decades measuring this stuff properly, with control conditions and everything.

Their 2022 paper in Social Psychological and Personality Science ran six studies. Three surveys covering 3,721 people across the UK, the US and China during pandemic lockdowns. Then three experiments where they deliberately triggered nostalgic recall. 4,388 participants in total.

What they found: people who revisited a nostalgic memory reported measurably higher happiness than those who recalled an ordinary one. Lonely people turned out to be more nostalgic, and that nostalgia then raised their happiness — partially offsetting the drop the loneliness had caused. And with a short reminder a day or two later, the lift held.

Their conclusion, in their own words, is that nostalgia is a psychological resource that can be harnessed. Not a symptom to be managed.

Which, functionally, is what your hobby already is.

Why Do Adults Still Collect Toys?

Because collecting activates the same dopamine-driven reward pathway that drives all goal-seeking behaviour, and because possessions genuinely form part of how people define themselves. The pursuit matters more than the object. It is also no longer unusual: Circana reports that buyers aged 15 and over now account for nearly 20% of global toy sales, with their spending more than doubling since 2020.

Start with the fact that you are not unusual. Circana’s 2026 global toy report puts buyers aged 15 and over at nearly a fifth of all toy sales worldwide, with spending in that group more than doubling since 2020. The global toy market is worth $123 billion and grew 8% in 2025 — and in developed markets, teenagers and adults are responsible for most of that growth.

There is an industry term for you now. You are a kidult, which is an ugly word for a fairly ordinary thing.

As for why — there are two mechanisms worth knowing about, and they explain almost everything about how a collection feels from the inside.

The dopamine and mesolimbic reward loop

Looked at neurologically, collectors are chasing the thrill of the chase rather than the object itself. The mesolimbic reward pathway is the neural circuit in charge of driving motivation and learning through the release of dopamine — and, crucially, it fires hardest in anticipation rather than on arrival.

This is why the hunt for the card so often feels better than owning the card. It is also why the sealed box you never opened is a warning sign rather than a trophy, but we will come back to that.

Belk’s extended self

The second mechanism is Russell Belk’s 1988 research on the extended self, published in the Journal of Consumer Research and still one of the most cited papers in the field. Belk’s argument is that humans have a natural tendency to use material possessions to define and anchor their identities. We are, in part, what we keep.

Put those two together and it is not difficult to understand why adults still collect toys, or why the number of adults doing it keeps going up. A collection is a self-portrait that you assembled slowly, on purpose, out of things that meant something.

Collecting Pokémon trading cards or Dragon Ball action figures may still seem childish to some. You probably have that one annoying friend or family member who never fails to make fun of this harmless hobby of yours.

“Why do you still buy this stuff? You are in your 30s!”

You probably laugh it off or internally scream, “Well, why don’t you fuck right off in your 30s!?”

The fact is that you don’t collect Star Trek action figures or a fully electronic Iron Man mask because you are immature, but simply because you want cool stuff. If anything, you are more mature than your peers about the things you enjoy, and about reclaiming your true self despite the constant societal pressures.

Can Nostalgia Help You Stop Overthinking?

It can, with one condition. Nostalgic media use during the COVID-19 pandemic was associated with better wellbeing in research by Wulf, Breuer and Schmitt — but only when it worked as a resource rather than an escape. Used as avoidance, the same behaviour predicts worse outcomes. The difference is whether you return to the present afterwards.

The study is Escaping the Pandemic Present, by Tim Wulf, Johannes Breuer and Josephine Schmitt, published in Psychology of Popular Media in 2021. Their finding was that during a crisis, people are especially motivated to consume nostalgia-inducing media — and that this is broadly good for them, right up until it isn’t.

Because holding onto nostalgia becomes a double-edged sword the moment you stop using it as inspiration and start using it as an exit. Taking strength, and even borrowing happiness, from your past is perfectly okay. Letting it consume you is a path you don’t want to start down.

With the pressures of life weighing on you every day, it is already challenging to keep your mind sane. Every one of us overthinks. For some of us it is the pressures of parenthood and marriage, for others it is the aging of our parents, and for some it’s both and maybe more.

So the next time you find yourself replaying Pokémon FireRed for the nth time, or YouTubing clips from Johnny Bravo, give yourself some credit.

At the very least, your escape from reality does not involve intoxicating yourself to the point that you lose sight of yourself.

Does Nostalgia Help With Burnout?

It will not fix burnout, and nothing in the research claims it does. What it offers is a low-cost form of recovery for people who are not getting any. In Deloitte’s 2026 survey of 22,595 people across 44 countries, 48% of Gen Z and 45% of millennials reported burnout, and 58% reported digital fatigue specifically — the condition a quiet, analogue, notification-free hobby happens to target.

The burnout generation — it’s the name coined for millennials by Anne Helen Petersen, a BuzzFeed culture writer, back in 2019. Seven years later, nobody is seriously arguing with her.

What the 2026 Deloitte numbers actually show

Today, in 2026, burnout is close to a baseline condition, and the numbers say so. Deloitte’s 2026 Gen Z and Millennial Survey ran from November 2025 to January 2026 and covered 22,595 people across 44 countries. Here is what it found.

What Gen Z and millennials report — Deloitte 2026 (n = 22,595, 44 countries)

Measure	Gen Z	Millennials
Feel burned out	48%	45%
Needed time off due to stress	71%	63%
Actually took the time off	41%	35%
Gave employer a different reason	21%	17%
Report digital fatigue	58%	54%
Anxious or stressed most/all of the time	34%	30%
Long-term financial future as top stressor	44%	39%
Delayed a major life decision over money	55%	52%

Read the third and fourth rows together, because that is the whole story. 71% of Gen Z needed time off because of stress. 41% took it. And of those who did, one in five told their employer something else.

That’s not a burnout problem. That’s a permission problem.

There’s a specific modern flavour of this too: 58% of Gen Z and 54% of millennials report digital fatigue — the constant alerts, the tool-switching, the low hum of six open tabs. Which goes some way to explaining why grown adults are spending three hours on a plastic brick set that does exactly one thing and never notifies you about anything.

Separately, 34% of Gen Z and 30% of millennials report feeling anxious or stressed most or all of the time. Nostalgic hobbies won’t fix the conditions causing that, but the research suggests they do something measurable for how you carry it.

And look at what’s actually driving it. When Deloitte asked what contributes most to stress, the top answers weren’t laziness or screen time. They were long-term financial futures (44% of Gen Z, 39% of millennials), the health and welfare of family, and day-to-day finances.

Cost of living has been the number one concern for five consecutive years. More than half of both generations — 55% and 52% — say they’ve delayed major life decisions like marriage, starting a family or starting a business because of money. For God’s sake, every one of us knows at least one person who has practically given up on building a family despite very much wanting one, for the very real reason of money.

So when someone tells you to grow up, ask what exactly they think you’re avoiding.

Can Childhood Hobbies Reduce Loneliness?

Yes, and the mechanism is indirect. Zhou and colleagues found that lonely people become more nostalgic, and that nostalgia then raises happiness — partially offsetting the drop loneliness causes. A shared hobby adds a second route by supplying actual social contact. The research frames nostalgia as a psychological resource to be used, not a symptom to be managed. 

They say living in the past and focusing too much on the future is a recipe for disaster. While we do not condone dreaming your life away, reigniting your childhood hobbies — or the dreams you never chased — could help you combat loneliness.

The six-study paper above is the strongest evidence for this. The three survey studies found that the lonelier people were, the more nostalgic they became, and the more nostalgic they became, the happier they reported being. The three experiments then showed this worked causally: people who were prompted to revisit a nostalgic memory came away measurably happier than people prompted to recall an ordinary one.

But life as an adult can be lonely sometimes, especially if you are unapologetically happy with what others may consider trivial or childish hobbies. So it is upon us to take the stigma out of adults buying Hot Wheels that give them a glimpse of their past selves, and to recreate those moments of joy without fear of judgement.

So the next time someone tells you they want to build that 3,803-piece Death Star LEGO, or buy that ridiculously expensive Transformer that can actually fucking transform — just be happy for them, as you would want them to be happy for you.

How Does Play Improve Emotional Regulation?

Absorbing, low-stakes play engages the brain’s default mode network, the system active during rest and self-reflection, which supports emotional processing. Complex building tasks like LEGO and Gunpla add a second effect: a problem with a definite solution, in a session you control, which is the opposite of most adult stress.

Any activity that draws on nostalgia or the feel of something familiar — even just daydreaming while listening to music — can activate the brain’s default mode network. That’s the network that comes online when you stop actively concentrating, and it does a lot of the quiet work of processing what has happened to you.

Why LEGO works as a stress tool

It is no wonder that many adults now use complex puzzles, LEGO and Gunpla included, to de-stress. Researchers at the University of Arizona have discussed LEGO’s role in building flexible and creative mindsets in adults, and the appeal is not complicated: it is a problem with a definite solution, on a timescale you control, with an instruction booklet. Name one other part of adult life that offers that.

Of course, these games will stress you out now and then. The piece will be missing, or the step will be wrong, or the thing will not click. But that also provides an opportunity to practise emotional regulation on something where the stakes are zero.

Even though you may not realise it, these childish games are helping you “grow up” more than sitting through a French film pretending to enjoy it.

Does Child-like Curiosity Help You Grow as an Adult?

Yes — and this is where nostalgia stops being consolation and starts being useful. Positive autobiographical memories reinforce self-worth and self-continuity, the sense that you are the same person over time. Sedikides and Wildschut describe this as nostalgia’s meaning-making function: it helps people read their own life as coherent rather than accidental.

One of the best things about the psychology of nostalgia is that it helps you grow into a better person, if you are willing to make the effort. Adults who take up puzzle-building hobbies like LEGO or Gunpla are more likely to keep acquiring new skills and to work at their problem-solving.

You can also use it as a parent, or an uncle or aunt, to connect with a young one. Imagine sharing a hobby with the little ones you love — not only do you get to spend the time, you get to make memories that could last a lifetime.

Remember that time you wanted to build a model aeroplane and fly it through a hoop? Well, it is never too late for that. You even have your mini servant to hold up the hoop or fetch the plane when you need it.

The first serious LEGO set I built as an adult was the Tumbler — the Batmobile from Bale’s Batman, a little over three thousand pieces. My mini servant wasn’t a niece or a nephew; it was my girlfriend. It took days and days, and it was worth every one of them.

And as you build this new relationship with a child or a significant other, you are simultaneously building up your own self-esteem. Positive memories help reinforce self-worth — what Sedikides and Wildschut call self-continuity, the sense of being recognisably the same person across a life. It helps us find the meaning in the life we have actually lived, rather than the one we meant to.

When Nostalgia Stops Helping

Everything above comes with a limit, and the research is clearer about it than most articles on this subject will admit.

The most instructive study here is Hanin, by Wildschut, Sedikides and Alowidy, published in the European Journal of Social Psychology in 2019. They worked with 190 adult Syrian refugees living in Riyadh. Nostalgic recall raised self-esteem, meaning in life and social connectedness — which is remarkable on its own, given what those participants had lived through.

But it also lowered optimism. And the whole pattern was moderated by resilience: the more resilient participants got the benefits and avoided the costs, while the less resilient ones saw their optimism fall. Nostalgia is bittersweet by design — participants reported genuinely mixed feelings — and that mixture is part of the mechanism, not a flaw in it.

Which gives you a practical test, and it is a simple one. Does the hobby return you to the present, or replace it?

The warning signs are not the hobby itself. They are spending you cannot afford. A collection that has quietly become an obligation. The sealed box you will never open, bought for a version of you that doesn’t exist. Using the thing to avoid a decision rather than to recover from one.

One more finding worth carrying: the same six-study paper found that the benefit holds better when you draw on different memories rather than replaying the same one. Nostalgia works like a varied diet, not a single comfort food.

When I say make your inner child happy, it is not an excuse for anything, or an encouragement to live in the past. Adult responsibilities are very real and you must face them regardless of what life throws at you.

The point is to treat nostalgia, and the things you loved doing, as a resource for strength to move forward — and, above everything, as a space to breathe and be yourself unapologetically.

FAQ

Is it normal for adults to still like childish things?

Yes, and it is increasingly common. Circana reports that buyers aged 15 and over now make up nearly 20% of global toy sales, with spending in that group more than doubling since 2020. Psychologists studying nostalgia treat attachment to childhood objects as ordinary identity maintenance, not regression.

Is nostalgia a sign of depression?

No. Nostalgia is bittersweet by design — mixed affect is part of how it works — but research consistently finds it raises mood and meaning rather than lowering them. Frequent nostalgic thinking paired with withdrawal, loss of interest or persistent low mood is worth discussing with a professional, but nostalgia itself is not a symptom.

What is the psychology behind collecting?

Two mechanisms. The mesolimbic dopamine pathway rewards pursuit rather than possession, which is why the hunt often feels better than the acquisition. And Russell Belk’s 1988 “extended self” research found people routinely use possessions to define and anchor identity. A collection is partly a self-portrait.

Can nostalgia be bad for you?

It can, when it functions as avoidance rather than recovery. In a study of 190 Syrian refugees, nostalgic recall raised self-esteem, meaning and social connectedness but reduced optimism, with the pattern strongly moderated by resilience. The practical test is whether the hobby returns you to the present or replaces it.

How does LEGO help with stress?

Absorbing construction tasks engage the default mode network and offer something adult life rarely does: a problem with a definite solution, on a timescale you control, with no notifications. Researchers at the University of Arizona have discussed LEGO’s role in building flexible and creative mindsets in adults.

What does “kidult” mean?

An adult who buys and enjoys products traditionally marketed to children — toys, games, collectibles, animation. It is an industry term rather than a clinical one, and it describes the fastest-growing segment of the global toy market.

Sources

• Zhou, X., Sedikides, C., Mo, T., Li, W., Hong, E. K., & Wildschut, T. (2022). The restorative power of nostalgia: Thwarting loneliness by raising happiness during the COVID-19 pandemic. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 13(4), 803–815.
• Wildschut, T., Sedikides, C., & Alowidy, D. (2019). Hanin: Nostalgia among Syrian refugees. European Journal of Social Psychology, 49(7), 1368–1384.
• Wulf, T., Breuer, J. S., & Schmitt, J. B. (2021). Escaping the pandemic present: The relationship between nostalgic media use, escapism, and well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. Psychology of Popular Media.
• Belk, R. W. (1988). Possessions and the extended self. Journal of Consumer Research, 15(2), 139–168.
• Deloitte (2026). Global Gen Z and Millennial Survey 2026. 22,595 respondents across 44 countries.
• Circana (2026). Global toy market hits $123B as play expands across ages and markets.
• American Psychological Association. Nostalgia boosts well-being.
• University of Arizona. Building a flexible and creative mindset: U experts discuss LEGO’s impact on adults.

Illustrations generated with AI in the Funcle Yeti house style. Charts produced by Funcle Yeti from cited data.