Our generation values shared memories more than you’d think, and that’s mostly because so many of our big moments just didn’t happen. COVID-19 erased everything that usually brings people together. Most of us had a virtual cap and gown ceremony, so unless we chose to go through the academic world again, that was our one and only graduation. The photos are cute, sure, but there’s a big difference between walking across an actual stage and posing in your living room holding your laptop like it’s a diploma. We tried to make up for lost moments with things like at-home concerts on Instagram Live, and while they were entertaining in a “well, this is our life now” kind of way, they also made everyone realize how much better moments feel when you’re experiencing them together. So now, whenever something becomes a shared moment, it hits differently. It feels like we’re collectively trying to catch up on memories we never got to have.
Now you see how fast these moments become part of the group chat. One person sends a meme, someone else replies with a voice note, another drops a TikTok that summarizes everyone’s thoughts better than any of us could, and suddenly the whole thing becomes a cultural moment you didn’t even mean to join. A show drops at midnight and by 12:17 there are memes circulating that make you question whether people watched the episode at 2x speed. And when an album drops, it’s over. Within minutes people are dissecting lyrics, analyzing who every line might be about, building theories, connecting dots that definitely don’t exist and behaving like they’re working on a dissertation in pop culture. It’s chaotic, but it’s honestly such a fun part of the whole experience. This is how shared moments work now. They don’t live in one place. They spread, evolve, and become reference points before lunch.
That’s why nostalgia, especially early 2000s nostalgia, works so well. For the older Gen Zs, it gives us something familiar to connect over in real time, because we lived through the original era as actual kids when life was significantly simpler. No responsibilities, no rent, no emails marked high importance. Just Tamagotchis we treated like they were real pets, debates over whether One Direction or Justin Bieber was superior, full fandom wars between Lady Gaga and Katy Perry and sitting through Taylor Swift music-video countdowns like they were global sporting events. Nostalgia lets us escape reality for a bit and go back to a time when everything felt easier and the world felt less heavy. And for the younger Gen Zs, nostalgia becomes a shared joke, a vibe, a community moment they can join even without the original context. It’s less about the past itself and more about the feeling it creates now, which is why you still see people treating a 2004 Hilary Duff song like it deserves a Grammy.
This is exactly where brands can come in and join a shared moment, but the line between cool and cringe is extremely thin. Something that sounds brilliant in a brand meeting can become TikTok’s next roast-fest if it’s even slightly off tone. We’ve all seen it happen. The forced slang. The outdated trends. The brand that drops a meme format four weeks late because they’ve only just got approval. And that’s where Gen Z creators, strategists and creatives come in. Their input is crucial because they live inside these moments, not outside observing them. They understand the tone, the timing and the difference between joining culture and invading it.
Brands that tap into that understanding and actually listen to the people who get how these moments form, can create something that genuinely lands. Not just something that gets views, but something that becomes part of the conversation. When a brand joins a moment people already care about, it doesn’t feel like an ad. It feels like they just showed up at the right time with the right energy. And that’s when people actually engage, because it feels real instead of performative.
Shared experiences matter more than ever. The blend of digital and real life has made it completely normal for people to react to moments together, even if they’re not physically in the same place. Nostalgia has shifted, too. It’s less about reliving the past and more about giving people a shared point of connection in the present. Brands that understand that dynamic automatically feel more relevant, because they’re adding to moments people already want to be part of rather than trying to manufacture something no one asked for.
After missing out on so much, we want real moments, not random content. We want things that feel fun, emotional, chaotic, relatable or even slightly unhinged, as long as they feel true. That’s the energy Gen Z responds to. And the memories we make together, the ones that spread through group chats and feeds and conversations we didn’t plan to have, end up being the ones we keep. They’re not perfect, but they’re ours. And after everything we went through, that’s all we’ve ever really wanted.
This is a Gen Z perspective on trend #5 in dentsu’s Human Truths in the Algorithmic Era | 2026 Media Trends report. Get your copy of the report here to see all ten trends.
