Time is a liar. It feels like just the other day we were all worried about the Y2K bug and listening to the Macarena, but here we are in 2026. If you’re sitting there wondering how many years ago was 1998, the answer is 28 years.
Twenty-eight.
That number feels wrong, doesn't it? It feels heavy. If 1998 were a person, it would be pushing thirty, probably looking to buy a house in a market it can't afford, and complaining about lower back pain. It’s no longer "the recent past." It’s a different era entirely. We are officially closer to the year 2050 than we are to the year 1998. Let that sink in for a second while you look for your reading glasses.
The Math Behind the 1998 Gap
Calculating the distance to 1998 is simple arithmetic, but the emotional math is much harder. Since it is currently 2026, you just subtract: $2026 - 1998 = 28$.
But the reason you’re likely Googling this isn't because you forgot how to subtract. It’s because our internal "temporal anchors" are stuck. Psychologists call this "telescoping"—the tendency to displace recent events backward in time and remote events forward. For those of us who lived through the late nineties, 1998 feels like it’s about ten or fifteen years away because it was the dawn of the digital world we still inhabit. It was the "modern" era, so surely it can't be three decades old.
Except it is.
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Think about it this way. In 1998, a 28-year-old was born in 1970. To a kid in 1998, someone born in 1970 was basically a dinosaur. They were a "grown-up." They remembered a world without color TV. Now, that same gap applies to us. If you meet someone born this year, 1998 will be as distant to them as the moon landing was to us back then.
Why 1998 Still Feels So Close (And Why It Isn't)
When people ask how many years ago was 1998, they are often trying to reconcile a memory with the current reality. 1998 was a massive year for culture. It was the year Google was founded in a garage in Menlo Park by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. It’s hard to imagine life before the search engine, which makes the year feel contemporary.
But look at the hardware.
We were using iMac G3s—the ones that looked like translucent blue jellybeans. We were dialling into the internet and hearing that screeching modem sound. Your phone? It was likely a Nokia 5110. You played Snake on it. You didn't take photos. You didn't check your email on the bus. You just... sat there.
There is a specific kind of "time blindness" associated with the late 90s. This was the last gasp of the analog world meeting the digital explosion. We had CDs, but we also had the very first MP3 players. We had Blockbuster Video, which was at its absolute peak in '98, unaware that a little company called Netflix (founded in '97) was about to ruin everything.
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The Cultural Weight of 28 Years
If you want to feel the weight of those 28 years, look at the movies. Titanic actually won its 11 Oscars in early 1998, even though it came out in late '97. Saving Private Ryan hit theaters. The Big Lebowski failed at the box office before becoming a cult legend.
The kids who were born the day The Truman Show premiered are now nearly thirty. They are starting families. They are the ones managing your department at work.
In the world of sports, 1998 was the year of the "Last Dance" for Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. It’s been nearly three decades since Jordan hoisted that final trophy in a Bulls jersey. France won the World Cup on home soil. Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were busy breaking home run records in a summer that felt magical before the steroid era conversations turned sour.
The Biological Reality of "Feeling Old"
Why does 28 years ago feel like 10? Neurologists suggest that as we age, the way our brains process time changes. When you are 10 years old, one year represents 10% of your entire life. It feels like an eternity. When you are 40, one year is only 2.5% of your life. Time literally "speeds up" because each new year is a smaller fraction of the total experience.
Moreover, the period between ages 15 and 25 is what researchers call the "reminiscence bump." We store memories from this time more vividly than any other period because so many "firsts" happen—first car, first love, first job. If you were in that age bracket in 1998, those memories are burned into your synapses with a clarity that makes them feel like they happened last week.
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What 1998 Tells Us About 2026
Looking back at how many years ago was 1998 provides a weirdly useful lens for the future. In 1998, the top-selling cell phone didn't have a camera. Today, we have AI-generated video and real-time translation in our pockets.
If the same amount of progress happens in the next 28 years, the year 2054 will be unrecognizable. We’ll be looking back at 2026 as the "primitive" era where we actually had to type things into a screen instead of just thinking them.
Practical Steps for Reclaiming Your Time
Since we can't actually go back to 1998—no matter how much we want to buy Apple stock at its split-adjusted pennies—the best thing to do is manage how we perceive the time we have left.
- Audit your nostalgia. If you find yourself constantly thinking about 1998, recognize that you aren't just missing the music or the movies; you're likely missing the lower "cognitive load" of that era. Life was slower. Recreate that by turning off notifications for an hour a day.
- Check the actual dates. When you're planning or reminiscing, do the math. Don't say "a few years ago" when referring to the 90s. Force your brain to acknowledge the 28-year gap. It helps ground you in the present.
- Digitize the relics. If you have physical photos or VHS tapes from 1998, they are reaching the end of their lifespan. Magnetic tape degrades. Get those memories into a cloud format before the 30-year mark hits and they’re gone for good.
- Invest in the now. If you had invested $1,000 in Amazon in 1998, you'd be a millionaire today. You can't do that now, but you can look at what the "1998-level" technologies of today are—stuff like fusion energy or advanced biotech—and pay attention.
1998 wasn't just a year; it was the start of the world we live in now. It's okay to feel a bit shocked that it was 28 years ago. Just don't let the shock stop you from enjoying the fact that you don't have to wait twenty minutes for a single photo to download anymore.