Such a speech genre as wishing, which functions both in real communication and in the Internet environment, has considerable flexibility in terms of content, despite the rather stereotypical forms of expression. The content of wishes is traditionally influenced by the personality factor of the addressee, their gender, age, social and professional affiliation, hobbies. In addition, the wish genre actively responds to changes taking place in the social sphere. Themes, vocabulary and intertextuality of wishes reflect various processes that occur in the modern culture. The purpose of this study was to identify markers, or signs of time, that label the text as belonging to a specific historical period. The material of the study was mainly the friendly wishes of young people, recorded in speech and Internet communication, as well as the wishes of older people. The article analyzes the linguistic and content signs of time. Various types of precedent phenomena that are often found in wishes are considered, such as: song lyrics and advertising texts, names of musicians, media personalities, movie characters, names of social networks, popular public places. Precedents, firstly, give wishes an individual creative character, and secondly, serve as features of the 21stcentury. They can be said to be establishing the dates of the texts of wishes. Particular attention is paid to how global extralinguistic events that concern all age groups of people (such as the coronavirus pandemic, a special operation in Ukraine) affect the content plan of wishes, generate new thematic components in their texts, or update and fi ll traditional desiderata (meaningful wish components) with new connotations. The conclusion is made about the dependence of human values, actualized in the texts of wishes, on the social processes of the given period.