The first major online trend of the year would… especially like to return to another year.
Vintage photo filters like ‘Sierra’ or ‘Mayfair’ had long been banished to the Instagram graveyard, but suddenly every timeline is full of sepia-toned, square throwbacks to ten years ago. People curate playlists with Drakes One Dance and Beyonce’s Lemonadealbum and look back fondly at the obsession with the dance movement the dab, fidget spinners and the dog filter on Snapchat. ‘Bring Back 2016‘ is the plea on Instagram and TikTok. But why has 2026 been renamed the new 2016?
Nostalgia is timeless and belongs to all generations. In recent years, trends have harked back to Y2K and the noughties. Consider: low waist jeansflip phones, iPods, baby tees and digital cameras with few megapixels and a harsh flash. What the eighties and nineties were for older millennials, the noughties and tens are for younger millennials and Gen Z. But the great nostalgia for one specific year is striking.
And was 2016, as is now claimed, ‘the best year ever‘? Certainly not. Rather, it was a year of major social rifts: Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, and the year in which the world lost many beloved idols such as David Bowie, Prince, George Michael and Alan Rickman. It was not without reason that the hashtag #Fuck2016 was trending that year.
But many young people see 2016 as the ‘last good year’. Before the pandemic, before Trump, before Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan. The internet would have been a nicer, simpler place: you took the Bottle Flip Challenge, put a filter over it and called it ‘content’. Macro trends of the time took the internet as a collective (the dab, Pokemon Gothe Mannequin Challenge) in contrast to contemporary ‘micro-trends’ (girl math, the Roman Empire) that follow each other in rapid succession and hyper-curated accounts of apparently perfect influencers.
Turning point
Rather, the year is symbolized as a turning point, and the urge to return to it is not surprising when deadly protests have broken out in Iran in just the first two weeks of 2026 and the US president is threatening to take Greenland.
“Unrest and conflict are triggers for nostalgia,” said Krystine Batcho, expert in the field of nostalgia and professor at the American Le Moyne College, by email. “The sudden and drastic changes of recent years, such as the pandemic or political polarization, create fear. Change is stressful. The accelerating pace of change can create the feeling that we cannot keep up with technological developments – such as AI, virtual reality, etc. It threatens our sense of control, a basic human need.”
Gen Z is especially sensitive to this, according to her. “They are in a transition phase from adolescence to adulthood, which brings stress about learning to deal with the responsibilities and uncertainties that a future as an adult will bring. Research has shown that you are more susceptible to nostalgia at this stage of life.”
Screenshots TikTok
And nostalgia has a reassuring effect, says Anouk Smeekes, social psychologist at Utrecht University. “It is an important emotional coping mechanism. It gives people something to hold on to; an anchor. It often revolves around beautiful memories with loved ones, which makes people feel more connected to each other. And connection is a very important basic psychological need, research shows. It makes us feel more optimistic, less lonely, and experience life as more meaningful.”
It is striking how widely supported this trend is among young people worldwide, says Smeekes. It also underlines how great their concerns are about the state of the world, finding a house, a job, the climate. “It shows a certain form of resilience and solidarity: it is a creative and generational way to boost the mood by sharing memories of what they were like as a group, as a generation, in 2016. In this way they help each other to deal with uncertain developments in the world.”
It is difficult to determine whether platforms such as TikTok and Instagram are actively driving such trends. “Meta is not transparent at all,” says Lotje Beek, policy advisor at Bits of Freedom. Although they are probably very happy with the hype. “The purpose of these platforms is of course: to make money. And they make more money the more time you spend on a platform, because then they can show you more advertisements. Such a trend of course helps enormously with this: because everyone will search back through old posts, look at each other’s posts, and post new things.
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