Each year brings another new set of trends that overtake social media and public consciousness for months at a time, and we recently flipped the calendar and laid 2025, the year of Dubai chocolate, matcha and Labubus, to rest.
As we moved into 2026, however, it suddenly appeared that we weren’t living in 2026 at all. We are in 2016. At least, we are in a version of 2016 that still lives in our heads.
2016 was the year of Snapchat dog filters, intensely saturated selfies, Musical.ly, athleisure fashion and the Mannequin Challenge. It is a deeply nostalgic era for many of us to look back on now.
But why is it that we are all so desperate to return to this time period? Why does it feel like there are more photos from 2016 on social media than there are from the present? And was 2016 really the colorful paradise that we’re remembering it as?
It’s not unheard of to reminisce about where we were ten years ago. We often reflect briefly on the pop culture moments turning ten years old each year for a burst of nostalgia before moving on to the new year ahead. With that being said, I can’t remember a year where we have ever been so committed to paying tribute to where we were a decade ago. This is more than just remembering the past; this is us trying to get in a time machine and chase the way we remember feeling in 2016.
The whole world doesn’t just decide that they want to reject the idea of living in the present for no reason, so I wanted to take a moment to consider why we are all feeling so nostalgic.
To put it quite plainly, 2026 is no utopia. In fact, it’s far from it and feels further away every day. It’s certainly not fun to feel depressed or infuriated every time you look at the daily news.
The United States feels more divided and uneasy than ever, and the push and pull between political parties seems to be leaving some of our human rights hanging in the balance. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, commonly referred to as ICE, is terrorizing communities while our president is busy dancing around the Constitution and trying to reshape the country by pure force.
Meanwhile, the development of social media has continued to prove itself as a blessing and a curse as we are more freely and frequently exposed to violence occurring across the globe than ever before. We aren’t just hearing about these tragedies anymore, we’re seeing videos from multiple angles of these events on social media within minutes of them taking place. While it is important for us to be aware of what’s going on in the world, there are undeniable mental health impacts as a result of this kind of access. Videos of real-world violence are hard to watch, and it seems like we are being exposed to them at least once a day.
And that is all on top of the stressors that impact us individually that we all face every day. Not only are we trying to fulfill all our responsibilities and make sure we can afford to live, but we’re also being inundated with troubling news from around the world.
With all of that in mind, it completely makes sense why society is so eager to turn the clock back to 2016. It’s a human instinct to flee from stressful or upsetting environments, and the 2016 trend has given us the escape method we have been craving. We’re using nostalgia to remind ourselves of a “better time” when life felt simpler. For people my age, that means returning to childhood memories. I was ten years old in 2016, and when I think of that year, I think fondly of a time when I was much less stressed and overwhelmed than I am today.
The world is having a great time returning to our happy memories from 2016 and posting throwback photos on social media, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that 2016 was a year full of sunshine and rainbows. We’re still looking back on that time through rose-colored glasses to some extent. The truth is that at one point, 2016 had quite the reputation for being an unpleasant year at best.
We can’t forget the 2016 U.S. election that resulted in our current president, Donald Trump, taking office for the first time. That entire election cycle was undeniably one of the main contributors to the fractured and divisive political climate we find ourselves in today.
2016 was also the year that 49 victims were killed in a shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, one of many terrorist attacks that took place during the year. We saw the U.K. leave the European Union in the Brexit vote and the outbreak of the Zika virus in 2016, which was also a particularly hot year with significant natural disasters.
Of course, no year can be perfect, but the point is that 2016 may not have been the kind of paradise that our romanticized memories have led us to believe it was.
It’s still not necessarily a bad thing that we’re reminiscing on a time that we remember to be more pleasant than the present, but there’s some irony in the fact that we’re yearning to go back in time to a year that many people once referred to as “the worst year ever.”
Either way, I’m right there with everyone else on this one. I would much rather look back fondly on 2016, listen to nostalgic music and post throwback photos on social media than accept the unappealing realities of 2026.
Justin Dearborn can be contacted at
jdearborn@kscequinox.com
