2026 has been marked as the return of 2016, with chokers, side parts, Instagram filters, and boomerangs. There is something so comforting about the nostalgia that is associated with 2016. Most of our generation was in elementary, middle, and high school for 2016, partly unaware of the greater politics and world health at that time.
Instead, we were online.
I started my Musical.ly account in 2015, I was watching James Charles demonstrate how to create thick brows on Youtube, Fetty Wap’s album was charting number one, the Mannequin Challenge was the biggest social media trend, and Snapchat streaks were alive and well (gosh, do you remember sending that S back and forth all day…that’s a trend I’m happy to leave there).
As we live through this time of political unrest and AI takeover, it’s comforting to think about “simpler times”. Although our culture has brought back certain 2016 obsessions, it goes beyond fashion and music, it reflects a desire to return to a version of the internet (and of life in general) that felt less complicated.
The internet shapes culture. Because of the shift in the way people use social media and the internet today, culture has shifted along with it.
The internet is much more individualistic than it was in 2016, relatable content was the big trend. People were trying to appeal to the mass public and seem “ordinary” “relatable”, and even “cringe” — Emma Chamberlain, being the pioneer of that, comes immediately to mind. Everything now is about being better and different. Emma’s evolution to brand work and less relatable content is a demonstration of this shift.
Culture has since moved away from community, and authentic self-expression, and has been consumed by competition and unrealistic standards.
I think of how GLP-1s and “looksmaxxing” have dominated the internet space, infiltirating our real lives and our relationships with one another, creating unrealistic competition and further pushing society into isolation.
We are more connected than ever online, yet the most disconnected in real life we have ever been. Our generation yearns for a community that we seemed to have had only 10 years ago.
In 2026, where everything is recorded, judged, and criticized, it is difficult to find community because it is difficult to put oneself out there. The constant competition among those in my generation is harming our ability to create the community we long for.
Although 2016 felt like this magical time, those in our generation really were young. I was entering middle school, so much of my worries were about which color of plastic band to put on my braces for the month, mostly oblivious to the state of the world that surrounded me.
The world was not necessarily better in 2016. Perhaps reheating our 2016 nachos is not necessarily because we want to recreate the memories, the trends, or the fashion, but because we want to recreate the feeling.
2016 was so beautifully cringe, original, and free. Social media was really still in its beginning stages, we did not care as much as we do now. Pictures were blurry, faces were natural, moments were lived and not necessarily captured and edited and posted like they are in the masses today. The air felt more crisp. Fall felt longer. The world felt brighter and more colorful.
Most of this is due to the fragmented selective memory of my childhood, but also some of this is real, some of this reflective of the time. Of the time before such anxieties and uncertainty.
Romanticizing 2016 offers a convenient escape from the present. Recreating a trackpant andbralette moment or listening to Daya (shoutout Skidmore Big Show) becomes a way to reconnect with a time when we had fewer responsibilities and more space to be free and ourcringest selves.
I’m curious, what will we be nostalgic for in 2036? And what will be our anxieties?