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Alanna Martine Kilkeary / Her Campus
USF | Culture

2026 is the New 2016

Anneliz Romero Student Contributor, University of South Florida
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at USF chapter and does not reflect the views of Her Campus.

As every new year rolls around, there’s always a big push for rebranding your life and adopting the “New Year, New Me” mindset. This year, that push has been slightly different. Instead of wanting to reach for the new things in life, I find myself wanting to backtrack to ten years ago, 2016. 

I know I’m not alone in this reminiscence and romanticization of the 2016 era, as my entire TikTok FYP is everyone thinking back on the pure nostalgia that year brings. Now, for me, I’m only 21, which means my 2016 was 6th grade, a year I feel like I have actual tangible memories from. 

With all the chaos thrown in my face every day, I think back to 2016, and it feels almost as if it was the last normal year. Afterwards, there was a shift in the air, and life never felt the same, carefree, fun, and upbeat as it did that specific year. It’s pretty common that every 10 years or so, pop culture trends resurface and make their way back into the current pop culture sphere. It’s why millennials reminisce on the early 2000s and so on. In this way, it’s no surprise that music from this year is making its rounds on TikTok and on my Spotify replay even today. 2016 me was fully blasting songs like “Closer” by the Chainsmokers, and “Dangerous Woman” by Ariana Grande, and 2026 me is revisiting those playlists and having the best time. 

Now, it wasn’t the absolute best year for music or being a music fan, specifically being a Swiftie in 2016 was horrific. But looking back now and realizing that year gave us one of her best studio albums, the next year is truly something else and makes it even more interesting to look back on. I mean, Taylor Swift just got inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2026, and knowing that 11-year-old me would be screaming and cheering at this fact makes it all the more nostalgic.

Not only was the music fun to look back on, but the fact that the year was pre-pre-COVID, in the sense that the pandemic was so far away in our future at the time that we couldn’t even fathom something like that, and it felt good. Stress and burnout were more manageable rather than existential. Even 6 years post-COVID, we are all still reeling from the effects of it, mentally and socially, so it’s fulfilling to look back on a time before these problems were apparent. 

Now, I personally wasn’t on social media in 6th grade, but many of my friends were, so I enjoyed social media vicariously through them. In 2016, social media was authentic even when it was being performative. With filters being everywhere, not everyone was necessarily “real” or in 4k, but the goal was to make people entertained, and that was authentic enough because everyone knew what you were getting at when watching a video. Recently, everyone is performative, and yet you can’t tell who is being genuine or not, and what the true motive for a video is. The push for this year that I’ve already seen being reflected on my FYP is to bring back this authenticity and to just have fun with the videos, and if that means putting an overly polarized filter on videos, so be it. 

So, if 2026 feels like the pop culture of 2016, I wouldn’t be mad about it. The people yearn for an era that is pre-pandemic, pre-social media doomscrolling, and a carefree time of nostalgia. 

Anneliz Romero

USF '27

Anneliz is a sophomore at the University of South Florida. She is studying English with a concentration in Literary Studies and a minor in Mass Communications. In her spare time, Anneliz enjoys reading, coloring and listening to music. She is an avid coffee drinker and enjoys the drink while curling up with a good book.