Why 2016 nostalgia is taking over social media in 2026

Wake up; year 2016.

The Chainsmokers are playing wall-to-wall, you’ve perfected your Snapchat dog filter pose and Leicester City have just won the Premier League.

Justin Bieber and Drake are dominating the playlists, and everyone’s chasing Pikachu in Pokémon Go if they’re not recording their Mannequin Challenge attempts on their phones.

Everything feels like it happened yesterday. But this could happen thanks to social media, which welcomes 2026 by looking back 10 years.

According to TikTok, searches for “2016” increased by 452% last week, and more than 55 million videos were created using the app’s filter named after the year.

The nostalgic wave reminded us of our favorite trends, pieces and looks. So why now? So is there anything special about 2016?

Music has been a big driver of the 2016 revival, with some of the year’s most popular tracks making a comeback online.

Radio 1 Anthems presenter Lauren Redfern told BBC Newsbeat it wasn’t hard to see why.

“The music of that time is so beautiful and so nostalgic for so many of us,” he says.

“We released Zayn’s first solo single Pillow Talk, the Chainsmokers were really hot at the time.

“Twenty One Pilots, The 1975 – everything was going on.”

Statistics from Spotify show a 71% increase in “2016” playlists last year compared to 2024, with big hit artists also making a comeback.

Zara Larsson’s smash hit Lush Life, which first entered the charts 10 years ago, re-entered the UK top 40 last month and has since climbed back to number eight.

The Swedish pop sensation was also behind a makeup trend focused on maximum, glamorous “Y2K” looks, and it’s something Lauren remembers fondly from 2016.

“They were all crazy colors,” he says. “The eyeshadow was bright pink. I loved big, bold winged eyeliner, too.

“I still like to bring it out every now and then.”

Joel Marlinarson, from London, is a TikTok creator and brand strategist whose video explaining why Gen Z is so obsessed with 2016 has been viewed more than a million times.

The 22-year-old actress told Newsbeat that the year has evolved into her own aesthetic on TikTok, thanks in large part to a special filter that she says helped accelerate the trend.

Joel says this gives the videos a vintage, rose-tinted look reminiscent of the classic Instagram photo effects “everyone was using” in 2016.

“So, without using words, whether it’s someone in France or someone in Germany, when you see that filter you instantly go back to a time when we had a lot of fun and were a lot younger,” he says.

Joel says the color pink also evokes a simpler time on social media, which plays a big role in young people’s lives but is much less complex.

“When we look at Instagram, there are no carousel posts around 2016,” says Joel. “People were posting a picture of their avocado and it wasn’t that performing.

“There were no short-format reels, so there wasn’t the kind of algorithmic fatigue that people have now.”

It’s something Lauren, 26, says she can relate to.

“Honestly, 2016 was the year of Snapchat stories,” he says. “If I go back to my Snapchat memories, I see that almost all of them are from 2016.

“Instagram was all about photos, we didn’t have to worry about Reels, we didn’t have to worry about constantly updating our stories. It was just a simple, quiet life.”

Looking at 2016 through a literal pink filter is a source of comfort for many of us, but is it distorting our memories?

It was a particularly bleak year for celebrity deaths, with legends such as David Bowie, Prince, George Michael and Alan Rickman passing away.

2016 also saw some major world events, such as the Brexit referendum in the UK and Donald Trump’s first election victory in the US, that continue to divide people, whether they celebrate the outcome or despair.

Psychologist Clay Routledge has been specializing in nostalgia research since 2001 and says he’s “hesitant to make too big a deal about any one year.”

Political events in 2016 may have amplified existing divisions, but these pivotal moments and events have nostalgic power because they serve as “beacons,” Clay says.

“You can always find these points in time where people anchor themselves for some kind of guidance,” he says.

Clay suggests that there are two factors driving the obsession with 2016: the beginning of a new year and the fact that many young people feel uncertain about the future.

“We tend to become especially nostalgic when it feels like the world is going through a major change,” Clay says.

It highlights the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and people’s concerns about how it will impact employment.

“When generations are going through this kind of turmoil or these kinds of challenges, they tend to look to their youth for comfort, inspiration and guidance,” he says.

And he says 10 years ago made sense for most of us.

“Younger millennials would be in their early 30s, and older Gen Zers would be in their late 20s, so 10 years ago was that kind of youthful period,” he says. “People maybe look back ten years ago and say, ‘Well, what happened then?’ “he says.”

Lauren, who was a teenager at the time, says 2016 was “a pivotal time for so many of us” and a time of firsts, discovering the world and yourself as you progressed.

Many people are using this trend to remember and reflect on how their lives have changed, and Joel thinks it reminds many of what carefree things felt like 10 years ago.

“You posted something, you didn’t think about how many likes there were,” he recalls. “Perhaps this ties into the universal experience of aging, but we get the sense that everything is so divisive now that it can feel like the world was a little lighter back then.”

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