Take me back to 2016!!

Why is everyone saying 2026 is basically 2016? Let’s get into it.

Before I get started, I have one request. DJ play: Closer by Halsey and the Chainsmokers. This was the theme of 2016, as some of us might have hated it, we can’t deny the facts! This is the only kind of soundtrack that makes sense for the time travel we’re about to attempt, a full rewind back to 2016. And no, I’m not about to trap you in a tragic slideshow of my own blurry decade-old memories. I had just turned 16 in 2016, which means most photographic evidence from that era lives exclusively in my instagram archives in its Gingham filter glory, and my best friend’s backyard trying to exude King Kylie and her MISFITS energy. What I am about to do, though, is dig into why all of us collectively, emotionally, almost desperately, keep reaching back to the past like it owes us something.

Somewhere between AI doing our homework, our photos, and possibly our emotional processing, the internet made a collective decision: “Take me back to 2016.”

Not 2006. Not the ‘90s. Not childhood. No. We want flower-crown filters, chokers, chaotic memes, and Drake crying in a turtleneck again. “2026 is the new 2016” has quietly become one of those online truths that everyone just… agrees with. Scroll for five minutes and you’ll see it: old songs back on the charts, blurry flash photos, Tumblr-core outfits, and captions about “simpler times”, as if we all signed the same emotional petition without discussing it first.

So what was it about 2016? And why, a decade later, does it feel like the last time the internet and maybe life felt normal? Let’s look into music, fashion, trends and social media in 2016!

The Soundtrack of Our Last Carefree Era

2016 didn’t just have music. It had main character music. This was the year of Rihanna’s ANTI, Drake’s Views, Kanye’s The Life of Pablo, Frank Ocean’s Blonde, and a constant rotation of songs that still make people yell “THIS WAS A TIME” the second they hear the intro.

You couldn’t go anywhere without hearing:

• “One Dance”

• “Work”

• “Panda”

• “Closer”

• “Don’t Let Me Down”

These weren’t just hits, they were background music to a specific kind of freedom. Pre-algorithm fatigue. Pre-“build your personal brand” pressure. We were just posting, going out, falling in love, falling apart, and letting the aux cord decide our emotional state. Hearing those songs now feels less like nostalgia and more like muscle memory from a life that felt lighter.

And YE was on his meds and he was killing it.

When Social Media Was Fun (And Not a Full-Time Job)

2016 was peak “post and don’t overthink it” energy. It was possibly the greatest time in social media there ever will be. We were MISFITS and it was so cool to be different, to have your own sense of style, to have opinions and the freedom that came with that was being able to post whatever you wanted to on social media without thinking about it too much; wondering how much likes or sponsorships you could get out of it, or whether people cared to see it. I even want to go back to this era of social media, because if you haven’t guessed it by now, I am so done with how many people are “influencers” now and how conformative we have to be on social media. Remember twitter? Remember Vine? Remember how honest and open we could be with each other? To share in comedy and no karen was in the comments being racist or complaining about how it isn’t inclusive enough.

Instagram was a square photo, maybe two hashtags, and a Valencia filter if you were feeling artistic. Snapchat filters were revolutionary. The dog ears? Cinema. The flower crown? Cultural reset. Nobody had a content calendar.

Nobody was talking about “engagement strategy.” You posted a blurry group pic, captioned it with one emoji, and logged off to actually live your life. Now? Every platform feels like a performance review.

The nostalgia for 2016 isn’t just about aesthetics, it’s about remembering when the internet felt like a playground instead of a portfolio. You didn’t post to impress, gain followers or promote your paid partnerships. You posted because it was cool to share random bits of life without much context other than it felt right and it looked aesthetic. VSCO approved!

The Fashion Was Questionable and That’s Exactly Why We Miss It

Let’s be honest, some 2016 outfits were crimes. But they were our crimes. Chokers. Ripped skinny jeans. Off-the-shoulder tops. Adidas Superstars. Bomber jackets. Matte liquid lipstick so dry it could file paperwork. It was experimental. It was expressive. It wasn’t optimized for “timeless minimalism.” You dressed for vibes, not for a Pinterest board titled Capsule Wardrobe for a Soft Life.

It was much crazier and more expressive, but I really am glad skinny jeans died in 2016, let’s NOT revive that! I am happier, comfier and more stylish with wide leg jeans, pants and shorts. I’m in my mom meets y2k era.

The point is, fashion pieces will always stay with us because they always come back to us, just like the Sisterhood of the travelling pants… Fashion is ever-evolving but also, we evolve what is old into new…

The 2026 return to 2016 style isn’t about copying the outfits exactly. It’s about bringing back personality. Fashion that says something, even if that something is “I made this decision at 7pm with no long-term plan.” Let’s go back to being original, using our creativity and style to throw an ensemble together, as opposed to “let’s see how tik tok is going to style me when I type in “my outfit” in the search bar…”

Memes Before They Had Layers, Lore, and Think Pieces

2016 memes were elite because they were stupid in the best way.

The Mannequin Challenge.

“Damn Daniel.”

Arthur’s fist

The iconic Arthur show, with unhinged characters and dialogue that could never be written like that again… Back when cartoons were the foundation of our childhood and the reason why we are all stable adults today. The kids of today desperately need cartoons of the 90’s and 2000’s to resurface, instead of roblox, fortnite and brainrot.

Bottle flipping like it was an Olympic sport.

I remember my friends and I spending majority of our lunch break talking about our favourite show, Pretty Little Liars (a 2016 gem of its own), the newest PINK item we wanted to get, whilst bottle flipping like we were training for the Olympics. We’d even skip P.E and rather do this as a sport instead of something active.

A time where trends were this. Actual things we could get together and do with our friends or family.

They weren’t brand deals. They weren’t discourse. They weren’t explained in 12-tweet threads. They were just… funny. Quick. Chaotic. Gone in a week.

Today, memes come with subtext, political commentary, and three levels of irony. In 2016, we laughed, reposted, and moved on. No emotional homework required.

Why We Think We Miss 2016 (And What We Actually Miss)

Let’s be honest with ourselves for a second: 2016 was not some glittering utopia preserved in a Tumblr filter. Big political shifts were happening. Social media was already tightening its grip on how we saw the world. The cracks were there, we just didn’t know yet how deep they would go. But the difference is, life didn’t feel this loud. The news didn’t follow you into every scroll with the same intensity. Technology hadn’t fully blurred the line between real and artificial. We weren’t yet living in a world where AI can mimic voices, generate faces, and turn creativity into code. Outrage hadn’t become a 24/7 cycle, and being online didn’t feel like a permanent state of performance. Back then, things felt dramatic. Now they feel relentless.

And that’s the part we’re really reacting to. Not just the chokers or the Drake songs or the dog-ear filters, but the emotional pace of life itself. In 2026, everything updates constantly. Trends move faster. Opinions spread further. The pressure to keep up socially, professionally, digitally- is quiet but constant. Nostalgia creeps in when the present feels overwhelming, and right now, the future is arriving faster than we can emotionally process it. So we reach backward. To a time that feels, in memory at least, slower. Softer. Less optimized. We don’t just miss 2016. We miss who we were before everything became content. Before every meal was documented. Before every opinion felt like a public statement. Before we understood how permanent the internet really is. There was more room to be messy, unfiltered, and fleeting to exist without imagining how it would look in hindsight.

Romanticizing 2016 isn’t about denying that the world was complicated then. It’s about longing for the last moment before complexity becomes constant background noise. A time when we were still living forward, not constantly archiving ourselves in real time.

So when people say “2026 is the new 2016,” what they really mean is: Can we have a little bit of that humanity back? Not the exact trends. Not the exact timeline. Just the feeling that life isn’t moving quite so fast, so loudly, all at once. And maybe that’s less about going backwards and more about learning how to breathe in the middle of all this forward motion.