2016 trend: is nostalgia bad for our wellbeing?

The year is 2016, and Zoella has just uploaded her latest Christmas vlog showing her audience how to ice the perfect Christmas cookie. Shane Dawson is trying to convince us that lizards rule the earth. Everyone has the Snapchat dog filter on. Strangers are meeting in parks to catch Pokémon. Instagram is still square, and no one knows what's coming.

There is a strange kind of nostalgia making the rounds this year: a longing to go back to 2016. Scroll for long enough, and it will find you. The throwback posts on Instagram, makeup and fashion recreations across platforms, and indeed - a 2016 Filter on TikTok which has amassed more than 55 million uses. In fact, TikTok reported a 452% increase in the searches for "2016" in the first week of 2026. What started off as mere nostalgia has grown into a full blown trend, one ' which shows no signs of slowing down. It feels like we are collectively yearning for a return to "simpler times".

Social media was undeniably still a business, but there was a sense of authenticity and intimacy in content that creators in 2026 just can't replicate. Even when our favourite YouTubers sat down to show us an excessive Primark haul, it felt like sitting across from a friend, not a salesperson. Relatedly, of course, it was far from the constant #AD disclaimers that we barely blink an eye at now. Content felt human, relatable, and personal.

Back then, users were driven by aesthetics rather than optimisation. Instagram feeds (square then) were dominated by the perfect sunset, mirror selfies, flat lays of coffee, and violently oversaturated food pictures. In 2026? I can't remember the last time I saw the pictures of someone else's holiday. From editing and angles to captions and timing, everything is intentional. With music so strongly linked to memory, it is no wonder that people are returning to old classics. Hearing the opening bars of Twenty One Pilots’ Stressed Out doesn’t recall the major events of 2016. It recalls how it felt to be younger, lighter, and less tired. And perhaps that explains everything.

With the Doomsday Clock now at its closest to midnight in its history, it's safe to say that things are feeling precarious in 2026. Life is fast, loud, and pretty uncertain these days. 2016 had a different energy altogether. Slower, less anxious, and though it wasn't perfect, things felt more stable - at least on the surface. But nostalgia only works when you avoid the bigger picture. 2016 was the year the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, a decision that remains deeply divisive. It was a period marked by misinformation, polarisation, and political unrest. For our friends across the pond, 2016 saw Donald Trump elected as President of the United States. Enough said, really.

It was also the year of the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting, which killed 49 people and shook the LGBTQIA+ community. The World Health Organisation declared Zika a global health emergency. Prince, Alan Rickman, and David Bowie died. The Syrian civil war continued. Arctic ice loss accelerated. Hardly a golden era. Romanticising a period defined by violence, division, and uncertainty is a form of historical editing, replacing reality with aesthetics. While it is natural to reflect on the past, it is futile to try to use it to navigate the present. 2026 is what we have in front of us. When we yearn for 2016, we are not yearning for the world we lived in back then. We are longing for who we were: younger, with less responsibilities, and almost certainly, less aware.

So, is nostalgia inherently a bad thing? No. Nostalgia, in small doses, is harmless and sometimes comforting. When paired with reflection, it can give us the perspective we need to understand how far we have come. The issue is when we are constantly doom scrolling idealised "2016 core" content as a means to escape the present. Nostalgia thus becomes unhealthy when we wish for the impossible - to go backwards. Rather than hoping to return to a decade that no longer exists, perhaps we should ask what we miss most about it. Was it the sense of online community? The creativity? The full-glam makeup looks? The excitement of discovering and experimenting with a new social media platform? Whatever the answer, I think it something that we can find again. Personally, I am happy to stay in 2026.