Why 2016 nostalgia is taking over social media in 2026 | UK News

Wake up – it’s 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 playlists and everyone is hunting Pikachu on Pokémon Go – if they aren’t filming their Mannequin Challenge attempt on their phone.

It all feels like it happened yesterday. But that might be thanks to social media, which has welcomed 2026 by looking 10 years into the past.

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

The nostalgic wave has got us recalling our favourite trends, tracks and looks. But why now? And is there anything special about the year 2016 specifically?

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

Radio 1 Anthems host Lauren Redfern tells Newsbeat it’s not hard to see why.

“It’s just so so good, that music from that time, and so nostalgic to so many of us,” she says.

“We had Zayn’s debut solo single Pillow Talk, Chainsmokers were really hot at that time.

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

Stats from Spotify show a 71% increase in “2016” playlists last year compared with 2024, and big-hitting artists have also been 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 up to number eight.

The Swedish pop sensation has also been behind a make-up trend focused on maximal, glam “Y2K” looks, and that’s something Lauren remembers fondly from 2016.

“It was all the mad colours,” she says. “The eye shadow was bright pink. I used to love a big, thick winged eyeliner as well.

“I still like to pull that 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 tells Newsbeat the year has become its own aesthetic on TikTok, thanks largely to the dedicated filter, which he says has helped to accelerate the trend.

It gives videos a vintage, pink-hued look that’s reminiscent of classic Instagram photo effects “everyone used” in 2016, says Joel.

“So without using words, be it somebody in France, be it someone in Germany, seeing that filter you’re instantly taken back to a time when we were having so much fun and were so much younger,” he says.

Joel says the rosy hues also evoke a simpler time on social media, which played a big part in young people’s lives but was far less complex.

“Looking at Instagram, around 2016, there was no carousel posts,” says Joel. “People were posting a picture of their avocado, and it wasn’t so performative.

“There weren’t short-form reels, so there wasn’t that algorithmic kind of fatigue that people have now.”

This is something Lauren, 26, says she can relate to.

“To be honest, 2016 was the year of Snapchat stories,” she says. “If I go back through my Snapchat memories, it’s pretty much all from 2016.

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

Looking back at 2016 through a – literal – rose-tinted filter is a source of comfort for many of us, but is it distorting our memory?

It was a particularly gloomy year for celebrity deaths, with legends including David Bowie, Prince, George Michael and Alan Rickman all passing away.

And 2016 also saw some major world events – such as the UK Brexit referendum and Donald Trump’s first US election win – that continue to divide people, whether they celebrated or despaired at the result.

Psychologist Clay Routledge has specialised in the study of nostalgia since 2001 and says he’s “hesistant to make too big of a deal of any one given year”.

Political events of 2016 may have elevated existing divisions, Clay says, but these significant moments and events hold nostalgic power because they act as “markers”.

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

Clay suggests two factors that could be driving the obsession with 2016: the start of a new year, and many young people feeling uncertain about the future.

“We tend to be especially nostalgic when the world feels like it’s going through some major change,” says Clay.

He points to the impact of artificial intelligence (AI), and people’s worries about how it will affect employment.

“When generations are going through this kind of upheaval or this kind of challenge, they tend to look back to their youth for comfort and for inspiration, for guidance,” he says.

And 10 years ago makes sense for a lot of us, he says.

“Young millennials would be in their early 30s, and the older Gen Z would be in their late 20s, and so 10 years ago would be that kind of youthful time,” he says. “People are looking back maybe a decade and saying, ‘Okay, what was going on then?'”

Lauren, who was in her teens at the time, says 2016 was “a pivotal time for quite a lot of us” and a time of firsts, discovering the world – and yourself – as you went along.

Many people have been using the trend to remember and reflect on how their lives have changed, and Joel thinks it’s reminded many of how carefree things felt 10 years ago.

“You posted something, you didn’t think about how many likes there were,” he recalls. “Perhaps that’s attached to the universal experience of ageing, but it feels now things are so divisive that we can all relate to feeling the world was a little lighter back then.”

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