The feeling of “take me back” has never been more relevant as 2026 kicks off.
With just a few weeks into the year, the year 2016 has been trending and making people nostalgic and reminiscing about the early days of social media — and the house parties, the clubs, the music and the fashion.
On TikTok, the hashtag #2016 has more than 2 million posts, often used to caption throwback photos, old videos and reflections on the unique pop culture moments and aesthetic trends of the year.
In 2016, Beyoncé dropped “Lemonade” and we were all wondering who was Becky with the good hair, Kylie Jenner was winning the beauty game with her lip kits, Snapchat and its filters took over, “Damn Daniel” had people cracking up and everyone was invited to Rubi’s quinceañera. Songs like Drake’s “One Dance,” Justin Bieber’s “Love Yourself,” The Chainsmokers’ “Closer” and Rihanna’s “Work” hit the airwaves.
Now, in 2026, people — particularly millennials, celebrities included — are reflecting on simpler times and being young, free and careless.
“It’s 2026, people are feeling nostalgic for 2016 (because) enough time has passed to have those warm feelings for that time,” Clay Routledge, an existential psychologist, who’s a leading expert in the science of nostalgia, tells NBC’s Joe Fryer.
Why are people nostalgic for 2016?
Routledge, also an executive vice president and COO at Archbridge Institute, adds that millennials and older Gen Z are the ones most affected by “technological transformations” amid the advances of artificial intelligence.
“People tend to be nostalgic when they’re anxious about the future or they’re not sure what direction in life to take,” he says. “So I think this generation is dealing with those anxieties, and they’re using nostalgia as a way to respond to them.”
However, he says that people tend to be “especially nostalgic” for that time in their youth where they felt “young and free and energized most.”
“So it’s not a surprise to me that you have this particular age group that would have been teenagers or very young adults in 2016 looking to that time for inspiration as they’re going through these transitions and dealing with these anxieties they have about the present and the future,” he notes.
What have people been posting?
TikTok and Instagram have been filled with people sharing their rose-colored, Snapchat dog ears and flower crown filter photos, as well as pics and videos from their party days.
These are also content creators reflecting on how they did their hair and makeup and the memorable “going out” outfit.
TODAY’s Jenna Bush Hager reflected on the year when she had “two babes, same man, lots of love.”
On TODAY with Jenna & Sheinelle Sheinelle Jones said she was still a rookie in “the TODAY show ecosystem.”
“I look back now, at the time I just felt like I was all over the place, flying everywhere, the kids were little, but now I almost look back and I’m like proud of it. I think they were good times,” Sheinelle said.
Jenna also shared a photo of her and Sheinelle from 2016, hugging and matching in purple.
“We were in our fill-in era!” Sheinelle said, referring to when they’d help out co-hosting TODAY with Kathie Lee & Hoda.
Savannah Guthrie looked back to her own 2016 on Instagram and its “singular” highlight: The birth of her son, Charles “Charley” Max Feldman.
“This happened in Dec. 2016 and everything else pales in comparison,” Savannah wrote on the Instagram reel.
Savannah also posted a 2016 flashback of her daughter, Value. “2016 Vale demands equal time ❤️,” she wrote.
Al Roker also hopped on the trend with a collection of photos including family, friends, his co-hosts and a whole lot of memories.
“Well, I see you, #2016 and you were a great year!! #ohhowtheyearsgoby,” he wrote.
On Instagram, content creator Steffy Degreff reflected on days when her hair was short and she was “newly living in new york & urban outfitters flatlays & cozy oversized cardigans.”
“I don’t think any year realizes it is up to the hype until the time has passed — but to me it was a really great year,” Degreff tells TODAY.com. “It’s really fun to romanticize the past, at a time when the internet was still blossoming and felt so much simpler.”
She adds that she thinks the 2016 trend has impacted people because they realize “how attached to the Instagram app they have been for a decade, and all of the iterations of change that social media has gone through — which impacts the way we live our life, and the way we share it.”
YouTuber and baker Rosanna Pansino remembers waiting for #ThrowbackThursdays to post old photos and being carefree about what you posted.
“I think that people are romanticizing (2016) because it feels like a simpler and a more carefree time on the internet,” she tells TODAY. “2016 was just a really fun and special time because content creators really had more fun… because a lot of people weren’t concerned about algorithms.”
She believes people “saw a lot more heart” with the content, stressing that nowadays as a content creator, “The heavier the algorithms get on all the social media platforms, the more robotic our content becomes.”
People aren’t only posting their 2016 photos, they’re also looking up the famous filters and music from the time.
According to Snapchat, searches for the “2016” lenses are up 613% from the beginning of the year to now when compared to last year. Searches for the “Dog Lens” on the platform are also up 352%, while searches for 2016 in their music library is up by 621%.
Routledge says that it doesn’t have to be the year 2016 specifically for people to be nostalgic. He explains that the way nostalgia works is people tend to have more time to curate the memories and the experiences that they found happy, energizing or inspirational.
As time goes by, they have more time to “put aside the negatives, or if we are thinking about the negatives, we’ve had more time to integrate that negative into a more redemptive or useful story.”
“When you go through something and it’s difficult at the moment, you don’t really appreciate it, but after some time has passed, you can say, ‘Well, maybe I learned something from that. It’s made me who I am. It’s helped me grow as a person,’” he adds.
This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:
