Nostalgia or revival? Decoding the 2026-2016 parallel
Nostalgia has a funny way of sneaking up on you. One moment, someone puts on “Closer” by “The Chainsmokers” at a gathering, and all of a sudden, the entire room is instantly taken back to 2016. Everyone is reminiscing about Vines, Dubsmash videos and a time when scrolling social media still felt genuinely fun rather than exhausting. It is a year that did not seem particularly special whilst living through it, even though it has managed to get engraved in the minds of an entire generation as the golden era they keep finding themselves drawn back to.
2016 represented the height of our teenage years. When people were still uploading shaky webcam videos and AutoTune remixes, the internet felt less performative, monitored, and hyper-curated. Moreover, the disruption caused by COVID-19 has robbed us of a significant chunk of our youth, making the timeline feel like just yesterday. Sadia Mahbub (Sophomore, ENH) shared, “We understand that we cannot reverse time, which is why we are trying to revisit the good memories of our past by listening to familiar songs and following different trends online.”
Students around the BracU campus are seen bringing back 2016 fashion, hair, and makeup trends like Zara Larsson’s summer makeup and low-waist jeans with colourful charm bracelets, and uploading pictures with the 2016 filter and songs like “Lush Life” or “3 Strikes” .The trend started with celebrities posting throwback photos from 2016 with famous Snapchat filters. After that, people started searching for 2016 on different search engines, redirecting the algorithms of TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram.
From declaring 2026 the new 2016 and calling January 1st of 2026 the reset day, our entire generation collectively agreed to relive the 2016 aesthetics. Zarin Nawar (Junior, ESS) thinks, “People are just trying to replicate the nostalgia of the lost days when responsibilities were much lighter, and life was not bound within routines and deadlines.”
Ultimately, the search for 2016 nostalgia is more about emotions and less about following trends. It is to remind ourselves that even within the stress of adulthood, fragments of our youth remain.
