In the final days of 2025, the internet was flooded with nostalgia for the final years before the 2020s. Among the end-of-year recaps and New Year’s resolutions, people posted montages soundtracked by the pop-EDM hits of 10 years ago, declaring 2026 to be “the new 2016.”

The posts felt optimistic, reminiscent of simpler times and hopeful for the year to come. Shockingly, this trend has remained relevant in the early months of 2026. Wired headphones have made a comeback. Film cameras face competition as young consumers buy older iPhone models for the reduced camera quality. Sororities have launched 2016-themed rush campaigns. Artists whose heydays were in the 2010s are making a comeback — the chief of which is Zara Larsson, this year’s Springfest headliner, who has returned to the Billboard Top 100 since debuting in the 2010s. 

Nostalgia is hardly a new phenomenon, and has been studied by psychologists for its influence on consumer behavior and feelings of social cohesion. Even 2016 itself was not immune: Instant photography and Polaroid pictures spiked in popularity that year. One could easily chalk up the 2016 obsession to fashion cycles and novelty. As Brandeis Prof. Kate Moran (PHIL) writes in her book “A Philosopher Looks at Clothes,” “since there are only so many visible colors on the spectrum, so many places a waistline can sit, or only so many ways a trouser leg can taper, old fashions inevitably become new again.” The jean rise “en mode” offers insight into our cultural cravings — for instance, “mom jeans” and high-waisted pants made a comeback in the late 2010s, when the television show “Stranger Things” gained popularity and the public yearned for the 1980s. 

However, 2025 was not deemed to be the new 2015, and a subdivision of 2016-oriented content, “millennial optimism,” suggests that the 2016 craze isn’t rooted in aesthetics alone. Millennial optimism glamorizes young adulthood in the first half of the 2010s. The trend cites media such as rock band Neon Trees or Lena Dunham’s sitcom “Girls” to imagine a quirky, hipster post-grad fantasy set in Brooklyn or Los Angeles. Though the photo carousels themselves are aesthetically gratifying, they also evoke the comparatively analog experience and feelings of economic and political optimism in the mid-2010s. 

I wager that most of the people participating in this trend — and perhaps even reading this article — were in middle school in 2016, so it makes sense that the era would feel hopeful or uncomplicated ten years later. In 2016 we enjoyed festival pop, niche cupcake shops, the rise of Vine, matte makeup and, inexplicably, cartoon owls. We also enjoyed a brief respite between two periods of social and political instability. 

In a conversation with Prof. Brian Horton (ANTH), he wisely pointed out 2016’s placement between 2008 and 2020: “In 2016, we were rebounding from the threshold of disaster after the 2008 financial crisis, and we had yet to experience the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.” In 2016, unemployment rates fell and job growth looked optimistic. Buzzfeed published articles now categorized as “girlboss feminism.” Even in my conservative hometown, a handful of cars sported giant “H” bumper stickers in support of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. It seemed that progress was in the air, and everyone could contribute to better the world. 

Of course, 2016 also marked significant social change. The Brexit referendum took place in June. Donald Trump was elected for his first term as President in November. Americans would later experience Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation, multiple presidential impeachments, the January 6th Insurrection, the coronavirus pandemic and the quotidian use of Artificial Intelligence.

The nostalgia for 2016 seems to lie in dissatisfaction with our current political climate. It is unclear whether the longing for a different time crosses party lines, though even the far-right white supremacist and former Trump supporter Nick Fuentes recently commented that he misses former President Barack Obama. “I miss the adults in the room,” he stated in March in an online livestream. 

In a 2007 essay, cultural theorist Svetlana Boym astutely offered that “nostalgic love can only survive in a long-distance relationship.” Of course, nostalgia risks inaccuracy and distortion. Some millennials online have taken to the comment sections to correct perceptions around 2016, offering a rosy picture of the trends being referenced. Furthermore, Americans elected President Trump in 2016, suggesting existing cultural and political instability in voters’ reception to, ironically enough, Trump’s own appeal to nostalgia with “Make America Great Again.”

Even so, nostalgia invokes “memory and desire,” as George Eliot writes in “The Waste Land.” The posts yearning for 2016 aren’t negative in nature. Users express the desire to recreate an experience like 2016 in the coming year, and the trend is hopeful in tone.    

Zara Larsson’s aforementioned career resurgence can be traced back to 2024, when her song "Symphony," a collaboration with Clean Bandit, exploded online. Users paired the songs with slideshows of dolphins and sunsets, overlaid with confessions ranging from the transgressive to the mildly depressing. Larsson has acknowledged the bizarre nature of the trend, using the format herself and dancing with inflatable dolphins at her concerts. The posts imitated a trend known online as “hopecore”: meme-ified optimism utilizing inspirational quotes and, in its early days, highly saturated images of animals or the beach. Hopecore has since assumed an ironic edge, and the Zara Larsson dolphin meme was no exception.

One could make the argument that the Zara Larsson meme is representative of the greater conversation surrounding 2016. Where the slideshows of dolphins stand in sharp contrast to user commentary, collective memories of 2016 feel rose-tinted — or, perhaps more historically accurate, rose-gold-tinted — in comparison to our present. In acknowledging our dissatisfaction and our desire for different circumstances, we empower ourselves to imagine a new reality. Perhaps our nostalgia can be understood as hope repackaged.