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TikTok and Instagram users are reposting their favourite pictures from 2016 or taking new selfies and videos using TikTok’s “2016” filter, which mimics the hazy, pinkish-purple tint of the early images we uploaded.
In New Zealand, interest in ‘#2016’ content has surged to its peak in recent weeks, according to TikTok Creative Center analytics.
Over the past three years, around 3000 TikTok posts including ‘#2016’ have been posted on New Zealand-based accounts, the platform’s data shows. About 32 percent of those posts were published over the past seven days alone.
Millennials and Gen Z are particularly entangled in this trend, says Duncan Shand, founder of a social and digital focused creative agency.
“I think it’s nostalgia, I think this is a throwback.”
Celebrities have jumped on the bandwagon, amongst them billionaire reality TV star Kim Kardashian who served a carousel of images this month to her 353m followers captioned: “I promise whatever happened to you 2016, mine was crazier”.
Kim Kardashian shares pictures from 2016 as part of the 2026 trend on social media.
@kimkardashian/Instagram
Locally, Finance Minister Nicola Willis reminisced on her life in 2016: “Loved that phase of life and loving this one too.”
Nicola Willis has shared pictures of 2016 as part of the social media trend to kick off 2026.
@nicolawillismp / Instagram
New Zealand content creator and marketer Jasmine Kim backs Shand up, saying she thinks it’s taken hold of those aged between about 29 and 45 because of how we have evolved over the decade.
“…It’s more of a millennial trend because they get to see what life once was before AI and technology took over. For me personally … I forgot what I was like in 2016 … it was before I got married, before I had become a mum … the makeup, the clothes we used to wear… “
Ten years ago, the social media of choice for Kim was mostly Snapchat and Facebook. She dug up pictures of herself, then in her 20s, when life, she says, felt simpler, and shared them to her grid.
Content creator Jasmine Kim shared a 2016 throwback picture, part of a trend kicking off the year 2026.
jasminekim__ / Instagram
The trend “2026 is the new 2016” can be traced back to an ironic joke which spawned a movement called “the great meme reset” in which TikTokers pined for the days before the internet was filled with AI, Forbes reports.
“The Meme Reset proposed that TikTokers ‘reset’ the internet by posting classic memes to drown out low-effort engagement bait, and spark something of a comeback for forgotten trends. 2016 was chosen as the golden age of memes, right before the perceived decline.” Forbes wrote.
And now it’s taken on a life of its own.
Why are we looking back at 2016? Was it even that good?
Christina Batistich-Vogels, a senior lecturer at AUT in communication studies, says it’s all about nostalgia for what feels like a better time – but was it really?
Dr Christina Batistich-Vogels, Senior Lecturer at the School of Communication Studies, Auckland University of Technology.
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“We tend to romanticise a past that is firmly placed in the past because it gives us a sense of security in that type of thing. And if we look back to 2016 obviously, Barack Obama was president, it was just before Trump got elected in 2017. So I think people go back to this nostalgia that this was somehow a better time and a simpler time. It was also obviously pre-pandemic.
“I think that has a lot of merit,” she says.
“…. People are posting a lot about what’s happening in the States, a lot about what’s happening politically throughout the world, and so it feels like when I get a sense of looking at social media, it feels like there is this collective understanding that this is really dystopian.
“So we go back to a time before all of this stuff happened… and people have landed on 2016.”
However, Batistich-Vogels points out 2016 wasn’t all roses.
“That was when Brexit came to life,” she says.
“So these kind of far right, anti-immigration, very kind of white nationalists and ideologies have been around for so long, but we’re just seeing such a concentration of it now.”
However, in a time when the world feels like it’s going to hell in a handbasket, she says a bandwagon offers collective therapy.
“Nostalgia is a way for people to deal with trauma as well.
“It’s a way to feel a sense of security and there is nothing more secure than the past because there’s nothing that you can do about it to change it.
“We’re in pretty f…ed up times, right? We’ve got Trump, we’ve got… all sorts of aggressive political stuff going on. We’re… post Covid, recession, cost of cost of living, crisis times – it’s just been difficult,” he says.
Duncan Shand, founder and CEO of YoungShand.
JAMIE WRIGHT
And so: “We’re all clinging on to the hope that 2026 is going to be more normal, boring, straightforward.”
He also reckons 2016 was a time before our social media was tainted with “so much AI slop ”, adding to the appeal of this trend. His theory reflects the origin of the movement.
“People are creating stuff and posting stuff and it’s very generic. They’re not personalising it or humanising it or really kind of curating it or crafting it.
“We’re in a period where there is so much more stuff being posted and it’s hard to tell really whether is this real or not real.
“I think part of this contrast between 2016 and 2026 is, 2016 was kind of a period where social media was more fun.”
Kim agrees: “A lot of people miss what life was like 10 years ago. It was a best messy, a bit more real, a bit more raw.”
How do social media trends catch on?
There are oodles of trends all over the internet, and the ones that appear to be flooding one feed may not be flooding the next. That’s the algorithm at work, explains Batistich-Vogels.
The 2016 trend has hit the sweet spot for people aged about 30 to 50, so if you haven’t heard a thing about it, you’re probably outside of the demographic, explains Shand.
This trend, he says, works because of the “human connection” it tugs at.
“It’s a shareable, relatable thing. It’s being able to be part of something that we’re doing together, that is kind of interesting.”
Australian social researcher and demographer Mark McCrindle says social media trends that seem to have the widest grip in the online world are those which are “a bit more nuanced” and open to interpretation.
Australian social researcher and demographer, Mark McCrindle.
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“For some people, it’s nostalgic. Some people are reflecting on their younger years pre their current situation. For some it’s a political statement, you know, pre-sort of the new world order of things.
“It’s got different aspects for different people. For some it’s just as simple as a retro trend – ‘Hey, here’s where I was 10 years ago, Look at me then and look at me now’.
“That tends to be the way of these trends these days. They capture a broad society and multi-generations because people approach them in different ways.”
Dr Christina Batistich-Vogels, Senior Lecturer at the School of Communication Studies, Auckland University of Technology.
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Duncan Shand, founder and CEO of YoungShand.
JAMIE WRIGHT
Australian social researcher and demographer, Mark McCrindle.
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