I’ve spent the past week frantically digging for a photo of myself using Snapchat’s iconic puppy dog filter. Or maybe one in which I’m wearing a choker, sporting aggressively lined eyebrows, or some unflattering lip combo. Really, any photo of me in 2016, clearly indulging in the era’s trends, would suffice. Because if the first two weeks of 2026 are any indication, online nostalgia for that year has reached a fever pitch, and I’d be remiss not to participate.

Everyone on my feeds, from celebrities to coworkers to high school acquaintances I knew back during the actual year, has been resurfacing their best (and most embarrassing) social media content from the bygone era. There are year-in-review recap carousels (typically reserved for the end of the actual year), and I’ve seen personal essay-length captions from people recounting every single thing that they achieved and experienced way back when. It’s as though the decade mark arrived with a mandate: find any discernible evidence that you lived through 2016 and quickly share the Snapchat memories to prove it. The BBC recently reported that “2016” TikTok searches shot up 452 percent the first week of January, and 55 million videos have been made using the app’s 2016-style filter.

The final months of 2025 showed some early signs of a big 2016 comeback. (I mean, Kylie Jenner revived her “King Kylie” era, and trending aesthetics started drifting back toward mid-2010s maximalism). But 2016, particularly the summer of 2016, reached mythic status long before then. It feels like pleas for its return started only a few years after it ended.

You’d think that the year’s major cultural and political pivots might taint any fond memories. Donald Trump was elected president, the UK voted to leave the European Union, and Prince literally died. But 2016 was also culturally rich and clearly defined. It gave us lauded releases from Frank Ocean, Rihanna, Beyoncé, Drake, and Kanye West. It was the summer the augmented reality game Pokémon GO reached peak popularity and became so ubiquitous that then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton referenced it in a widely derided campaign speech. There were distinct, now easily replicable style and beauty trends: leather pants, chokers, blocky brows, and barely any “clean girl” makeup in sight. Screens already dominated our lives, but we hadn’t yet been inundated with new research on the long-term effects of social media and influencer culture.

Every era has its drawbacks, and nostalgia inevitably clouds our memory of them, but 2016 has been uniquely lionized.

Part of its hold may come from its very distinct timing. It’s the first year older members of the Gen Z demo began to enter adulthood and younger members of the set (born in the late 2000s) gained consciousness. There’s also its distant economic reality. The cost of living in the U.S. has risen dramatically over the past decade, and 2016 now represents a version of modern life that still offered today’s technologies and pop culture but with greater novelty and, in certain cases, financial accessibility. Social media wasn’t yet flooded with AI-generated content, and luxuries like Uber and food delivery had far lower average rates (even with inflation considered)—you didn’t even have to pay a monthly fee to access the cherished Snapchat Memories being used to honor the era.

Posting a throwback photo with a puppy dog filter from the days when you were unburdened by today’s political and financial realities is without a doubt the easiest and least emotionally taxing way to digest just how drastically the times have changed. Young adults captioning their posts “heard we’re bringing 2016 back” know we won’t soon return to $5 Ubers. But maybe what they’re hoping to revive is the joy and possibility that defined the year and made its drawbacks all the more tolerable in the first place.