The 2016 Nostalgia Effect

Why Gen Z Can’t Stop Yearning for the Year That Raised Us

By: Tessa May

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Credit: Vox

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Lately, we’ve all caught ourselves scrolling through TikToks set to old Chainsmokers songs or rewatching Vine compilations that cured depression. Somewhere between the rainbow Instagram filter, the “Closer” era, and Snapchat dog ears, we realized 2016 wasn’t just another year, it was THE year. 

The one that raised us, shaped our adolescence, and offered us an online world that seemed happier, weirder, and lighter. Now , as adults trying to navigate through curated chaos, we cannot help but crave simplicity.

The 2016 internet sparkled and we long for that. Back then, social media felt like a unity, not a battleground.

We posted blurry selfies with the Valencia filter, captioned “mood,” and genuinely meant it. The rainbow lens flare wasn’t ironic, it was art. The Instagram grid wasn’t a brand, it was a scrapbook. 

There were no analytics dashboards haunting us, no algorithmic anxiety. If your photo got 72 likes, you didn’t spiral, you just texted your group chat, “It flopped lol,” and moved on. We didn’t need an aesthetic; we were the aesthetic.

Our feeds were chaotic greatness. One post might be a meme about Harambe (RIP), the next a dance video from Musical.ly, and then a screenshot of a conversation that ended with “wyd.” The chaos worked because it was real. 

There wasn’t a “For You Page” deciding what we liked - we decided that ourselves. Today, the internet feels like a mall run by AI: over-curated, ad-heavy, and somehow missing that messy human touch we used to love.

2016 music alone could carry the nostalgia. Drake’s “One Dance,” Rihanna’s “Work,” DJ Snake and Justin Bieber’s “Let Me Love You,” and The Weeknd’s “Can’t Feel My Face” were songs for playing repeatedly at every middle school dance and sleepover. 

Beyoncé released Lemonade, showing us that pop can still be political. It also showed that pop music could be quite personal. Everyone listened to the same songs, shared the same playlists and screamed the same lyrics at parties. 

Now, thanks to algorithmic streaming, we all live in our own sonic bubbles. There’s no collective “song of the summer” anymore; there’s just Spotify’s idea of what we might be into.

And who could forget the Mannequin Challenge? We froze mid-motion while Rae Sremmurd’s “Black Beatles” played, pretending to be statues for some stranger’s iPhone 6. It was dumb, creative, and communal … and that’s exactly why it worked. 

From high schools to hospitals, to eventually the White House joining in too, we lived in a unified cultural community. Today, along with every viral moment as a disguised marketing plan, that kind of universal participation now feels nearly impossible.

Aesthetically, 2016 was loud and proud. Contoured faces, bold brows, metallic eye shadow … we were all walking around like Snapchat filters that came to life. The “Instagram Baddie” look wasn’t about subtlety; it was about transformation. We wanted to be seen.  

Contrast that with today’s “clean girl” beige minimalism — beautiful, sure, but also sterile. 2016 was maximalist confidence before “main character energy” became a meme. Even our humor hit differently. Vine’s six-second clips demanded creativity. It was raw, absurd, and fast. 

We memorized lines like “Road work ahead? Uh, yeah, I sure hope it does,” and quoted them like scripture. Today’s TikToks are polished, edited, and optimized for engagement and retention. Vine was chaos for chaos’s sake, and that’s what made it special.

So why are we yearning for it now? Because 2016 was when Gen Z still believed in the internet as a creative space, not a capitalist one.

 It was when authenticity didn’t need to be branded, when our digital lives weren’t so entangled with our professional ones, and when self-expression didn’t come with a price tag or a content strategy. We miss that version of ourselves: spontaneous, chaotic, connected.

In a way, revisiting 2016 isn’t just nostalgia; it’s rebellion. It’s Gen Z saying, “We want the internet to feel human again.” The filters, the playlists, the memes … they remind us of a time when we were creating culture instead of consuming it. 

When we laughed without fact-checking, danced without posting, and took pictures without thinking about engagement. 

Maybe that’s why we’re resurrecting rainbow filters and Vine audios. Because deep down, we’re all still chasing that version of ourselves who thought a Valencia selfie could fix anything - and for a moment, maybe it did.

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Tessa May is a fourth-year online editorial writer at Rowdy and an advertising student at UF. In her free time, she enjoys doing yoga, mindless Pinterest surfing, and creating excellent playlists for her every mood.