Despite the Snapchat dog filters and Vine clips, you didn’t accidentally sleep through a decade. NBC News reports that 2016 nostalgia is surging in early 2026, with Instagram users reviving heavily filtered photos and videos from 10 years ago to celebrate what many remember as a more carefree moment in internet culture—the one with the “Mannequin Challenge.” The throwbacks have flooded feeds with chokers, winged eyeliner, Snapchat memories, and Coachella-era outfits, often framed as a fond reminiscence of a time before social media felt so heavy. “People were just posting for their friends,” said Katrina Yip, who posted her own throwbacks. “The people you followed on social media were just people you knew in real life. They weren’t celebrities or educational accounts, and so everything just felt like you were more in a little personal bubble.”
That sense of “normal” is closely tied to how platforms functioned. NBC News notes that for many millennials and older Gen Z users, 2016 marked the tail end of an era when social media felt smaller, chronological, and less optimized for performance. People dumped entire camera rolls into Facebook albums, posted brunch photos without irony, and eventually could reach the actual end of their feeds. Steffy Degreff, 38, said the shift since then has been unmistakable, especially as algorithms and monetization reshaped online behavior. “I do think that 2016 was the beginning of the end of a golden era of when people felt really good about the internet and social media and politics,” she said. “And then, obviously, the pandemic happened.”
But not everyone is eager to romanticize 2016. The Cut argues that the current wave of nostalgia glosses over how turbulent the year actually was, from political divisions to mass violence and global crises that still reverberate. “You may continue posting throwbacks to your heart’s content, but, please, do not tell me it was the ‘best year ever.'” Still, many people sharing the photos say the trend isn’t about rewriting history so much as remembering a time when things felt lighter to them personally. For content creator Teala Dunn, the appeal comes down to how ordinary life felt then. “I didn’t realize how much we took for granted normal life pre-Covid,” she said. “Things were just a lot more fun.”
