ConnexionGrab your fidget spinners! Why gen Z are pining for 2016 | Coco Khan
As galling as it is to see young people refer to the items I wore 10 years ago as ‘vintage’, surely the real problem is that so many of them believe their best years are behind them
‘I grow old … I grow old … I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled,” wrote TS Eliot in 1915, in his seminal poem The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock. And as I sit here in 2026 with my jeans turned up (as per the style of the thirtysomething urban millennial), well, I can relate. What has brought on this bout of contemplation? The latest TikTok craze. Loosely known as “Bring Back 2016”, it involves TikTokers urging their mostly gen Z audience to “live 2026 like it’s 2016” – complete with mannequin challenges, a Major Lazer soundtrack and the promise of never-ending summer. And it’s sure to get heads spinning quicker than the fidget spinners it’s resurrecting.
Admittedly, most of the content is just plain silly: 2016 challenges and dances (the bottle flip, the dab); nostalgia for tech crazes (Pokémon Go and that Snapchat dog filter that made you look like a slobbering puppy but in a weirdly sexy way); and a return to 2016 makeup, fashion and low-effort aesthetics. Remember when “vintage film” filters were all the rage (RIP Instagram’s Mayfair and Sierra)? When videos didn’t need a number of takes, lengthy edits, and border on a professional production? When it was OK to just be online without considering what it said about you as a personal brand? Or when the internet wasn’t divisive politics everywhere? Well, that’s 2016 according to TikTok, and it’s time to “Bring! It! Back!”
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© Photograph: Posed by models; andresr/Getty Images
© Photograph: Posed by models; andresr/Getty Images
© Photograph: Posed by models; andresr/Getty Images
