India, Dec. 29 -- If your social media feed suddenly feels familiar, you're not imagining it. Filters, bold makeup, glittery edits and Swedish singer and songwriter Zara Larsson's popular hit Lush Life are back. Online, many young users are saying "2026 is the new 2016". And the internet seems happy to play along.

The phrase took off in December 2025 Great Meme Reset, a social media movement, when online searches for it peaked worldwide. A TikTok creator @joebro909 suggested January 1, 2026, as a "reset day", a chance to return to the playful internet culture of 2016. Soon, users began reposting old-school memes and revisiting the light-hearted humour of that time.

For many Gen-Z and younger millennials, 2016 felt like peak internet joy...