Everyone has a year they remember fondly. If you ask Bryan Adams, it’d be the summer of ‘69. Smashing Pumpkins? 1979. Anne-Marie? 2002. Adams was thinking back to the best days of his life from 1985, 16 years on. But young adults today are strangely nostalgic for an even more recent time - 2016.
First off, we're going to have to break it to some of you that unfortunately, 2016 was almost 10 years ago. But for Gen Zers, the summer of that year captures the same sentiment as Adams’ memories of 1969. It was the year of Damn Daniel, Harambe the gorilla, and Pokémon Go - which 37% of American Gen Zs played during the summer of ‘16, making it briefly as popular as Amazon. Little wonder that zoomers think it was “the last good year”!
At the time most people couldn’t wait for 2016 to end. David Bowie, Prince, and Muhammad Ali were among an array of notable deaths, the UK controversially left the EU, and Donald Trump’s unexpected presidential victory shocked the world. If you take off the rose-tinted glasses for a second, were you really happier 10 years ago, or is this nostalgia for 2016 just something that everyone experiences in their own way?
It’s primarily younger generations driving nostalgia for this time. Not only are Gen Z the most likely generation to be nostalgic for the 2010s, they’re the most likely to be nostalgic overall.
And who can blame them? They’re the most likely generation to feel regularly lonely, to have a mental health condition, and to be faced with an intimidating job market. So it figures they want to go back to when their only concern was catching a Snorlax, before real world responsibilities kicked in.
Some of this is manifesting in their purchase behavior, where consumption works as a means of escapism. For younger consumers, the fact that they’re being locked out of traditional rites of passage means that the lines between childhood and adulthood become blurred. As a result, zoomers are the most likely generation to buy collectable cards, collectible figures, and plushies.
The real question is, did the 16-24 year olds of 2016 have it that much better than that same demographic today?
Well, in the US, youth unemployment was in decline. In our research, consumer confidence in the US and UK was at its highest level since the Great Recession.
There might be some nostalgia around technology as well. Even allowing for Pokémon Go’s breakout success, it was the last year before the smartphone era really took off. 2016 was the last year PCs were used to access the internet more than mobiles, and a transitional period in how we used social media, too.
While many of the online population are quick to reminisce about the memes of 2016, more at the time were using social media to stay in touch with their friends. By the time we reached 2020, social media became about trends and content first-and-foremost, and less about real-life connection.
On the other hand, there’s an argument to be made that things have in fact got better for young people today. Wage growth for 16-24s in the US has outpaced 25+ year olds since 2020.
As much as the job market is a concern, it’s remaining steady for now, while more young people are in education, employment or training worldwide. And Gen Z are outpacing the previous generation in home ownership.
So, they’ve nothing to complain about, right? Well, despite the increase on paper, the share of young people who would describe themselves as affluent hasn’t budged. It goes to show that ultimately, our mindset is more relative and vibes-based than information-driven. We compare ourselves with the people around us, not people in the past.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter whether 2016 was actually a good year or not - any year looks better in the rear-view mirror.
Nostalgia is inevitable, one of the few trends you can reliably predict. In the year that made Bryan Adams wax nostalgic, we saw the Manson family murders, and the United States was in the depths of the Vietnam War. And for those of a certain vintage, it seems strange that 2016, a year marked by political disruption and celebrity deaths, would be remembered so fondly.
But the nostalgia pattern is settling in again, and brands could do worse than capturing the experience economy as Pokémon Go did, creating AR filters as popular as the Snapchat dog ears, or a 10 year Harambe memorial, if that floats your boat.
Or you could look ahead even further. 2020 was, by a number of metrics, a pretty bad year. Yet, just 5 years on, the nostalgia wheels are already turning.