Millennials and Generation Z have all the feels for 2016 in their social media posts

Pokemon Go. The release of Beyonce’s “Lemonade” album. The debut of Netflix’s “Stranger Things.” The meme of Harambe the gorilla.

The year was 2016 — and for millennials and Generation Z, it was apparently the best year ever, judging from their recent social media posts.

Nostalgia for the good old days of a decade ago has inspired users on TikTok, Instagram and other platforms to flood their feeds with photos, videos, memes and memories of the year of Brexit, the Rio Olympics and the first election of Donald Trump.

Of course, many social media users have personal touchstones for the year that was. Travel blogger Julia St. Clair, 31, has reposted pictures of herself as a 21-year-old in 2016.

“For me, 2016 was a year of hope and dreams achieved and planted,” she posted on Instagram. “I graduated college with my BA in Communications, and my last class was a 3 week travel course in Rome — I also made my first ’big girl’ purchase when I needed a new car.”

Ms. St. Clair, who works for a nonprofit group, says some of her hopes and dreams have been fulfilled but others have yet to be realized.

“I hope and pray the hopeful flames of 2016 can light 2026 and have it burn brightly to lead us towards the light at the end of our tunnels and make our long held dreams in our hearts that were celebrated, acknowledged and or created in 2016 come true in 2026 and beyond,” she told The Washington Times.

But Jazz Warren, who runs a YouTube and TikTok page that “yaps with Jesus in mind,” sees social media itself as an impetus for the nostalgia trend. He says social media felt less contrived 10 years ago and more about forging authentic relationships and communication between people.

“I think it [social media] was very different from what it is now, though, from a discourse standpoint, how people relate to each other, how people use it, how people leverage it,” he told The Times. “It was fun, right? It was truly meant to be social, right? And to talk about the things that, you know, we care about, i.e. the sports and the music and so forth and so on.”

At 28 years old, Mr. Warren describes himself as a “Zillinneal” — born on the cusp between millennials (1981-1996) and Gen Z (1997-2012) — and works in corporate communications in North Carolina. He notes the negative effects that COVID-19 had on the public, especially young people.

“I think we’ve yet to see the real result of what that did to a lot of people, kids, so forth and so on,” he said.

Still, it’s hard to square the sentimentality for a year noted for the deaths of so many performers, leaders and celebrities. Those who died in 2016 include musicians David Bowie, Prince and George Michael; actors Gene Wilder, Debbie Reynolds, Carrie Fisher and Alan Rickman; athletes Arnold Palmer and Muhammad Ali; and former Cuban leader Fidel Castro and former first lady Nancy Reagan.

“2016 kind of functions as a temporal landmark,” said Dalia Halabi, a mental health practitioner and life coach who practices in Los Angeles. “So it’s like a before-and-after structure because the present feels so unstable.”

“We’re talking about a prolonged global disruption. We had a pandemic, there’s repeated uncertainty, collective stress, political instability, and so this kind of puts the nervous system into a chronic adaptation mode because uncertainty has become ongoing,” she told The Times.

Under such stress in the present, it’s easier for the brain to embrace the past as a coping mechanism, Ms. Halabi said.

So recalling the sinister mystery of the Upside Down in “Stranger Things” or the exuberance of Beyonce performing “Formation” could be just what social media users need to face what 2026 holds.