A Nostalgic Guide to Kids’ Culture for Out-of-Touch Adults: 2016 Nostalgia

This week, young people are looking back on the recent past through rose-colored glasses, enjoying life by filming harmless school pranks, and hopefully protecting their futures by not ingesting too many chia seeds or burning themselves with hot water bottles.

What does nostalgia for 2016 mean?

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the online optimism trend among millennials , which focused on the years around 2010, but it’s gone further: young people are feeling nostalgic specifically for 2016. This might seem odd. 2016 saw the deaths of Muhammad Ali, David Bowie, and Prince, as well as political and social upheaval on a scale many of us have never experienced, leading many to consider 2016 the worst year in history (how wrong we were!).

So why do young people feel nostalgic for this period? Firstly, because if you were young, the scale of societal collapse didn’t really interest you. 2016 was the year of Pokemon Go , Snapchat, and the bottle-flipping trend. You watched a brilliant new show called Stranger Things and spent time with friends on an internet that didn’t feel like an algorithmically controlled hellhole. Nostalgia is a personal thing; if you’re a young person in 2026, 2016 was your childhood, and after the pandemic and the ongoing destruction of “normal” social life, everything has gone awry, so 2016 will naturally feel like the last normal year. Growing up during collapse is tough, and I don’t blame anyone for being a little nostalgic; look at the world we left them. But don’t take my word for it. Check out some of the 2.2 million nostalgic TikTok videos under the hashtag #2016 to draw your own conclusions.

Viral Videos of the Week: Absurd Classroom Pranks.

I don’t think there’s a name for the viral videos I’m showing this week, so I’m calling them “absurd school pranks.” These are videos of kids/teens at school doing something absurd yet harmless while trying not to laugh. These recordings of good-natured acts of covert rebellion are both funny and inspiring. For example, this Instagram video by @avamonpere , which has garnered five million views, shows a couple of guys carefully arranging snacks on the board in the middle of a lecture:

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Or, for example, the ongoing series “Bringing Random Items to School,” in which Instagram user @eli6666k and his friends do exactly what the title suggests: pull the weirdest things out of their backpacks while trying not to laugh. I couldn’t even do it while watching. Here are a couple of examples:

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But check the source . The series is ongoing, so more to come.

Dangers from the Internet

In Part 4034 of my 36321-part series, we’ll look at three things people do online that no one should do in real life.

• “Fire Challenge”: A suburban Chicago mother is warning on behalf of her severely burned daughter: don’t participate in the “viral social media trend” called the “Fire Challenge”—that is, don’t douse your hands in alcohol or sanitizer and set them on fire. It’s a tragic story, but like most media reports of injuries resulting from online challenges, I can’t find any evidence of similar videos existing on social media, so calling it a “viral social media trend” seems misleading. Such videos may exist, but they’re unlikely to be viral or trending. There’s a hashtag called ” tiktokfirechallenge ,” containing 34 videos, none of which depict anything dangerous. While #firechallenge contains several videos warning about the dangers of the “fire challenge,” none of them actually show it happening.

• Don’t eat too many chia seeds : Chia seeds are all the rage among young people. People make ” chia water,” mix them with apples to make ” chia pudding ,” and even make disgusting videos using artificial intelligence about the supposed health benefits of eating a handful of raw seeds. The latter is the problem. Chia seeds are a good source of fiber, but nutritionists advise against eating them without soaking them in liquid first. They absorb liquid, and eating raw seeds can cause intestinal obstruction and choking.

• “Fried Skin Syndrome” – This triggered a phobia I didn’t even know I had: if you regularly use a heating pad on high, you can literally slowly fry your own skin . Medically, it’s called “fried skin syndrome ” or “fire erythema,” and it’s caused by prolonged exposure to heat sources like heating pads, electric blankets, space heaters, or even a laptop on your thighs. TikTok user @teezubal brought attention to the issue by posting a video of her friend’s disturbingly blotchy back , which has been viewed over 50 million times in a week. The friend insists, “It’s fine, I promise,” but it’s not . In milder cases, recovery can take months, and if continued, the discolored skin can become permanent. Solution: If you use a heating pad, set it to the “low” setting.

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