The Last Good Year

my own reflections on 2016

I kind of love online trends that involve looking back on personal histories. I loved the 2019 (which I thought was a movement from just last year, but Martin googled it and found it was much longer ago) “ten years ago” trend, even though I believed at the time (I still believe) that it was a conspiracy to further develop facial recognition without our consent. I love seeing people’s past lives lined up beside the current, and I love seeing how people’s children have grown, how their lives and hairstyles have changed. It’s fun!

The recent “2016” trend took me off guard. Okay, it was ten years ago, but what’s so special about 2016? I couldn’t come up with any fresh conspiracies, neither have I jumped aboard, but I have really enjoyed seeing the then-and-nows all over my Instagram feed. For some reason, the 2016 trend seemed to be holding a lot of nostalgia for people, more than the previous throwback trend that just kind of compared faces from a decade apart. I was a bit confused, but then I happened upon a news article that tried to decipher the trend, and it made a lot of sense.

The article claimed that people see 2016 as “the last good year.” From then on, the world has been in somewhat of a downward spiral in terms of global and US politics, which has had an affect on our collective mental health as a generation, but that wasn’t the crux of it—they cited phone usage as the primary downfall of our happiness. According to the article, 2016 was the last year we were able to enjoy our phones and put them down to live our real life. Since then, our devices have pulled us in and become a constant companion, feeding us doom and gloom in some form or another 24 hours a day. 2016, they say, is when we left behind “simpler times” and in general, “real life” in exchange for online-everything, social media as our sole communities, and never-ending news and events streaming.

This makes absolute sense to me. I see it! Even though that wasn’t exactly my experience (for me, I’d say 2021 was the year everything changed for me,) I see clearly the line where the phones took over. It bewilders me that it wasn’t ignited by Covid, like so many other societal changes we’ve seen and felt, no, it was just a lifestyle choice that we all made. Crazy! I remember when Martin and I would sit down at the kitchen table at the end of the day with a cup of coffee and “catch up” on Instagram. There was a purpose and there was an end—you had a few followers to post for (I posted about every day, maybe twice a day) and you followed a handful of people who genuinely interested you. Nowadays, I find myself reaching for my phone all day long to see what’s going on, only to be fed mostly advertisements, which makes me feel unfulfilled, so I keep scrolling in order to see more "real” people accounts. And how much do I even care about the majority of the accounts I’m seeing? Let’s just see:

I just opened up my Instagram and the first thing I see is “Fitz & Floyd.” I have never heard of Fitz & Floyd before this moment, they seem to be… dishes? Home things? Their motto is “One Look and You Know.” I don’t even know what that means. One of their items is a cookie jar that is shaped like a pickup truck. Fitz & Floyd is so far from my own decorating style that I have no words. But I have to scroll past that ad in order to get to the very next thing, an ad, from “allure,” which I think is a magazine? Allure asks someone “what is your game day beauty routine?” I do not have game days. I do not have a beauty routine. I do not read this kind of magazine—oh, I just looked, it’s a beauty magazine! lol! Can you even imagine me reading a beauty magazine! (Maybe they are trying to give me a hint! “IT’S TIME, ANNIE, IT’S TIME!")

My next immediate ad is from “Visit Ft. Meyers.” Um. Okay. (Alright, this one is not SO far off the mark, since I DO have beloveds in Florida now, but Fr. Meyers is not where they are, nor is it where I would want to go if I had the time, money, lack of travel anxiety, etc.)

Closed Instagram. Reopened Instagram. Ad: Douglas Toys. Very cute stuffed walrus that I definitely don’t need in my life. No thanks, Doug.

You get where I’m going with this ridiculousness.

What began as an online community has become a constant source of FOMO, but without ever supplying anything we actually care about or need. It’s just an empty longing for something that doesn’t really exist anymore.

And crazier—everyone is unhappy. Or at least more unhappy than we were in 2016. (Again, this isn’t my experience, but the experience of people on average. I’d venture to say heavier than average.) Here we are, admitting our misery with a nostalgic social media trend! What on earth!

It’s time, folks. It’s time to hang it up, and we are all feeling it.

Real life is beautiful. I miss it. I recognize that in my own life, I am filling empty spaces with my phone that used to be filled with the tedium of mothering in the early years. I spend a lot of time wandering around these days, waiting for someone to need me. I have allowed my hands to fill that time with scrolling instead of with any other activity. That’s so stupid! My precious life, wasted on looking at advertisements for magazines I don’t want to read, trips I don’t want to take, stuffed animals I don’t want to buy, home boutiques I don’t understand. And yet, I still reach. As do most of us, evidently.

So, what’s next? Well, obviously change is what’s next. Alongside this trend of reminiscing on happier times, there have surfaced some new movements: the analog movement, the decorate-your-house-however-you-want movement, the slow-and-purposeful-living movement. I’ve noticed a turn away from consumerism overall (“buy local!” “buy organic!”) in favor of more community-based experiences and a mindset of doing without. This doesn’t seem like good news for business people who are in the “goods” part of goods & services, nor does it bode well for the advertisers bombarding us, but it does seem like a healthy move for social humans.

Whatever was so special about 2016, pre-Screen Takeover, let’s get back there. What’s stopping us? I tell my kids: “You are in charge of You.” (ALL THE TIME, I say this.) It applies to each of us, all the time, through all the trends and movements.

As for me, whether or not 2016 was my last good year, I am all about throwing our phones out an upper window and getting back to face-to-face commerce and society. I have such a love-hate relationship with social media… mostly these days it’s hate. No longer in a phase of life where I’m lacking human contact, I don’t need social media as a lifeline. I think a lot of women my age feel the same way—for awhile, Instagram was our window to the outside world, a little naptime escape. Nowadays, I don’t have time for that kind of time-suck. My life is filled to the brim with fulfilling life happenings, and if I need a break or a reset, I can just walk out my door and find what I need in world outside my house. I can just pick up the sweater I’ve been knitting for six months and work on it. I wonder how the young moms are feeling these days? Is Instagram a lifeline for them, or just a distraction always at their fingertips?

2016 was definitely a year I was in need of a lifeline. Man, oh man. That was the year of a terrible commission job that was bringing home paychecks of $0. That was the year I begrudgingly had to leave our homestead and animals to move back to our downtown house. So much sadness and worry. Four little girls, nobody more than 9 years old. I definitely would not have ever categorized it as my “last good year,” not by a long shot. But you know, nostalgia has a way of turning our hearts and memories. I remember the anxiety, but what I feel in my heart for 2016 is beauty.

Here we are in 2026. Plenty of anxieties, but plenty of beauty. Let’s make more room for the beauty so that in 2036 we can look back at Now and remember how good it was.