2025 is the new 2015

Digital Dreams and Disconnections—Mapping 2025 Through the Lens of 2015

We tell ourselves stories about time repeating, about the eternal return of trends and tastes. On TikTok they say 2025 is the new 2015, pointing to eerily similar patterns: a resurgence of minimalist fashion, the return of social media fatigue, and a renewed push for environmental action. But what we mean when we say this, what we are really talking about, is our desperate need to make sense of where we are by mapping it onto where we've been.

To examine 2015 is to witness a year suspended between past and future, a critical moment of transformation where the foundations of our current world were quietly being laid. This was not just another year, but a complex ecosystem of emerging possibilities—a laboratory of cultural, technological, and global shifts that would reshape our understanding of connection, innovation, and collective action.