Based on Shutterstock’s data, among the trends impacting the world are “Flat Lay, Boho, Sacred Geometry, and Metallics,” according to Shutterstock. In the United States, “Data Science” was searched 356 percent more than the previous year. Other areas of the world with significant increases in visual trends include Japan and the monkey (up 1,005 percent, presumably coinciding with the Chinese Lunar New Year, being that 2016 is the year of the monkey), Spain and the French Bulldog (up 439 percent), and in India, “Smart City” images were up 535 percent from the previous year. The one thing that Shutterstock’s data doesn’t explain, however, is exactly why these terms and trends are popular, only that they reflect what’s happening globally.
Further, as more users and celebrities battle internally and publicly to find a comfortable spot between being too well-connected and completely unplugging, the data indicates an increase in the two opposing cultural trends. On one hand, there is the 900-percent increase in smartwatch categories; on the other hand, there is the 197-percent increase in wanderlust. A 169-percent increase in wellness, and a 109-percent increase in mindfulness.
The increasing numbers of video-related social networking platforms such as Periscope and Meerkat, as well as video features that made their debuts on Facebook, will likely play tremendous roles in video for 2016. In video trends, Shutterstock says we can expect to see more of the classical elements of fire, water, and earth – allowing viewers to experience the power of nature from new perspectives. In music, words like “bright, confident, happy, and uplifting” are the heavily searched terms.
As other data has shown, current events and individual viewpoints of global events play important roles in social media and will continue to be noteworthy trends in images and video for 2016. Shutterstock’s social trends for the year include color in nature, atmospheric, and human scale images that will likely be the most viral-worthy and shareable images on the Internet in the new year.
