Forget having a boyfriend – these are the trends that will be embarrassing in 2026

Boyfriends officially became embarrassing in 2025. That’s according to a viral article by Chanté Joseph for British Vogue, which articulated a distinct vibe shift: that it is now “fundamentally uncool to be a boyfriend-girl”.

Far from being aspirational to post about your partner online, it became a bit, well, cringe. Women refrained from “hard launching” their relationships on social media; if they did ever include their man, he’d be mainly out of shot, with perhaps just a hand creeping into frame. Subtle hints without the confirmation – and certainly minus the gushing posts of old.

“Being partnered doesn’t affirm your womanhood any more. It is no longer considered an achievement and, if anything, it’s become more of a flex to pronounce yourself single,” observed Joseph.

So if openly having a boyfriend is the most decidedly off-trend behaviour of 2025, what’s destined for the lifestyle scrapheap in 2026? Here are my predictions for the most obvious casualties…

Whisper it, but… isn’t posting about your life on social media a bit naff these days? It certainly looks like it. Tired of the infinite scroll and being manipulated by algorithms, people are spending less time on platforms overall and sharing less of their personal lives. This is reflected in young people’s changing tastes; screens may have ruled the roost over the past two decades, but Gen-Zers are all about going analogue, more likely to be pursuing a latent passion for whittling bespoke milking pails than cruising for likes or mindlessly watching TikToks. They’re experimenting with dumbphones, leaning into tech-free hobbies, going off-grid and taking life offline. And, for Gen Alpha, social media is where people like their parents hang out. What could be more deeply uncool?

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I’m not attacking hydration, merely the receptacle it comes in. After Booker Prize-winning novelist Ian McEwan branded the modern-day obsession with carrying a water bottle “deranged”, it became clear that the days of insanely gargantuan Stanley cups and their ilk were numbered. Somehow, carting around a vessel that’s roughly the same size and weight as a newborn baby, just to avoid being temporarily thirsty, no longer screams “chic”.

As the AI tsunami that nobody asked for continues to rage unabated, I predict that authenticity and anything with the unmistakable mark of being human-made will command a premium. On the flipside, fessing up to consulting ChatGPT – especially when you could have just googled or, let’s face it, engaged your brain for five minutes – is going to become just a little bit shameful.

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Trashy, structured reality shows have long been the guilty viewing pleasure we no longer feel guilty about. But as the proliferation of shows has expanded at an ever-increasing rate – Selling Sunset having spawned Selling the OC, Selling Tampa and Selling the City faster than you can say “How many bathrooms?” – the quality has plummeted. Once-golden formats like Love Is Blind no longer sparkle; now, they’re saturated by self-selecting narcissists (who are much too image-conscious to ever fall in love, let alone get married), while derivative shows like Perfect Match seem like they were dreamed up by an AI bad ideas generator. The only exemption in all of this is The Traitors, which, off the back of its first epic UK celebrity version, remains the most compelling thing on telly.

The world and his wife seem to have been on weight loss injections this year – and boy, do we never stop hearing about it. While there are clearly huge health benefits – especially for those who were pre-diabetic – the darker side of the jabs has also become apparent.

In 2025, we started to hear more about hair loss, “Ozempic teeth”, crippling nausea and the revelation that patients typically gained all their original weight back within 10 months of stopping medication. Not to mention all the potential risks from dodgy, unapproved jabs manufactured by organised crime gangs…

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I’d never even heard of these cursed, fanged plastic dolls dressed in fur rompers eight months ago. Now, they haunt my dreams. They inexplicably exploded in popularity with young women in 2025, commanding crazy prices as scarcity increased (Forbes even suggested they might make good investments after one sold for more than $10,000) and becoming the bag accessory du jour, as ubiquitous as it was ugly.

There’s even a Labubu movie reportedly in the works. Too bad the hype has already cooled, with the trend declared “over” at the tail end of 2025 thanks to stalling sales and increased availability.

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…otherwise known as Brazilian butt lifts, or BBLs. This cosmetic procedure involves taking fat from other places like the stomach, hips, or thighs via liposuction and injecting it into the bum to create the extremely shapely, rounded (and very clearly not natural) silhouette popularised by the likes of the Kardashian clan and Cardi B in the 2010s.

More than a decade later, the exaggerated posterior feels very much of its time. As one Instagrammer identified, the BBL now looks dated, as anchored to a particular era as the giant perm was to the Eighties. People are even getting them removed, including Geordie Shore’s Chloe Ferry, who said back in August that she looked “so much better” without the oversized derriere.

But you know what never goes out of style? Doing what makes you happy, regardless of trends. So if that’s chugging out of a Labubu-adorned bottle the size of a toddler while watching Real Housewives and consulting ChatGPT about what to have for dinner... well, “you do you”, as the kids say. Ignore me and go live your best life.