Throwback Thursday blog post featuring Squeeze Pop candies

Throwback Thursday

2006catchphraseclassic

Published October 3, 2026

Throwback Thursday is a weekly social media tradition where users post old photos of themselves every Thursday, tagged with #throwbackthursday or #tbt. What began as scattered blog columns in 2006 took off on Instagram in late 2011 after hashtags were introduced, growing into one of the platform's defining recurring hashtag rituals by 2013.

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Overview

Throwback Thursday works as a weekly ritual: every Thursday, users dig up an old photo of themselves, a childhood snapshot, a middle school yearbook pic, a party from a decade ago, and post it with #throwbackthursday or the shortened #tbt1. The format travels well because the rules are loose. Urban Dictionary's 2012 entry noted the photo should be "from a different era" of the poster's life, with cheeky exceptions allowed for recent pictures that still hit the right vintage energy2.

The tag isn't limited to personal photos. Brands post archival ads, sports teams share old jerseys, and music accounts pull up vintage album covers. The sneaker blog Nice Kicks built an entire recurring column around the idea, highlighting discontinued or vintage Nike silhouettes3. The common thread is simple nostalgia, with the Thursday cadence giving it a built-in schedule.

Origin & Background

Platform
Blogosphere (early use) / Instagram (viral spread)
Date
2006

The earliest documented use of the phrase "Throwback Thursday" appeared in January 2006 on a blog by animator Saxton Moore, who titled a series of retro cartoon character redesigns "Throwback Thursdays"4. That July, the sneaker site Nice Kicks launched its own Throwback Thursday column, kicking off with a 1991 Nike Air Trainer SC II post that would run through June 20123. Also in July 2006, Georgia Tech staged a Throwback Thursday football game with players wearing 1970s-style uniforms, per Know Your Meme's history of the tag1.

The word "throwback" itself had already been circulating as slang for classic or vintage items, with its first Urban Dictionary definition dating to 20035. By 2011, the Thursday framing started showing up more frequently in blog posts tied to nostalgic topics1.

How It Spread

The ritual became a social media staple on Instagram. By November 2011, roughly ten months after Instagram rolled out hashtags, users were posting old photos on Thursdays under #throwbackthursday and #tbt as an established trend1. The habit spilled onto Twitter fast, with Mashable reporting that #throwbackthursday was used more than 90,000 times on Twitter in the first week of January 2012 as part of its weekly roundup of top hashtag photos6.

Celebrity participation accelerated it further. Kim Kardashian began sharing Throwback Thursday photos on her social accounts in February 2012, and that same month a Yahoo! Answers user had to ask what the phrase even meant, a sign it had outrun its explainer1. Urban Dictionary added a dedicated "Throwback Thursday" entry in January 2012 defining it as posting an era-appropriate old photo on a Thursday2. By July 2012, #tbt was the 15th most popular tag on Instagram with more than 9.1 million photos1.

The hashtags only grew from there. Know Your Meme tracked #throwbackthursday at 24.2 million photos and #tbt at 42.2 million by May 2013, when Digital Trends published a long explainer on where the tag came from1. The format is still a weekly fixture on Instagram, Tumblr, and Twitter years later.

Timeline

2006-01

Animator Saxton Moore uses "Throwback Thursdays" as the title for a retro cartoon redesign series on his blog, the earliest known use of the phrase.

2006-07-01

Sneaker blog Nice Kicks launches its Throwback Thursday column with a post on the 1991 Nike Air Trainer SC II.

2011-11

Posting old photos on Instagram with #throwbackthursday and #tbt becomes an established weekly trend.

2012-01

Mashable reports #throwbackthursday was used over 90,000 times on Twitter in the first week of January; Urban Dictionary adds a dedicated entry for the phrase.

2012-02

Kim Kardashian starts posting Throwback Thursday photos to her social accounts.

2012-07

#tbt reaches more than 9.1 million photos on Instagram, becoming the platform's 15th most popular hashtag.

2013-05

#throwbackthursday hits 24.2 million photos and #tbt hits 42.2 million on Instagram; Digital Trends publishes a deep dive on the tag's origins.

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