Gen Z grew up with smartphones. They’ve never known life without instant access to everything. They can stream any song, take unlimited photos, and text anyone instantly.
So why are they suddenly buying vinyl records? Shooting on film cameras? Using flip phones? Reading physical books? Writing in paper planners?
It’s the great paradox of the digital generation: they’re rejecting the very technology they grew up with and reaching for “analog” alternatives that their parents abandoned decades ago.
This isn’t just hipster aesthetics or vintage nostalgia. It’s something deeper—a reaction to the exhaustion, surveillance, and emptiness of digital life.
Let’s unpack why Gen Z is embracing analog technology, what they’re actually looking for, and whether this trend will last or fade like every other aesthetic cycle.
The Analog Revival: What’s Actually Happening
What’s making a comeback:
Music:
- Vinyl records (sales at highest level since 1980s)
- CDs (yes, really)
- Cassette tapes (mostly aesthetic, but still)
- Physical albums over streaming
Photography:
- Film cameras (prices skyrocketing)
- Disposable cameras at every party
- Polaroids and instant film
- Darkroom photography classes booked solid
Communication:
- Flip phones and “dumb phones”
- Handwritten letters
- Physical photo albums
- Printed photos instead of digital storage
Planning and creativity:
- Paper planners and bullet journals
- Physical books over ebooks
- Newspapers and magazines
- Typewriters (the most hipster thing)
The pattern: Seeking physical, tangible, permanent things in a digital, ephemeral world.
Why Gen Z Is Rejecting Digital (Even Though They’re Digital Natives)
Reason 1: Digital Fatigue and Overwhelm
The problem with digital everything:
- Every song ever made available = decision paralysis
- Unlimited photos = none feel special
- Constant connectivity = never any peace
- Infinite content = nothing feels valuable
What analog offers:
- Limitations create intentionality
- Scarcity creates value
- Disconnection feels like relief
- Permanence feels meaningful
Real example: “I can play any song on Spotify but I never know what to listen to. With vinyl, I have to choose an album and commit. It forces me to actually listen.”
Reason 2: The Permanence Problem
What digital broke:
- Photos live in cloud, never printed
- Messages disappear or get deleted
- Accounts get banned, content vanishes
- Platforms shut down, memories lost
What happened:
- People lost entire photo libraries to dead hard drives
- MySpace deleted everyone’s content
- Streaming services remove movies/shows
- Nothing feels permanent
What analog provides:
- Physical objects don’t disappear with platform changes
- You actually own it
- Can’t be deleted by corporate decision
- Will exist in 50 years
The fear: “What if everything I have only exists digitally and then just… disappears?”
Reason 3: The Anti-Algorithm Rebellion
How algorithms control digital life:
- Curate your music (Spotify)
- Curate your content (TikTok, Instagram)
- Curate your purchases (Amazon)
- Curate your everything (Google)
What you lose:
- Discovery and surprise
- Personal taste development
- The joy of finding things
- Agency over your choices
What analog offers:
- You choose what to buy/read/listen to
- Random discovery (browsing record store)
- No algorithmic manipulation
- Your taste develops organically
The rebellion: “I don’t want Amazon telling me what I like. I want to discover it myself.”
Reason 4: Tangibility in an Intangible World
Gen Z’s existence:
- Work is digital (emails, Zoom)
- Social life is digital (texts, Instagram)
- Entertainment is digital (streaming)
- Money is digital (Venmo, cards)
- Everything is pixels
What’s missing:
- Physical objects
- Sensory experiences
- Material reality
- Something to hold
What analog provides:
- Weight of vinyl in your hands
- Smell of film chemicals
- Sound of shutter clicking
- Texture of paper
- Physical proof something exists
The need: Human beings are physical creatures. All-digital existence feels disconnected from reality.
Reason 5: The Performance of Privacy
Digital life is surveilled:
- Every stream tracked
- Every photo metadata’d
- Every purchase logged
- Everything data-mined for advertising
The creepy moment: Talk about something, immediately see ads for it.
What analog offers:
- Read a book → nobody knows what you’re reading
- Play vinyl → no data collected
- Film photos → not uploaded to cloud
- Flip phone → limited tracking
The appeal: Privacy isn’t just protection—it’s freedom from being a product.
Reason 6: Intentionality Over Infinite Choice
The problem with unlimited:
Spotify: 100 million songs available
- Result: Skip through 20 songs, never settle on anything
- Nothing feels satisfying
- Music becomes background noise
iPhone camera: Unlimited photos
- Result: Take 50 photos of the same thing
- Never look at them again
- Photos feel worthless
What analog forces:
Vinyl: Choose one album, play the whole thing
- Result: Actually experience music fully
- Albums feel like events
- Music becomes foreground
Film camera: 24-36 shots per roll
- Result: Each photo is intentional
- Photography becomes meaningful
- Photos feel valuable
The psychology: Limitation creates value. Scarcity creates appreciation.
Reason 7: Nostalgia for Something Never Experienced
The weird part: Gen Z is nostalgic for experiences they never had.
What they’re romanticizing:
- Going to record stores (most have never been)
- Developing film (never did it)
- Analog photography (never shot film before digital)
- Flip phone era (they were children or not born)
Why this happens:
- Curated media (movies, TV) romanticizes pre-digital life
- Parents talk about “the good old days”
- Internet aesthetics make analog look appealing
- Real exhaustion with digital life seeks imagined alternative
The truth: They’re not actually returning to analog. They’re creating a hybrid that never existed—analog aesthetics with digital backup.
Reason 8: The Craft and Ritual
What digital removed:
Music listening:
- No ritual of putting on record
- No album art experience
- No sitting and listening
- Just background noise
Photography:
- No developing process
- No anticipation of seeing photos
- No physical prints
- Just scroll and delete
What analog returns:
Vinyl ritual:
- Select record
- Remove from sleeve
- Place on turntable
- Drop needle
- Sit and listen
Film ritual:
- Load film
- Shoot carefully
- Drop off for developing
- Wait
- See prints
The appeal: Process over product. The journey matters, not just the destination.
What They’re Actually Buying (And Why)
Vinyl Records
The facts:
- Vinyl sales highest since 1980s
- Gen Z largest buying demographic
- Records sell for $25-40 each
- Many buyers don’t own turntables yet
What they’re buying:
- Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo (current artists on vinyl)
- Classic rock (Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd)
- Whatever looks cool
The truth: Many buy vinyl as collectibles, then stream the music. It’s about ownership and aesthetics as much as sound.
Film Cameras
The market:
- Vintage film camera prices up 300%+
- Film costs up (supply chain issues)
- Developing costs $15-25 per roll
- Some cameras selling for $500+ that cost $50 in 2015
What they’re shooting:
- Kodak Disposables at parties
- Point-and-shoot Canons and Nikons
- Some SLRs (if they’re serious)
The appeal:
- Photos feel more “real”
- Aesthetic (film grain, colors)
- Intentionality (limited shots)
- Cool factor
Flip Phones / Dumb Phones
The movement:
- Growing number of Gen Z ditching smartphones
- “Dumb phone” as intentional choice
- Flip phones as rebellion
What they keep smartphones for:
- Maps (primary reason)
- Banking/payment
- Important apps
The strategy:
- Dumb phone for day-to-day
- Smartphone for necessary functions only
- Reduces screen time dramatically
The challenge: Modern life is designed for smartphones. Going without is genuinely hard.
Physical Books
The comeback:
- Physical book sales increasing while ebooks decline
- BookTok drives physical sales
- Gen Z visits bookstores
- Aesthetics (bookshelf as decor)
Why not ebooks:
- Reading on screen feels like work
- No ownership feeling
- Can’t display ebooks
- Physical books are sensory experience
Paper Planners
The trend:
- Bullet journals
- Physical planners
- Hand-written to-do lists
Why not digital:
- Writing helps memory
- No notifications interrupting
- Tactile satisfaction
- Screen fatigue
The Contradictions Nobody Addresses
The reality: Gen Z’s “analog” life is deeply digital.
Examples:
Vinyl collectors:
- Stream music 99% of the time
- Buy vinyl for favorites
- Post photos of records on Instagram
Film photographers:
- Shoot film for aesthetic
- Scan negatives and post digitally
- Use film look filters on digital photos
Flip phone users:
- Keep smartphone for maps
- Use computer for most tasks
- Not fully disconnected
Book readers:
- Post photos of books on BookTok
- Use Goodreads (digital)
- Research books online before buying
The truth: It’s not a rejection of digital—it’s a selective embrace of analog as supplement to digital life.
The hybrid approach:
- Best of both worlds
- Intentionality where it matters
- Convenience where it’s needed
Is This Just a Trend or Something Deeper?
Arguments it’s a trend:
- Every generation romanticizes previous eras
- Vinyl was trendy in 2010s with millennials too
- Markets are capitalizing (Urban Outfitters vinyl section)
- Might fade when next aesthetic arrives
Arguments it’s deeper:
- Genuine psychological need for tangibility
- Real exhaustion with surveillance capitalism
- Sustainable (physical objects last)
- Generational shift in values
The likely truth: The specific manifestations might be trendy (vinyl might peak and decline), but the underlying need for physical, intentional, human-scaled experiences is permanent.
The prediction: Format might change, but desire for analog alternatives will persist.
What This Says About Modern Life
Gen Z’s embrace of analog isn’t really about technology.
It’s about:
Control:
- Algorithms control digital life
- Physical objects you control
Value:
- Digital feels worthless (infinite, disposable)
- Physical feels valuable (limited, permanent)
Attention:
- Digital demands constant attention
- Analog allows focused attention
Meaning:
- Digital interactions feel empty
- Physical experiences feel meaningful
Privacy:
- Digital life is surveilled
- Analog life is private
Humanity:
- Digital feels machine-mediated
- Analog feels human-scaled
The diagnosis: Gen Z’s embrace of analog is a symptom of digital life’s failures.
The Bottom Line
Gen Z loves analog technology because:
- Digital fatigue is real – constant connectivity is exhausting
- Algorithms feel manipulative – want to choose for themselves
- Tangibility matters – humans need physical objects
- Privacy is valuable – tired of surveillance
- Limitation creates meaning – scarcity makes things special
- Process matters – ritual and craft are satisfying
- Permanence is important – digital feels ephemeral
The irony: Digital natives are rejecting digital.
The reality: They’re not actually rejecting it—they’re supplementing it with analog touchpoints.
The future: Hybrid approach—digital for convenience, analog for meaning.
The deeper issue: We built a world that’s too connected, too fast, too algorithmic, too disposable. Gen Z’s embrace of analog is a very reasonable response to that.
The question for everyone: What would it look like to incorporate more analog into your life?
Maybe you don’t need vinyl records or a film camera.
But maybe you need something physical, intentional, and human-scaled in a world that’s increasingly digital, algorithmic, and overwhelming.
Maybe Gen Z is onto something.