What I don’t like about the analog movement
Between the end of 2025 and the beginning of 2026, content about the so called “analog lifestyle” started proliferating online. YouTube videos, think pieces on Substack, Instagram reels. Somehow, it seemed that the most timely thing one could do was to talk (online) about how much time they were spending offline. This post doesn’t wanna be a critique of the analog movement, because I’ve embraced it in the past for limited chunks of time, and benefitted immensely from it. But, at the cost of sounding like one of those fans that say stuff like ‘I listened to Paramore before they were mainstream’, I… adopted many of the lifestyle choices before the movement became public and common practice. Modern social networks work in and with trends, and it’s not surprising to see that the word analog is all the rage right now. There is also no superiority in intercepting a trend before it starts, or in deciding not to adopt it to spite all the people who do. When I say that I started doing ‘analog’ things, I genuinely don’t mean to say that I was smarter, or prescient about how things would turn out—I simply happened to discover new ways of living before others, as well as after countless people who came before me. We are all recycling ideas here; I think it’s important to acknowledge where they come from to have a clear picture of how they might evolve in the future.
With that being said. My first interactions with the ‘analog’ lifestyle happened as a response to a difficult time in my life. A handful of years ago, freshly moved to a new country, I found myself overwhelmed by pretty much everything going on at all times, and I realised that constantly being connected and performing for others online was not going to be good for me in the long run. This is why I take long social media breaks from time to time; I like to simply disappear from Instagram for months when I feel like everything is a bit, well, too much.
The reason why I don’t like this sudden analog revival is twofold. On the one hand, this all happened rather quickly, and even though I understand the reasons why people are feeling burnt out and depressed about the interconnectedness of all things, I can’t help but notice that many are not thinking this through. At the end of the day, I welcome people who see the trend and decide to give it an honest try. But the speed at which this shift happened has me question people’s motives nonetheless. Are we all going analog because we think it might be the right thing for us? Or is it because certain influencers are suddenly talking about it, and we want to somehow feel closer to them? Moreover: if an influencer endorses something (be it a product or a lifestyle), best believe they have something to gain for it. The true supporters of the analog movement are those who are not constantly posting about it online, because they’re simply too busy… having analog lives, which for them are, just, their everyday lives.
The other thing I don’t like is the demonisation of technology. I used to be like that too. The high you get from disconnecting from digital devices can be powerful: it’s all in that first eye-opening moment, I think—when you realise that things could work differently. Suddenly you want to say good-bye to social media. Embrace physical media. Switch to a dumb phone. Buy a Polaroid camera. All of these things are very good, I think!! But we can’t sit here and assume that they would work for everyone, or that simply using a smart phone is evil incarnate. Not to mention the huge environmental costs of changing lifestyles and hoarding on physical media or analog devices just because everyone else is doing it too.
My prediction is that this analog trend will soon burst. CD cases will keep ending up in landfills, cheap mp3 players bought off Amazon will sit in a drawer for years, users will go back to smart phones for convenience’s sake. The reason why I don’t like the current analog movement is because it’s not organic, and as such, it’s much more likely to fail as soon as the trend dies down and major actors switch to more lucrative aesthetics.
All in all, though, there is still much more to like. If people can stop and be intentional for the first time in their lives, that’s still a net positive, even if it’s not forever.