Analog Is Cool Again
After 30 years of digitalization, some parts of our world are reverting.
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One of the biggest trends of the last 30 years has been the digitization of everything. Kicking off with the launch of Internet Explorer in 1995, the internet has changed how we work, communicate, research, entertain, read, date, travel, and, really, live.
In many ways, the internet has been a blessing:
You can Facetime your mom from across the country, for hours, for free. You can spend hours researching the fall of the Roman Empire, the foundational elements of quantum computing, and the evolution of Italian cuisine from the comfort of your bed. You can take Spanish lessons with a Colombian/Argentinian/Spaniard who lives in Bogotá/Buenos Aires/Madrid for less than $10 per hour. Geography is no longer an employment requirement, and I couldn’t imagine navigating a 7-hour road trip without Google Maps (though, some would say that Apple Maps is now superior).
In some ways, however, the internet has been a curse, especially for young people:
Across the United States, depression rates have never been higher, with almost 20% of Americans currently depressed, and evidence increasingly suggests that social media is to blame. According to the Pew Research Center, 35% of US teens are on at least one social media platform “almost constantly.” From 2003 to 2022, American adults reduced their average hours of face-to-face socializing by about 30%. For teenagers, it was 45%.
I have a few thoughts on this dichotomy of the internet.
First, why are young people so vulnerable to the internet’s dark side? The obvious answer is that young people are more susceptible to, well, pretty much anything considered dangerous or addictive. But there’s more to it than that. Young people also grew up in the era of a fully-evolved internet, while the folks who built the internet experienced its evolution incrementally.
Much like alcoholics, who build a tolerance to booze over time, the generation that built the internet was exposed to its changes gradually. Desktop preceded laptop preceded smartphone. Painstakingly slow dial-up internet was the norm for years. Netflix’s streaming business didn’t surpass its DVD rental business until 2009, 12 years after the company was founded. Our smartphone <> social media industrial complex didn’t really take shape until the back half of the 2010s. For older generations, internet exposure evolved with baby steps.
For anyone under the age of 30, however, the iPhone was released when we were children, and the internet approached its addiction crescendo as we hit adolescence. It was like giving teenagers heroin and being surprised by the side consequences; of course there were going to be problems. However, as the downsides of digitalization have grown more apparent, a new trend has begun to emerge: a reversion to analog.
For the generation building the internet, the core question was always: “What can we put behind a screen?”
And the answer, it turned out, was pretty much anything. Everything is now digital. Of course, we have search browsers and social media apps, but it goes deeper than that. Restaurant menus are QR codes. Tap to pay is ubiquitous. Textbooks are iPads. Conferences are Zoom calls. Even cars have tablets for control panels and entertainment systems. We kept digitizing more, and more, and more, because for the generation that built the internet, digital was always better.
But for the younger millennials and zoomers (like me) who grew up in a world where fully digital was the norm, the question is no longer what can we put behind a screen, but what should we? Which screens were mistakes? What should be reverted? Which “progress” actually set us back?
And we’re beginning to see that reversion to analog in real time.
Take dating, for example. Forbes reported that 79% of Gen Z users on dating apps have experienced dating app fatigue, and Bumble and Match Group’s stock prices are down 65% and 25%, respectively, over the last year as both companies have struggled to attract young users. The New York Times summed it up best:
Among young singles today, dating-app fatigue is real. The popularity of in-person dating events and the eagerness of some users to take a sabbatical from swiping both point to a shift among members of Gen Z. And that weariness is being felt by the largest dating-app companies, Match Group and Bumble, both of which have reported poor revenue growth and have laid off workers.
One main reason? They’re struggling to connect with younger daters.
People prefer to meet their romantic interests in person. Go figure. Here’s another interesting topic: automobiles. From Slate:
A growing number of automakers are backpedaling away from the huge, complex touch screens that have infested dashboard design over the past 15 years. Buttons and knobs are coming back.
The touch screen pullback is the result of consumer backlash, not the enactment of overdue regulations or an awakening of corporate responsibility. Many drivers want buttons, not screens, and they’ve given carmakers an earful about it. Auto executives have long brushed aside safety concerns about their complex displays—and all signs suggest they would have happily kept doing so. But their customers are revolting, which has forced them to pay attention.
No, we don’t want an iPad on the console of a vehicle. It’s tacky, inefficient, and dangerous. Throw in a few knobs for the A/C and volume and some buttons for the radio and we’re good to go.
And this one’s my favorite. A few years ago, I heard that our attention spans are cooked (they are) thanks to social media, and no one’s going to read books anymore. And yet! Of all things to lead the book revolution, TikTok has ushered in a golden age of readers, with “BookTok” driving 10s of millions of printed book sales. Who would have thought?
I’m not a Luddite (frankly, my screen time is probably in the 90th percentile of Americans), but it certainly feels like, while technology itself continues to improve, we’re seeing more and more people consider which technologies actually improve our lives as well. And that, my friends, is a good thing.
- Jack
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Jack's Picks
I recently stumbled across this 1970s Hunter S. Thompson feature piece on the Kentucky Derby, and it’s one of the weirdest, most entertaining articles I’ve read in a while.
This was a fun piece from Mr. Derek Guy, the infamous “work wear” guy that we’ve all seen on Twitter, regarding how to find a good tailor.
Great read, Jack! As someone who grew up right inside that Millennial/ Gen Z age gap, I’m happy I remember dial up, flip phones and DVD Netflix to see how far we’ve come. Facebook, IG and Snapchat hit their stride when I was in Middle School, and seeing how fast people became obsessed with social media in real time always made me a little bit wary of where we were headed. My generation helped lead the boom, but we are also starting to recognize and address the long-term impact to try to help those that followed us down the path.
definitely agree.
Adding onto the theme is recent popularity of run clubs, padel clubs, mixers,etc. In person just works much better !