Opting for a more “analogue” life is one of the internet’s many solutions to its chief predicament: how to spend less time on it. Proponents of “going analogue” aim to interrupt what feels like an increasing digitization of daily life. They might elect to use digital cameras, read physical books, and write letters on stationery.
Gen Z has a well-documented history of internet — and social media- malaise. The internet offers endless remedies for shortened attention spans and scrolling addictions, ranging from apps that restrict device usage to physical phone cages. Earlier this year, Canadian columnist Kathryn Jezer-Morton coined the term “friction-maxxing” for building tolerance for inconvenience — something smartphones seem so readily available to ease. Others have tried “digital detoxes.” Laptop-free cafes or tables (such as those at Black Medicine Cafe) urge patrons to opt for more face-to-face interaction. Analogue? It’s en vogue.
These myriad efforts to reduce screen time reflect a generation simultaneously addicted to yet dissatisfied by the internet. OfCom’s 2025 “Online Nation” survey reported that only a third of UK adults considered the internet “good for society,” a proportion that has decreased over the past two years. Of all surveyed age groups, 18-24 year olds’ opinion of the internet fell most significantly. However, 18-24 year olds spent the most time online: as of May 2025, young adults in Britain spent five hours and six minutes per day on their smartphones. Young people feel most oppressed by the internet yet use it the most. Where is the escape?
For Religion and Creative Writing student Agnes Puchner-Noel, the answer was out a third-story window. Frustrated with her phone’s monopoly on her time, she chucked it out the window and bought a Nokia 2780 Flip. She said many of her friends and peers share this impulse to go entirely smartphone-free.
“I did not want to be an adult who was scrolling on their phone,” she said. Things she knew she enjoyed, such as reading and walking, she felt she did not do enough. “The phone doesn’t let you get drunk on anything else” she said.
It’s now been two years since Puchner-Noel went analogue, and she has mixed feelings.
“It’s taken me faster and quicker down the route of who I was going to become. I think I like myself a lot better now,” she said. And yet, she recognized that eliminating one device did not completely wipe her desire for a digital fix. She confessed that she is probably addicted to her computer, and knows “a bunch of people with flip phones who are addicted to YouTube.”
Puchner-Noel discourages thinking about “going analogue” through the lens of a purist. An avid writer, she enjoys scribing things by hand or using her electric typewriter from the 1980s. But she also writes on her laptop, which she calls “a wonderful invention.”
“I don’t want this idea that I am more committed to the real world than anyone else” she said, adding “but then again, I have a flip phone.”
Fundamentally, “analogue” forms of technology position their users against the grain. For this reason, Puchner-Noel said she doesn’t always like pulling her phone out in social situations.
“I’ve been thinking about the fact that it is a material signifier,” she said, “that part of my obsession with being so against anything digital has to do with a signalling of identity to others — but also especially to myself.”
While Puchner-Noel transitioned to a flip phone to reclaim her time and attention, another student, Grace, chose to use a flip phone for data privacy concerns.
While Grace still had a smartphone, she described feeling “general paranoia” about how big tech companies used her information; she listened to interviews with Yanis Varoufakis about his theory of technofeudalism.
“It wasn’t really bothering me that I was being watched, because everyone is. But then I was like, why doesn’t that bother me?” Grace described transitioning to a flip phone as allowing herself to get uncomfortable with the idea of being surveilled and sold. Once she made the switch? “It became generally easier, that feeling of paranoia and stress went away,” she said.
However, not all who try analogue phones feel like they are worth the hassle. Hadeel Al Farhan, a Landscape Architecture student, “dumbed down” her iPhone using the Settings app, but found its fewer features inhibited life as a university student.
“You need a smartphone to live a daily life — to order groceries, go places, that kind of stuff,” she said. She ended up restoring her phone to its full functioning.
While “going analogue” eliminates convenience in the day to day, some have found it a viable solution to digital burnout and nihilism.
“I think I am going to have a flip phone for the rest of my life,” said Puchner-Noel.
Photo by Alexander Andrews on Unsplash
