The online world says that being offline is cool. Younger generations are taking a step back and turning to the analog, which may well be one of the biggest trends awaiting us in the year ahead.
Sonja KneževićFebruary 3, 2026
The online world keeps telling us that being offline is cool. Younger generations are stepping back from the digital and returning to the analog, and this may be one of the biggest trends awaiting us in the year ahead. Recently, my younger brother and I were browsing online shops in search of home décor. “I’m looking for an analog clock,” my seventeen-year-old brother announced—and I honestly think that was the first time I’d ever heard that sentence. Those of us who grew up a little earlier remember clocks with heavy hands and such loud ticking that no one could fall asleep in the room where they stood. He decided that a clock like that would be the perfect decoration for his room and that he would use it as an alarm clock. While the idea of turning off an alarm every morning by slapping a clock on the bedside table like the star of a romantic comedy feels, well, romantic, I couldn’t resist asking him:
why do you need that when you have a phone? He gave me one of those adolescent looks that say you do not understand anything.
Adults have long expressed concern about younger generations and growing up in a world obsessed with technology. I honestly believe this is because they themselves cannot put their phones down, caught in a vortex of AI videos, fake news, and Candy Crush levels. Endless debates have been held about how young people will master basic life skills, socialize, and communicate meaningfully if they are constantly hanging out on social media. However, it turns out that the aspirations of Gen Z are actually the opposite of what we might have imagined. Young people who grew up with all the advantages of technology are in fact giving it up more easily, and more willingly. Given that I have been chronically online for at least fifteen years, you can imagine my shock when I learned from my brother and sister that being online is no longer a sign that you are cool.
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What is cool is having a life completely detached from the virtual.
Our conversation led me to think about all the analog devices I had throughout my life, which they may never even have seen, because today they all fit into a single phone, including the analog clock. I remembered my first MP3 player with nearly a thousand songs, trips to the video rental store and flipping through film catalogs, cutting photos out of fashion magazines and making a kind of prototype Pinterest. I was wrapped in a strange sense of nostalgia, because all of that once made me so happy. And it seems that lately this same nostalgia has completely taken over Gen Z, both my peers who remember the devices that colored their childhoods, and virtual pets that have not been fed for decades, as well as younger ones who feel they missed an important part of technological development. It was a world in which online and offline life existed in almost perfect harmony. We had many advantages of technology: connectivity, online searches, and entertainment, but we could clearly separate the virtual world from reality. Today, when almost all of us are chronically online and the boundary between the real and the virtual is increasingly blurred, such a distinction feels utopian.
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Over the past year, I discovered on social media that one of the biggest trends in the online world is actually being offline. Ironic, right? As we endlessly scroll through feeds, we are bombarded with hundreds of ideas about what to do in order to stop scrolling. From wellness retreats that teach us to leave our phones behind and just breathe deeply without thinking about the pile of unread messages probably filling our inboxes at that very moment, to trends of “living like it’s the 2000s,” everything pointed toward disconnecting and, as social media told us, touching grass. It is clear that these trends are our reaction to the ever-accelerating development of technology, which, as we now know, may be slipping out of control. The year 2025 was highly significant for technological development, especially artificial intelligence. ChatGPT and other chatbots became part of our everyday lives in less than 365 days. With that in mind, we cannot help but wonder how much that same technology will develop over the next 365 days.
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Hannah Arendt believed in the power of technology to create a world that would outlive the individual, and in advanced devices through which we build better living conditions for future generations. Although she did not consider technology inherently bad, as early as the mid-twentieth century, when she wrote The Human Condition, she understood that the greatest danger of technology lies in its ability to distance us from the real world, from community, conversation, encounters, and ultimately responsibility. In short, from everything that makes us rational human beings. Her greatest fear is now taking root within us, because we can almost physically feel how hyperconnectivity negatively affects our mental health. The term brain rot did not get its name without reason. Did you know that scientists predict that in the coming decades people may completely lose the ability to remember? I read that information recently, and since then I have been consciously trying to memorize things as if I were studying for a biology test again. Focused and without technology.
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In that sense, going offline feels like a small act of rebellion. A subtle resistance by younger generations to an increasingly saturated technological world. It started as a pursuit of digital detox, relaxation, and choosing activities not strictly tied to the virtual world, but it has grown into a return to the analog and to devices that are not integrated into every part of our lives.
With this mindset, a device is merely a utilitarian object, not a passport to a virtual universe.
When everything, even money, became digitized, we began searching for the tangible, for something that feels real and human, something we lost in one of the countless software updates. The simplest example of this is analog cameras, which have become extremely popular in recent years. They are far less practical than phones, but their appeal lies in the fact that you actually have to make an effort to take a good photograph, to truly experience and capture the moment, instead of relying on live photos that can be edited later. In fact, the distinctive look of analog photographs has become synonymous with spontaneity and sincerity, so much so that even the photos we take on our phones are run through retro filters to evoke that sense of emotional connection. On social media, especially on the much-maligned TikTok, a trend called Analog Bag has been circulating lately, in which users share the contents of their bags devoted exclusively to offline life. They usually include analog cameras, books, crossword puzzles, retro consoles, and notebooks, and even flip phones. All of these objects help us stay grounded and calm our nervous systems, while also allowing us to briefly fool ourselves into believing that we can still have a world where not everything has to be posted online. Specifically, using an analog alarm clock instead of a mobile phone is good for sleep, because it allows us not to sleep with our phones and thus reduces the chances of scrolling late into the night or grabbing our phones the moment we wake up. This year I tried replacing screen time with reading and doing crossword puzzles, and it felt like applying a hydrating serum to my brain. These hobbies are slow and do not overwhelm me, and they awaken a long-lost feeling. Like when you manage to solve a math equation. Without a calculator.
Generation Z walks more, socializes more, and plays sports. The popularity of board games has increased significantly over the past three years, while the popularity of social networks is declining. Younger generations are trying to experience the world without virtual influences, and to use technology as a practical assistant, not as a source of life itself. In 2025, more and more people installed productivity apps that allow them to track the progress of their analog hobbies. How many books we have read, how many steps we have taken, and which films we have watched are becoming more important pieces of information than the aesthetic coffee we religiously photograph every morning for an Instagram story. Although they are undeniably trendy, analog devices and offline hobbies are not just a matter of fashion, but a subversive response to the dominance of technology in everyday life. And if the past year was the year of digital detox and began to nurture our affinity for the analog, we can only believe, or hope, that the next will be the one in which we finally manage to regain balance between the online and offline worlds.
