Somewhere between the hundredth doomscroll and the third tab you forgot you opened, a lot of people under 30 are quietly putting the phone down and picking up a pen, a paperback or, in a growing number of cases, an actual typewriter.
It’s called going analog, and it isn’t a niche thing anymore. It’s a full-fledged trend, and the Future of Wellness 2025 Report from the Global Wellness Summit identified a growing interest in analog technologies as one of the dominant trends of the year among younger generations.
What going analog actually means
Analog refers to activities and objects that exist outside the digital world, like analog clocks, vinyl records, cassette tapes and CDs. Journals, film cameras, board games and basic phones all count too.
As social media fatigue grows, many people are turning to analog hobbies as a way to disconnect from screens and spend more time offline, with think knitting, reading physical books, doing puzzles, journaling and drawing all part of the mix. None of it is about rejecting your phone forever. It’s about having somewhere to put your attention that doesn’t ping back at you.
The clearest sign this has gone past aesthetic is what’s happening with handwriting itself. The art and craft materials sector, the broader category that journals and stationery sit within, was valued at $23.56 billion in 2025 and is projected to grow steadily through the decade. Researchers studying the shift note something simple underneath the numbers: for Gen Z in particular, young people whose lives have been performed on social media since childhood find in handwriting a space where they can be honest rather than curated.
Where it actually came from
This didn’t start with one viral video. While the term “analog” began trending in late 2025, the concept of posting about an offline hobby has been popular for years, with online communities like BookTok already helping revive interest in reading physical books.
Typewriters specifically have had their own slow build. People started pulling them out in public, and coffee shops turned out to be the perfect stage: TikTok and Instagram have played a big role in spreading this, with videos featuring vintage hauls, analog writing routines and typewriter ASMR racking up millions of views, and coffee shops with their ambient hum and soft clatter providing the perfect backdrop, becoming semi-public creative spaces. There’s also a practical reason writers keep coming back to them: writing on a typewriter is messy, imperfect and raw, since you can’t delete a sentence with a backspace key, and that restriction forces creativity to flow differently, more honestly.
One specific corner of the trend has a named origin point. In 2025, content creator Siecec Campbell introduced the concept of an “analog bag,” a bag where she stores objects like colored pencils, magazines, crossword books and craft materials, and since then videos where creators show what’s inside their analog bags have begun trending too. Think of it as the offline version of a going-out bag: instead of a charger and lip balm, it’s a paperback and a deck of cards.
It’s also started showing up somewhere less expected than a coffee shop: the office. Gen Z aren’t swearing off tech, but some are gaining a new affinity for paper notes at their desk, whether reminders on Post-its over a typed to-do list or a physical notebook to flush out ideas. Part of it is pure focus, since some find it to be the best hack for focusing when their screens are full of tabs and pings. Part of it is a quieter reaction to AI doing the thinking for us: writing out thoughts to problem solve gives them privacy and agency that a chatbot summarizing and suggesting for them does not.
Five low-cost ways to try it
You don’t need to buy anything new to test this out. Most of the best entry points are things you already own, can borrow, or can find secondhand for less than a takeaway order.
| Idea | What it looks like | Budget way in | Secondhand pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| One-line journal | Write a single sentence about your day before bed instead of scrolling | Any spare notebook or stapled printer paper | Swap half-used notebooks with a friend or check a charity shop |
| Typewriter letter | Type a note or journal entry with no delete key, errors and all | Borrow one from a relative, a library makerspace or a vintage fair | Working vintage models on Etsy run from around $195 to $350 depending on the make and condition |
| Phone-free weekend | Switch your main phone to grayscale and mute non-person notifications for 48 hours | Free, it’s a settings change on the phone you already have | A refurbished basic or minimalist phone for the days you want a real break from your main one |
| Film roll instead of a feed | Shoot one disposable or secondhand film camera roll at a hangout instead of reaching for your phone | Share one disposable camera between a group | Secondhand film cameras turn up cheap at charity shops and flea markets |
| Analog bag for friend time | Pack a tote with a paperback, a deck of cards and a crossword for a phones-away catch-up | Use what’s already in a drawer at home | Build the bag from secondhand bookshop finds and a charity shop card deck |
If you do want to go further than a settings change, the price gap between phone options is worth seeing side by side. The minimalist phone brand Light sells two versions, and the difference between its older model and its newest one is big.
Light says it will continue to sell the Light Phone 2 even after the Phone 3 is released, available at a much more manageable $299, while the newer model costs considerably more: by late 2024, the price of the Light Phone 3 rose to approximately $599, eventually reaching a final price of $799 after pre-order sales close. A secondhand or older-model minimalist phone, or simply using your current phone’s grayscale mode, gets you most of the same break without the price tag.
A couple of smaller swaps fit the same idea without costing anything. Trade your phone’s alarm for an actual clock by your bed, so the last thing you touch before sleep isn’t a screen full of notifications. Leave the phone at home for one walk this week and notice what you hear instead.
Will it last, or is it already fading?
Here’s the honest split. The habits driven by real fatigue look like they’re sticking. The ones driven by needing the right props for a video probably won’t.
On the sticking side: handwriting at work isn’t just a cute idea, it’s showing up as an actual workplace habit, and the craft and stationery market backing it up is genuinely large and still growing, not a flash sale. Unlike other trends that flash and fade, this one seems to be sticking, likely because it’s grounded in a real emotional need. Writers and creators who picked up typewriters for the quiet, not the aesthetic, tend to keep using them long after the novelty wears off.
On the fading side, there’s a real warning from people living through the trend right now. The conversation around analog hobbies is starting to shift, with the emphasis increasingly on having the right materials and posting about them online rather than the simple joy of offline activities, and retailers have caught on, marketing so-called “analog bags.” Analysts watching the money side flag the same risk: the trend offers significant upside, but investors must navigate risks like fleeting consumer fads and the inherent challenges of scaling “slow” experiences.
The version worth keeping is the cheap, boring one. A $3 notebook you actually fill in. A walk with no phone. A board game with friends where nobody checks a screen. That part doesn’t need a market report to tell you it’s working. You’ll just sleep slightly better and remember the conversation the next day.
Sources
- Standard-Examiner: Tech Matters: The analog comeback
- GCN: A pen moving across paper fires 32 distinct neural cluster differences
- Yahoo Lifestyle: Going ‘Analog’ Is Gen Z’s Newest Trend, but They’re Doing It Wrong
- YPulse: The next level of Gen Z’s analog revival is handwriting at work
- Kavout: Is Gen Z Really Ditching Digital for an Analog Future
- SavingAdvice: Why Are Gen Z Bringing Typewriters to Coffee Shops Now?
- Android Central: The Light Phone 3 is here with miniature features, massive $799 price tag
- Wikipedia: Light Phone III
- Etsy: Cheap Typewriter listings
- Etsy: Vintage Typewriter That Works listings