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Retro tech is back. Flip phones, Polaroids, VHS camcorders, vinyl, CD players and Walkman. For Gen Z, these gadgets aren't just nostalgia or irony. They're tools for slowing down in a world that never stops. Their appeal is tactile, finite and deliberate. They create edges, moments that can't be endlessly curated or optimized. They help us reclaim agency and authenticity in daily life.

The internet has collapsed into real life. The boundary between online and offline is gone. Everything is connected, endless, always on. Virtual platforms like Roblox and Facebook's "metaverse" replicate real-world experiences at massive scale, and online behaviors directly affect offline reality. There's an interconnected chaos of online and offline life.

Social media feeds, notifications, and algorithm-driven content have eroded patience, made interactions transactional, and left many young people socially atrophied. Withdrawing from traditional social interactions like dating and partying, anxious about connection, and dependent on digital spaces for social fulfillment. COVID accelerated this, but ongoing anxiety and learned helplessness keep social skills, and dare I say street smarts, in decline. We are too scared or outright unable to make real friends, so we buy a $129 AI wearable necklace (friend.com) with a chatbot living inside the pendant, moonlighting as our best friend. Thank you to the good people of New York City for their grafitti on this ad in the Subway.

In this context, retro consumer tech products become a counterbalance, a way to reclaim agency and presence in an overstimulated world. I'm thinking about my yellow Walkman Sport. It's clunky and runs on AA batteries. Using it is harder than slipping in AirPods for a run, but the inconvenience is part of what makes it feel alive. Insert the tape, hear the hiss and click, and suddenly the music plays on its own terms - no skipping, no algorithm deciding the order. It's not about utility, but about intention, and a more deliberate relationship with sound.

Nostalgia has become a form of resistance and a psychological strategy for managing the present. In a culture where feeds scroll forever, retro devices have weight and endings. A film runs out. Cassettes only have two sides. Polaroids force us to accept finality - no retakes. Polaroid sales jumped 20% in 2024, while vinyl sales hit their highest point since the 80s. Resellers like Retrospekt are pulling in millions refurbishing Walkmans and camcorders. This isn't a niche anymore. It's a market.

Their appeal is also deeply emotional. Retro tech offers a pocket of clarity in a world where the digital and physical blur. Analog gadgets are a way to "disconnect to reconnect." They give us friction, and friction feels human. That friction is the same thing I've written about in the past when laying out the bull case for IRL social clubs: spaces designed for presence, slowness, and the attention and care of being together without distraction.

Retro tech isn't about rejecting the internet, but about surviving it. The cassette doesn't erase Spotify. Nostalgia isn't regression, but a coping mechanism. A subtle insistence on the value of the tangible, the imperfect, and the raw. Those tools anchor us and remind us that music is not just data, photos aren't just pixels, and attention has limits. They restore edges that the algorithm has erased.

Gen Z's embrace of the nostalgic is about ritual and care. Picking up a camcorder, rewinding a tape or flipping a phone open is a statement: "This moment is mine, not the algorithm's." We're seeking intention in a world where attention is flattened, where interactions can be performative and ephemeral. Sometimes, it's not the gadget itself that matters but the connections it allows us to have with ourselves, with time, and with others.

When I listen to a tape, I'm not just listening differently but living differently. I'm waiting, present, and noticing. That's the clarity people are really buying when they spend on vinyl, Polaroids or refurbished Walkmans. And yes, sometimes we're buying yesterday because yesterday is something we can't get back - moments, attention, and care that the modern world has made scarce.