let's get physical again

Why zillennials are going back to analogue means of consuming content.

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Earlier this month, satirical news site The Onion announced the launch of a monthly print edition for its online subscribers. They believe this new addition to the existing subscriber benefits will increase their profits as they are reducing their reliance on advertisers who don’t align with their values. And you know what? They actually might be on the right track with this one.

Lately, I have started making full use of my local library membership to check out magazines and other print publications whose websites I regularly visit. I have also started having my morning cup of chai with a copy of The Hindu newspaper. (I obviously already know all the news, but I love the detailed analysis in the editorial pages). As it turns out, I am not alone.

“As someone who works in libraries, I can tell you that there has absolutely been an increase in young people who read physical books,” Emily Rapoza, Director of Library and Archives at Library Science Degrees Online tells me. According to her, a major reason for this rising trend is BookTok making reading and book clubs cool again and giving us a reading community. “A lot of Zillennials don’t have the funds to buy a Kindle e-reader, so they take full advantage of their public libraries to read books for free,” she adds.

It is not just physical books we are going back to. A cursory glance at my X (formerly Twitter) Home page or Instagram Explore page tells me that zillennials are desperately looking for accessible ways to consume content that doesn’t involve a screen. For instance, take a look at this note that went viral on Substack this week:

Over these last few weeks, I talked to more than a dozen zillennial women who are making all kinds of digital-to-analogue switches — glossy magazines over websites, vinyl over Spotify, DVDs over streaming, letters over emails, and so on — to understand why in a world that prioritises ease of access and compactness they are making a seemingly inconvenient switch.

Anna Pompilio, a 29-year-old brand strategist based in Ohio, USA utilises her local library to reduce her screen time. But that is not all. “Going to the library to pick up or return does add an ‘errand’ to my day, but I see the act as almost novel in an instantaneous and digital-forward world,” she explains.

Anna also handwrites every essay in her newsletter Midwesthetic before typing it up to publish. She says that it helps her think better and be less precious about revisions. “Something about typing into a blank document feels much more intimidating than scrawling over notebook paper,” she laughs.

We live in an attention economy. Everybody wants our attention, to sell us more things we don’t need of course. Throughout our waking hours, we are bombarded with a steady flow of content without a single second to actually process and reflect on all that information. And we are getting tired of it all.

As the world is getting faster making us all more exhausted, young people are finding new ways to influence each other to live a slower life. We are replacing FOMO with JOMO (the joy of missing out), limiting screen time, and being conscious about how we spend our time, especially the time we spend consuming content.

“Film makes me care about the media,” Allexxis Youngs, a 23-year-old filmmaker and DEI consultant from Detriot, USA who recently made the switch to DVD and VHS tells me. She explains that this way she engages in the film more, noticing credits, editing, and other work put into it, but when she is streaming, she puts on the film and scrolls on her phone.

While Allexxis notes that this switch has made her film-viewing experience more rewarding, she acknowledges that going back to analogue may not be accessible to all due to the storage space and equipment access it demands.

“I am more mindful when I’m listening to music now, I’m not putting music on shuffle and then skipping ahead anyway,” says Maddie Marshall, a 25-year-old video editor based in Melbourne, Australia who collects vinyl records. She adds that the mild inconvenience of having to flip the record over or replace it has been a good way for her to get up when she is sitting at her computer or on the couch. And the fact that she is supporting her favourite artists through this process is just the cherry on top. “I still use Spotify to find new artists and listen to music when I’m out and about, but at home, I put on the record player,” Maddie adds.

Allexxis Youngs’ vinyls that her family has collected over the years. The sheer effort and time that takes to build an analogue collection makes it seemingly more valuable than a digital collection.

When we were kids, every Saturday my Dad used to take me and my sister to the local library (which happens to be the biggest and oldest public library in the state) and we would return home armoured with the entertainment for the week. Now I mostly use my Kindle to read. Even though it is more convenient for my digital nomad lifestyle, I do miss smelling the old, yellow pages and rubbing my hand against the red thick binds.

This nostalgia for the tactile experience of consuming content is also a factor in the current digital-to-analogue exodus. “There is something deeply satisfying about holding a tangible object that you can touch and feel,” agrees Gabrielle Yap, a 26-year-old culinary entrepreneur based in Manila, Phillippines who curates handwritten notes and letters. “The tactile experience of reading a book, along with the physical presence of a well-loved volume on a shelf, offers a sense of satisfaction and connection to the material that screens simply can’t replace.”

One of my favorite childhood memories is when during our summer break my dad would take my sister and me to buy DVDs of all the movies we had missed out on during the school year. We still have all the DVDs at home, waiting patiently to be lifted off from a film of dust. Even though we don’t really use them anymore, we won’t get rid of them — not just because there are memories attached to them, but because you literally can’t find them anywhere else. They are mostly Malayalam movies and despite some of them being great works of art, the streaming giants don’t think they are valuable. So if I ever want to rewatch them, I use the worn-out DVD player at home or an old laptop we keep for watching DVDs (because laptops don’t come with a built-in DVD player anymore).

“It's always a big fear in the entertainment industry that our work can disappear, I've taken that fear and started looking for physical copies of films I want to watch. LOL, less room space,” says Allexxis. This is a sentiment echoed by almost everyone I spoke to — zillennials are going back to analogue ways of consuming media because of the frustration of streaming platforms regularly updating their catalogues and removing our favourites.

The streaming and subscription economy — and I acknowledge the painful irony of writing this on a subscription-based platform — has somewhat killed ownership. I mean, our generation can’t afford to own real estate. At least let us own the content we consume, right? But that’s a rant for another day. In a world that’s making the exclusive shift to digital every day, choosing to stay analogue can be an inconvenience. Then why are these folks making this switch? “Well, some things are worth the inconvenience,” they all say.