Dear 2026: I’m Not Going Back to Analog

The polaroid/analog camera goodies at Loft Shibuya

There’s a growing trend among Millennials and Gen Z to “go back to analog” this year. Apparently, 2026 is the year of analog — whatever that means. Maybe they’re tired of hunching over their phones or exhausted from curating filtered online personas. As someone who has lived half her life in true analog mode, I believe the analog and digital worlds don’t have to compete. They can meet halfway. While some people want to rewind the clock, I say: bring on the digital future, baby!

I have no plans of returning to cassette tapes and vinyl records — yes, they look aesthetic, but I’ve grown used to media on demand. I still remember how many cassette tapes I destroyed from endlessly rewinding my favorite songs on a dusty tape deck. Yet there was something magical about recording my voice and the ambient sounds around me on a blank, high-fidelity TDK cassette. On my 18th birthday, I got a Sony Walkman and became so oblivious to the world around me that I literally fell into an uncovered manhole. I was more worried about the scratch on the Walkman than my scraped knee.

After college, I worked as a radio DJ, and my daily “board work” meant juggling cassette tapes, mini-discs, and CDs with precision timing. You had to stay alert because analog tools could betray you at any moment — scratchy audio, jammed tapes, or equipment suddenly refusing to cooperate while you were live on air. How wartime radio stations managed to spin vinyl turntables under pressure still amazes me. Analog demanded skill, patience, and perseverance. I loved the 80s and 90s, but there’s no way I’m going back. Everything the younger generation now enjoys — digital players and streaming media — was once something I could only dream of.

There’s no need to demonize new technology or obsess over the metrics debate. Whether we like it or not, the world evolves. Perhaps what we really need is intentional structure — moments to unplug without rejecting progress altogether. Maybe it looks like this:

Buy inexpensive journals and create handmade recipe books, the way people did long before cloud storage.
Put down the keyboard and cultivate your own penmanship. Skip the printed labels.
Pause the online shopping. Shower, get dressed, and wander through real shops.
Designate an offline day and be elegantly off the grid.
Document everyday life in analog ways — a poem, a sketch, a journal entry — and if you want, take a photo of it afterward.

I’d rather be grateful for the convenience technology gives me than curse it. Tools are just tools. What matters is how we use them to build a life that feels more human, more present, and more our own.