They’re tossing tech to the trash and seizing a retro reboot.
Gen Zers are ditching sleek smartphones and algorithm-fed apps for vintage flip phones, once-coveted iPods, digital cameras, even typewriters — and jump-starting a simpler, less plugged-in life.
And parents are scooping up retro tech for their children, too, as a way to preserve family life and delay the deluge of doomscrolling that is trapping kids into digital addiction.
About a year ago, Sonya Saydakova, a grad student at New York University, switched from an iPhone to a dumbed-down Nokia 2780 flip phone.
“It’s an indescribable feeling to feel so detached and not constantly available,” the 23-year-old raved to The Post.
Saydakova got a movie theater membership, picked up a digital camera and a CD player — and she quit Spotify. She also asks for directions instead of solely relying on Google Maps, saying the interactions with people on the street have enriched her life.
Reducing her screen time, Saydakova told The Post, has made her feel liberated, focused, happier — and less anxious.
“We’re culturally at a breaking point,” she maintained. “People are just sick of it.”
Alex Becker, a 34-year-old mother who lives outside of Philadelphia, shares Saydakova’s desire to eschew tech, telling The Post she is one of “many” parents who have “no interest in getting their kids a smartphone or an iPad.”
Instead, she wants her children, 5 and 2, to experience the “joy of childhood” without “the online drama,” she said.
“The second kids get these devices, the innocence of childhood is lost. That’s what I hear from so many parents, like, ‘My daughter is spending every day on Instagram and Snapchat, wanting to buy skincare products, when six months ago she was reading Narnia books.’”
The low-tech switch is part of a “broader cultural shift away from constant connectivity” and “digital overload,” according to Amanda Michel, US director of marketing at Backmarket, an online marketplace for refurbished electronics.
Michel told The Post — in an email, ironically enough — that the site is seeing a “renewed interest in older, simpler devices,” with consumers scooping up Wi-Fi-free iPods, MP3 players, vintage gaming consoles, handheld cameras and more.
In 2025, eBay also saw “strong signals of growing interest in legacy music devices like iPods and other offline listening tools,” a spokesperson told The Post.
According to the company, iPods were searched more than 1,300 times per hour on average globally across 2025, while prices rose between 40% and 60%, depending on the model.
Computers are not his ‘type’
Brooklyn fiction writer Dean Jamieson is drafting his works — but not on a computer. Instead, he’s tap-tapping away on a metal-green manual typewriter, an Olivetti Lettera 32, which was first launched in 1964.
He had considered getting a typewriter for a while, Jamieson admitted to The Post, “but I’m kind of a procrastinator and I’m pretty cheap.”
His girlfriend found one on eBay, nabbing it from “some Russian guy in Queens; it was his mother’s and hadn’t been touched.” She gave it to Jamieson for his 26th birthday last November.
He likes the “tactility” of seeing the words on a physical page, being able to edit “by hand on paper,” instead of looking at a “ticking cursor on the screen,” he said.
“The biggest thing is having no access to the internet,” Jamieson added. “When you’re trying to write on your computer, I find it to be very distracting and destructive.”
He described the retro tech trend more as a “general attitude,” adding that many of his friends are reading books, going to the movies, and getting off their phones.
“These things are kind of liberating and can be really nice and pleasurable,” he said.
Pennsylvania mom Becker also feels a sense of pleasure, mixed with nostalgia. By listening to music on Spotify, she realized her taste in tunes has gotten “really narrow,” and she misses listening to a variety of music and delving into a full album.
She strives to “preserve some of that ’90s childhood” for her children, even snagging a used boom box (remember those?) with a compact disc player, dusting off her old collection and thrifting CDs.
Her kids “love it,” she said.
Another reason Becker and others are choosing refurbished tech is the invasion of discarded electronics, which, according to the World Health Organization, is the fastest-growing solid waste stream in the world.
In 2022, the WHO reported that an estimated 62 million tons of e-waste were produced globally. Many discarded devices, like phones and laptops, contain toxic materials, such as lead and mercury.
“I get a sinister feeling from how much waste we produce,” 26-year-old Rachel Reich told The Post. “I try not to buy things when I don’t need them.”
Making the switch
Last May, when Reich’s iPhone was on “its last leg,” Reich downgraded after years of devotion to tech.
“I didn’t develop normal hobbies,” the New Yorker confessed about her decade-plus addiction to Instagram, noting that she got her first smartphone when she was just 9. “After school, I would just be scrolling.”
A few years ago, she read about the harmful effects it has on the brain and hung up a sign in her room proclaiming: “Doomscrolling is rotting your brain.”
But she still couldn’t stop.
“I was deleting and redownloading Instagram multiple times a day,” she recalled.
Finally, her dying iPhone freed her. She bought a UniHertz Jelly Star 2E, a smartphone with a 3-inch screen.
“It’s bite-sized,” Instagram-free Reich said in triumph. “It structurally inhibits you from going on it.”
Reich also considered her budget.
“Two hundred bucks for the UniHertz was pretty cheap compared to a new iPhone,” she said.
“Pre-owned and refurbished devices,” an eBay spokesperson explained to The Post, are an “affordable alternative as digital storage and subscription costs evolve.”
Can you go back in time?
During COVID, devices became unavoidable for schoolkids. Now, many parents are “trying to walk that back,” Washington, DC, mom Elizabeth Mitchell told The Post.
She got her 13-year-old son two disposable cameras for his spring break vacation and nabbed a used iPod on eBay to steer clear of web entanglements.
“He likes to listen to music when he’s going to bed. I’ve been struggling to find devices where he can do that without having access to the internet,” she said.
NYC Gen Zers also told The Post they are using digital cameras instead of their smartphones to take pictures — and some are even shooting their movies on 16mm and on 35mm film.
“There has been this resurgence pushed by a lot of young people that are experiencing film for the first time, because we come from a world that was all digital,” Joji Baratelli, a 26-year-old photographer and collector of vintage still and movie cameras, told The Post.
Baratelli’s oldest still camera, which he frequently uses, dates to the 1930s.
At a deli in Manhattan, a 27-year-old store clerk, who declined to give his name, proudly showed The Post a 1950s Royal Aristocrat typewriter he acquired after inheriting it from a neighbor who died.
He cited a nostalgic loss of family connection for appreciating old tech.
“We used to wake up, see our moms, and eat our breakfast,” he lamented. “Now we wake up and go straight to our phones.”
