Gen Z is flipping the script this season.
Hanging up on the addictive call of the smartphone, tweens, teens and 20-somethings are, instead, going retro, ditching their digital devices for 2000s-era flip phones.
“Flip phone summer,” declared Makayla Aubrey, posing with her throwback artifact in a trending clip. “Life will be so simple.”
It’s an ease that comes with less time on screens.
The Zs, youngsters under age 27, have recently begun rehabbing their high-tech fixations with the help of low-tech tools.
It’s a generational effort towards disconnecting from the World Wide Web, and reconnecting with the real world in oldfangled ways.
Forgoing iPhone photoshoots, Gen Zers are virally all in favor of snapping pics on vintage digital and disposable cameras, insisting that “a camera from 2007 gives off a certain vibe that something like an iPhone can’t produce.”
The whippersnappers are, too, preferring cassette tapes and vinyl records over music streaming platforms, and Walkman headphones over ultramodern Bluetooth earbuds.
Their newfound fascination with Y2K-style horns, however, started with the BlackBerry.
Nicknaming the once in-demand devices “dumbphones,” owing to their unique keyboards and limited capabilities, Zoomers have been zooming to sites like Facebook Marketplace and eBay, purchasing BlackBerrys to supplant their more sophisticated cellulars.
Now, as flip phones rise from the ashes as the hot months’ hottest commodity, Gen Zs are crediting the vintage mobiles with restoring their grip on reality.
“It’s an unplugged summer,” Meni, who admittedly spent 13 hours staring at screens each day, announced in the caption of a TikTok clip.
“I swear that my brain is just mush,” she said, blaming her smartphone, its alluring apps and constant notifications, for the regression.
“I no longer live my life,” continued the brunette. “I just watch other people live theirs, and feel s—ty about mine.”
Meni went on to laud her early aughts flip phone, along with an old-timey e-book reader, praising the resurrected gadgets for saving her from sure destruction.
“I love the freedom.”
