Reject Modernity,Embrace Motorola RAZR

Written by Alysse Mazakian

I am in the middle of taking a semester-long oil painting night class through a local college in NYC. In this class, we paint using live models. They stand up on the podium and pose in 20-minute increments with 5-minute breaks in between. During each break all of us students will put down our paintbrushes and pick up our phones, scrolling in silence. Over the course of this semester, I have only introduced myself to one girl in the class that I sit next to. Our few conversations have been mainly impersonal, focused around the contents of the class and vague holiday plans. I don’t even know anyone else in the class’s name, nor do they know mine.

In one of my recent classes, I imagined what the students would do during these 5-minute breaks before cell phones. Were they socializing when the models would step down? Would they read? Would they sit in silence and analyze their paintings while they waited? Look out the window?

Being a ‘Zillenial’, I have watched technology grow up alongside me. I remember the time before we needed a phone in our hand to do anything, though I heavily rely on it now. In middle school my LG EnV-Touch could only text and call, and I had a monthly character limit. If I ever accidentally opened the internet on the phone I had to shut it down immediately to avoid being charged. Contrastingly in high school, I got my first iPhone which put Instagram, Snapchat, unlimited access to the internet, and more into the palm of my hand.

As I have gotten older, I’ve watched my interactions with others go from mainly in person to mainly digital. Even at my day job, which I have to commute to the office 3 days per week for, I experience most of my meetings virtually. In the office, I am surrounded by real people who I don’t interact with, but the people I am working with directly, I only see on a screen, communicating through Zoom, Teams, Google Meets. I also experienced this shift in college, with COVID happening and changing the way in which I learned and interacted with classmates. I often wonder if this boom in nostalgic technology is Gen Z’s response to being sick of living in a digital world and a depersonalized way of communication.

Much like the Millenials before us who revived the polaroid camera, record players, typewriters, and physical media, Gen Z is following in their footsteps to return to more ‘analog’ ways of living. The objects of our affection? Dumbphones, digital cameras, old ipods, and photobooths to name a few. For a lot of us older Gen Z, these pieces of tech that we likely used in elementary/middle school are sparking both nostalgia and a desire to go back to days when technology ruled less of our time.

The dumb phone specifically has seen a major rise amongst Gen Z, with one school in the UK even providing them to the student body after banning smart phones. So what is Gen Z’s obsession with going back in time?

Digital Fatigue - For a lot of us, in removing the option we are removing the temptation. I often find myself pulling out my phone on the metro, when waiting for a friend, between meetings. I spend this time mindlessly scrolling on TikTok, Instagram, sometimes even going through my emails. I do this not because I am desperate to see the latest on social media, but because it’s there and for some reason I can’t let my mind rest, even when I want to. Removing the clutter by changing the device seems to be the best way to get away from the overstimulating amount of options and activities on our smart phones.
Desire for Social Connection - A lot of Gen Z were in school during COVID, so in addition to technology advancing as we grew up, our interactions becoming more and more virtual was forced upon us as we were not even able to meet our peers in person for that extended time. I am sure I’m not alone in wondering when out in public, what would be different if no one had phones? If strangers would talk to each other more, if I would notice stores that had never been there, if, lacking the ability to facetime or text constantly, I would meet friends more often? Our phones make things easier and simpler in terms of talking to your friends but in removing the labor do they also remove the fulfillment?
Tactile Consumption - The modern smart phone has combined all of the different devices we used to use into one. It’s our iPod, our computer, our maps, our camera. There is a certain gratification that comes from pressing the shutter of a camera and waiting to find out what the photo looks like, or moving your thumb around the circle of a first gen iPod to find the song you downloaded last week, which is something we don’t get when scrolling on spotify or pressing the screen to take 100 photos that we will delete 98 of later. There is intention behind each of these old school devices in a way there isn’t with modern phones which almost makes the use of them more meaningful.

Gen Z, a generation drowning in technological advances, is rejecting the modernization of technology. We want our actions to be more meaningful than a drop in the digital ocean, even if it’s less convenient. The question is, is this something unique to our generation? Or is this simply being human, to glorify and revere past ways of living?