It’s the start of a new year, a time that usually connotes clarity, acceleration, and future-facing ambition. But 2026 isn’t opening on a note of forward momentum. It’s opening with a rewind.

Instead of charging into the AI-powered future, another meaningful group of people are doubling down on analog. Vinyl outsold CDs for the first time in decades. Disposable camera hashtags on TikTok have passed 1 billion views, even as film development costs continue to rise. Print magazines are seeing a resurgence—particularly in the form of personalized, collectible, or niche issues. Publications like Grazia have reported a 46% year‑over‑year rise in total circulation, reviving standalone print editions like Grazia Casa to meet renewed demand.

There’s an emotional correction happening: the more optimized, digitized, and frictionless our world becomes, the more people crave substance, patience, and tactile connection. It's not nostalgia for the past—it's a rejection of an algorithmically optimized present.

This analog shift is particularly striking because of who’s leading it: Gen Z. A generation born into smartphones and shaped by social media is now craving the imperfect, the tangible, the delayed. As one 19-year-old told The Telegraph, “I want a version of life before everyone was plugged in.”

When New York implemented statewide school phone bans, teenagers rushed to buy basic watches—with many learning to read analog clocks for the first time. They're subscribing to print magazines and buying back issues at vintage shops, building personal collections in an age of infinite feeds. Record stores are seeing a revival as social spaces, with Gen Z organizing listening parties around new vinyl releases—events where the format is part of the point.

But this isn’t just Gen Z. The desire to experience the world in a slower, more embodied way is cross-generational. The Oasis reunion tour, drawing fans who weren't born during the band's original run, sold out stadiums across every age demographic. Live events broadly are experiencing a boom: premium hospitality at sporting events sees customers paying $50,000 per ticket not for better views, but for curated physical presence that can't be replicated digitally. Attendance at pop-up magazine fairs and analog culture festivals has surged, with events like the New York Art Book Fair reported record turnouts in 2025, driven by both younger and older audiences seeking in-person discovery and physical media engagement. 

What unites these behaviors across generations is what writer Kyle Chayka calls "friction-maxxing": opting into difficult formats on purpose. Choosing an experience precisely because it takes longer, feels harder, or costs more. Buying a paper planner instead of using a phone calendar. Reading a physical book instead of scrolling. Attending a live event instead of streaming it from home. The constraint has become the appeal.

The commercial implications are real. Devices designed to disconnect are finding a market: The Light Phone, which strips away apps and notifications entirely, has tripled sales since 2021. Physical Phones sells curly-corded landlines for the home, moving over 4,000 units during the Christmas period alone. Analog alarm clocks like Hatch and Loftie were among the most-purchased gifts for Gen Z this Christmas, single-purpose tools reclaiming the bedroom from screens. Even mass-market retailers are responding: Target now carries affordable film cameras, and Urban Outfitters stocks cassette tapes and Walkmans. Analog is no longer niche—it's the new premium.

For brands the opportunity isn't in removing friction, it's in reintroducing it thoughtfully. Products that solve for one thing instead of everything. Digital experiences with deliberate constraints rather than infinite options. Physical retail reimagined as destination spaces, not distribution channels. The brands that will win aren't the ones optimizing for convenience, but for meaning.

This isn't about turning back the clock. It's about opting out of a present designed for passive consumption. Analog has become resistance: to optimization, to surveillance, to sameness. The brands winning this moment aren't the ones making things easier. They're making things matter more. 

The future won't be frictionless. That might be the entire point.