Disconnect from digital, embrace an analogue life

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/01/2026 (286 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It looks like 2026 is already shaping up to be the year of the analogue.

All over Instagram I’ve seen posts deriding, well, spending all your time on Instagram. People are setting intentions to listen to, read and watch physical media, pick up tactile hobbies such as painting, knitting, collaging and crocheting and buying alarm clocks and timers.

Screen time is out. Reconnecting with real life is in.

Over on TikTok, creators are encouraging people to pack an “analogue bag,” which is just a TikTok trendspeak for “sack of activities.” You can put whatever you want in there, but suggestions include books, journals, puzzles and sketchpads — things that do not require an internet connection or a phone.

It’s an irony of ironies that this pro-analogue content is being posted to be consumed digitally when the leitmotif is “I want to get off the internet and away from my phone.”

But this pull toward slower, real-life activity speaks to the moment. AI slop, rage bait, brainrot — the internet has become an increasingly exhausting, demoralizing place to spend any amount time.

And yet, a lot of us are spending inordinate amounts of it there. It’s too easy to get sucked into its rabbit holes, our splintered attention becoming ever more fragmented.

For people who remember a time before constant internet access was a thing, the allure of the analogue might be rooted in nostalgia for the internet as a place to visit — from the family computer in the hallway, maybe — rather than as a place to live.

Some people are too young to know what this was like because they were born on the internet. But Going on the Computer was the activity, and then you left it for a different activity. Email was blissfully contained on a stationary computer; it took effort to check it so you checked it less. Even the longest gabfest messenger sessions had a time limit; eventually someone had to go do something else, and the Computer had to stay behind.

That’s not to say the Computer wasn’t addictive back then, too; the stereotype of basement-dwelling keyboard warrior with the Cheeto-stained fingers comes from somewhere, after all. But the Computer didn’t demand constant connectivity. You could still walk away. You could still leave.

It’s not surprising that people are feeling burned out by being chronically online, because that means they are also chronically available, chronically connected and chronically consuming. There’s an itchy hypervigilance about always being on your phone, and your phone always being on you.

In the weeks leading up to the analogue posts, I saw a lot of content reminiscing about “’90s Christmas.” People were waxing nostalgic about slow mornings and going tobogganing and having a warmly lit Christmas tree with mismatched ornaments and playing with your cousins.

What people are really craving, I suspect, has nothing to do with a specific holiday, or a specific decade, or even “going analogue.” It’s about connection and community. It’s about hands-on creativity and getting into flow state. It’s about going out and, crucially, being unreachable, however temporarily.

It’s about being in the world without technological tethers that make you feel as if it’s possible to be everything, everywhere all at once when really you’re just on your phone.

It’s about play: there’s a reason why an “analogue bag” sounds a lot like a pre-iPad-era bag you might pack for a toddler about to go on an airplane. A lot of us stopped playing, stopped creating for the sake of it.

It’s about slowing down. A lot of these analogue activities demand not only your focus, but your time.

Completely ditching the digital world isn’t realistic for most people, and abstinence-only advice tends to ignore the fact that phones are, occasionally, extremely fun.

The amorphous bucket known as “screen time” also needs context; time spent in group chats catching up with friends is not the same as time spent mindlessly doomscrolling.

In addition to embracing the analogue in 2026, may I also submit bringing back Going on the Computer as a supplemental concept? Maybe you leave your laptop or tablet in a designated space and that’s where you use it. Going on the Computer is the activity — none of this scrolling-on-a-smaller-screen-while-watching-a-giant-screen business.

Listen, do you want to be able to read a book ever again? This may help.

This urge towards the IRL is encouraging. Maybe we’re learning, finally, that despite consuming constant feeds, we’re never actually being fed.

winnipegfreepress.com/jenzoratti