"As technology distracts, polarizes and automates, people are still finding refuge on analog islands in the digital sea. The holdouts span the generation gaps, uniting elderly and middle-aged enclaves born in the pre-internet times with the digital natives raised in the era of online ubiquity. They are setting down their devices to paint, color, knit and play board games. Others carve out time to mail birthday cards and salutations written in their own hand."
"The analog havens provide a nostalgic escape from tumultuous times for generations born from 1946 through 1980, says Martin Bispels, 57, a former QVC executive who recently started Retroactv, a company that sells rock music merchandise dating to the 1960s and 1970s. "The past gives comfort. The past is knowable," Bispels says. "And you can define it because you can remember it the way you want.""
Many people across age groups are choosing analog activities to escape pervasive digital life. Activities include painting, coloring, knitting, board games, handwriting cards, driving manual-transmission cars and listening to vinyl records. Analog pursuits appeal to older generations who find comfort and certainty in familiar past experiences and to younger people seeking tactile, deliberate, and personal engagements that resist digital ephemera. The resurgence of vinyl and renewed interest in low-tech, in-person interactions reflect a search for tangible memories and slower rhythms. Nostalgia and a desire for less mediated social contact help sustain the trend.
Read at Fortune
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