Issue #14: The 2026 renaissance of physical media

19/02/2026

At the end of 2025 and at the beginning of 2026, I’ve seen some posts and news websites talking about how in this new year, we should resorta to using physical media (CDs, digital cameras, even actual alarm clocks) again, instead of our phone.

This sentiment has been around for quite a hot while, actually.  On the internet there are articles about ‘digital detoxing’ that date back as early as 2012, so it’s definitely not that new of a concept, but since the pandemic the concept of ‘digital detox’ has been more popular than ever. The question is: why’s that?

Based on my own experience, using the internet nowadays isn't as fun as it once was.  It’s crowded, full of ads, and we cycle between using the same five websites: Google, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, and accessing other niche websites is harder than ever. 
And if that wasn’t enough, in the past years AI has been taking over the Internet, and almost (if not all) every website on the ‘top 50 most visited websites’ list on Wikipedia has implemented AI in some way. (Why is AI bad?) It might be safe to say that the Dead Internet Theory (theory that asserts that there’s more bot activity on the net than human activity) might not be only a theory, after all.

One of the trends that I’d like to discuss today is the No Phone Summer trend that has been been popular during summer (duh) 2025 where people claimed that during that summer, they would commit to not use their (smart)phone and instead, rely on MP3 players, digicams, and portable gaming consoles that don’t have access to the internet (or at least, this was the most popular kind of tech in these videos). 
Are people posting this only to look cool? Who knows. I heard people say that this was only to sell more flip phones and this kind of ‘older’ tech, and that in no time, people will realize how hard it is to live without a smartphone in the modern world, and they’ll be back to where they started. And that might be true, but it doesn’t mean that everyone that tries will fail. I know there are people that are willing to sacrifice most of their ‘social’ lives to be more in touch with their surroundings. (Are you really being social after all if all you do is scroll on your phone?)

Social media is forgettable, but physical media is not. The ‘No Phone Summer’ trend, by ‘showing off’ CDs, DVDs or MP3 players, involuntarily highlights how even streaming services are part of the greater evil that is part of the modern popular internet, and that people want to free themselves from the algorithms that control them, and the subscription plans that drain their wallet. I mean, you’re going to feel like you actually have a choice when you decide to pick up a jewel case and play it in your boombox, or decide to watch a movie off of a DVD or a VHS tape without extra costs, don’t you?
Maybe SpaceHey (and any other old internet revival website) could be considered part of this sentiment, too. There’s no ads, no tracking (little to no moderation too, unfortunately) and a lot of its appeal is mainly due to the nostalgia factor it brings with its blogs, forums and customisable profiles, even if maybe not all the users on this platform have actually experienced what MySpace was.

I have to admit, though, I’m part of this sentiment. I’ve deleted all social media apps from my phone around June 2025, and I have to say, it’s probably one of the wisest decisions I’ve made, (considering that I never think too much on what to do, lol) and getting a flip phone would just get rid of more distractions and maybe bring in a thousand more ways to misspell words.
When this zine was founded, I also started building my own (and still, tiny) collection of CDs and DVDs, and I feel that listening, or buying, or even burning CDs is more purposeful than passively listening to a mix Spotify generated for you. There’s more thought to it, in my opinion.

After all, maybe all of this is simply just ‘young adult caving into nostalgia once they have their own money to spend’, but I hope that one day this statement will become more false than true, and until then, I hope the world can start “unlearning” modern technology, as we humans were made to go outside and touch grass, rather than navigate life through the internet.

Live life, be happy.
-Dam