My conversations with 13- to 25-year-olds revealed the core tension: a longing for a past when they were tech-free and owned their own attention.
“I am nostalgic for a time when I was present, when my generation was between 5 and 10, when we were still doing things in the real world,” shared 19-year-old Nancy, a university student in London, “I don’t remember what I watched yesterday on TikTok, but I remember what I did years ago when I didn’t have a phone.”
“That looked like a better time than today,” she says. That sentiment helps explain why searches for Y2K aesthetics shot up 891% since November 2024.
Gen Z didn’t choose digital overload. They inherited it. But they are now doing something no previous generation has done: deliberately dismantling the attention economy from the inside — one dumb phone, one detox cabin, one conversation, one deleted app at a time. The analog future isn’t a retreat. It’s a correction.
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
