Teens wanting analog stuff all of a sudden?

[pasteldome]

My teens (who both have February Birthdays) are currently asking for things like a CD player, DVDs, CDs, wired head phones, DS wants a record player and DD wants a vintage compact digital or film camera and a planner / notebook that costs about £60 and a pricey fountain pen.

I get that analog is a trend and I'm enjoying sharing my 90's music with them and if we have old tech or CD's then they can use them for sure but some of what they want is quite expensive Vinyl for example.

I think that the impulse is genuine to want to get away from screens and I'm delighted that my daughter seems more interested in books although she isn't yet reading a lot she got Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar and Jane Eyre for Christmas which are still on her bedside so I think she will get into them eventually.

We don't have a cd player anymore or a record player and so before I invest in any more tech / stuff is this just a trend do you think?

I've noticed this with mine as well. DS14 had a discman for Christmas 2024 and was still asking for new CDs this Christmas. His mates all have CD players or old iPods. Same for DD12 who has a CD player and an old camera. CD sales (whilst still low) have been increasing. No idea if it's just a fad!

Thank god I kept all my old CD's then! I wonder if it will stick or if its just like me in the 90's rummaging though my parents records and my mums old clothes and then acting like I was the first person ever to realise Fleetwood Mac were amazing!

No advice but as a Gen X who still uses all those things I am delighted to once more be in fashion!

You could get them a cassette recorder - they're quite cheap - if they've never had one before, they'll love it 😄

@LookingThroughGlass Good idea! I spotted on ebay that my old cassette tapes were now going for a fortune and instead of chucking them out I stuck them in the loft. Now I'll get them down and impress the kids with some old mix tapes 😂

My DD loves LP Records and has a record player.

There are increasing numbers of schools that have banned smart phones where I live(I assume other places as well), so more teenagers will have non-smart phones than previously. It makes sense that for those without a smart phone, they’ll look to other ways of listening to music, for example

I tried to ditch all our CDs in a fit of Swedish Death decluttering. DH was hanging onto them for grim life. Despite us both being mostly digital, he's convinced The Cloud could go poof one day, leaving him Dire Straits-less. DD(25) has been in a vinyl phase for quite some time. (She's drawn the line at my copy of Wham's Make It Big, though )

Lovely, CDs are not analogue...

@123ZYX "he's convinced The Cloud could go poof one day, leaving him Dire Straits-less."
😂Your very lucky to have him, he seems like a man with foresight!

Not the same really but my 13yo ds requested a Nokia brick phone around Christmas time when the old iPhone he had gave up the ghost.

Yeah I know but they fit in to the overall pattern of physical media come back we seem to be seeing. Both my kids have Spotify on the family plan but actually owning a tape, disc or record seems to be important to them now. My son has a friend who is collecting vinyl and doesn't even have a record player.

Now that is a shocker, not sure either of my two would go that far!

Ds loves his vinyls, they are expensive though. Luckily I still had all mine from the 80s.
He bought himself a vintage poleroid camera too, film for that is eye watering!

This is fascinating. Our daughter wanted a CD player for Christmas to play k-pop, which isn’t something I’d expected to be making a comeback. I didn’t realise it might be a trend.

Also I don’t know whether the retro vibe extends into looking for old-time music, but second-hand hunting can be a much cheaper pleasure. The jackpot is if you can get your kids into bargain-bin clogger-uppers like Barbara Streisand or Manilow, those things are cheaper than chips!

I love my record player and analogue cameras..

It was quite weird! He’s not a massive gamer or anything but he still asks for the old iPhone to play geometry dash so it hasn’t completely gone…

I agree with your husband! I think CDs and the like are much safer bets because they're actually tangible.

My 14 year old asked for a vinyl player for Christmas. The records were pricey. It all came to a pretty penny for sure!

I still have some analog stuff and I love it too just surprised that the kids are also getting into it.

@Sskka Now that would be a savvy move, perhaps these will become cherished objects of desire, if so I'll be quids in as there are loads of them in my local charity shops!

My youngest DD18 asked for a record player and some records for her 16th birthday and she still uses it and saves up her money to buy more records so for us it hasn't been a fad.

I think your DH has a point, or more modern tech ‘ages’ very quickly, my old windows phone no longer has supported apps, so I can no longer download music, instead I have to plug it into my computer, I can see this happening more and more and eventually downloaded music and audiobooks will only be available to those who upgrade their tech every few years. I loath built in obsolescence; bad for the environment; bad for the wallet!
I still have most of my CDs, and DVDs!

We severely decluttered before moving house to downsize last year and we got rid of hundreds of cds, dvd and blu-rays to save space. Lots of stuff rarely watched/listed to, but I really wish we hadnt. We have plenty of loft space for storage and I would have happily gone up there to retrieve them as and when I needed.

Even if I had backed them up onto a hard drive or something would have been better than just getting rid of them all. Half the stuff I want to watch isn't on sky, or subscription services, and spotify/amazon prime just isn't the same. I absolutely regret getting rid and wish we had kept them all, not least as I would have been trendy again 😂

One of my fave teen memories was one of my beloved Nirvana cassettes got all mangled and chewed up. It was way too far gone for the pencil trick. My dad smashed the case open, took the whole thing apart and re-threaded the whole tape into another spare (bright orange) casing. It played perfectly after that!

My daughter is into analogue photography. She has top of the range equipment (my dad’s old stuff) and has lots of fun posing in streams in the mist with her friends wearing evening dresses and taking blurry photos of which she is very proud.
My nephew is on his second record player after a rogue flatmate stole his first and my ds has just had a fountain pen for Christmas resulting in a burst of creativity, written and drawn. It’s all good stuff imo.
Also, dh and I have just ordered a camper van and we have requested a CD player and they are able to do it!

We got rid of cds years ago, but teen DD often takes our digital camera (from the early 2000s) on trips and holidays. She had a Polaroid camera for a while but that was definitely a craze that passed (with her)