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?

Taping the Top 40 on a Sunday night providing a mixed tape of entertainment for the week ahead. Punching the air when you stopped it just at the right moment at the end before the DJ chimed in.

Never could do it 😟. Every single mix tape I made always ended up being interspersed with Dr Neil Fox (not a real doctor. Who knew?!) starting to spout some utter bollocks.

I do wish DVDs were still being released like they used to be with all the extras like outtakes, commentary (sometimes multiple ones) behind the scenes video diaries and so on. I remember the Hot Fuzz DVD had about two hours of extra material.

I'd quite liked to have watched the Gavin & Stacey finale with a commentary from the cast.

I don’t think it’s that sudden tbh. My dd17 has been collecting vinyl for 4-5 years. My youngest son 21 has pretty much given up his digital drawing tablet for traditional paper pads , My son is 25 and the only phone he has is a Motorola Razr. All of my kids prefer to spend time playing instruments and have kind of gone more towards old school consoles for traditional games like Mario kart instead of doom scrolling. Charity/vintage shops seem to be much cooler now than they ever were before. I love it.

Extra bits are still present on the blu rays and 4K releases.

The vinyl market has been steadily growing for the last 20 years so I don't think it is a short lived trend. There are lots of reasons why people like it -
They have something tangible that they own. It comes with nice artwork. It sounds fuller than compressed digital files.
Spotify and other streaming services give artists a raw deal. In buying an artist's music on vinyl, you are better supporting the artist and the music industry.
I think (some) younger people want to feel.more connected to the world rather than consume everything through a phone.

Dd (19) has her dad's record player and vinyl collection, and has just bought herself an old sewing machine from eBay as it's very simple to maintain and repair herself. All the parts are metal and it weighs a bloody ton! She's fed up with increasingly complicated technology that quickly becomes costly to repair or obsolete.

As a sideline I trade in film photography darkroom equipment (an extension of it being a hobby) and its really busy at the moment - you can't find decent enlargers on eBay as they go as soon as they get listed - thankfully I have quite a stock available.

Like vinyl it's having a real revival, some manufacturers who ditched film for digital are bringing equipment back, and Chinese firms are copying classics - the good old Kodak dish syphon (for washing prints) is back in production!

That's one of the great bonus's of old tech - if something breaks you can often mend it or make or buy a new part - and that's really satisfying!

My son got a cassette player and loads of 80s tape for Christmas. He's not even a teenager and now his classmates want them too.

I had a cassette that mangled itself the wrong way round, so the songs played backwards. I decided I liked some of them backwards and re-dubbed them backwards onto a new cassette. I made up my own surreal lyrics from the backwards lyrics which I still remember - this would be a good party trick, singing a song backwards, except I can't sing in tune 😆

Perhaps not it could just be that mine are getting to that age. I do hear that Motorola Razr, a phone I had for about 6 years when it came out is now the height of fashion. I remember we used to shop in a vintage shop called Flip in the 90's so its probably always coming round again. I do think the move away from modern tech is really buzzy at the moment now.

Thats good to hear, hopefully its popularity will reduce the cost a of film and developing a bit. I do remember a Lomography craze in back in the 2000's and urban outfitters selling these plastic film cameras which everyone had for a time before it fell out of fashion.

Film is definitely making a comeback in photography; a lot of the wedding photographers I know have started offering film as part of their package. I've just bought an 80s 35mm camera and some film to see if it's a viable option for my business.

I do think Vinyl is more long term but it is more popular with quite young teenagers now. I used to buy second hand records as a teenager because they were cheaper and I liked old music but they were probably not the best copies and some stuff just wasn't available on cd for ages. I think there have always been serious record collectors and new people entering the hobby although it was sort of niche but I think 13 year olds wanting vinyl of contemporary artists and record players is newish in modern times.

I really think this is great actually. I was worried about it dying out although film prices are still through the roof when I was looking for DD.

My DD has had a record player (which she bought new) for about 4 years. Mix of old and new records.

she’s very much about supporting the artist -Spotify pays peanuts and by buying vinyl if it’s made much more money goes to the artist.

she’s more suspicious of subscription services as well - stuff moves on and off eg Netflix whereas if you own it it’s always there….

@Octavia64 I do think subscription services have shot themselves in the foot, the actual content is spread to thinly between them all now and prices keep increasing. Add to that everything eventually shows up on the terrestrial channels.

Another retro past time that probably never really went away is sailing the high seas of the internet and taking what you want from download sites, lots of people running their own media servers with "shared" content or even more common the dodgy sticks. A few years ago this was way less common now every other home has one.

Yes kids that young buying them is relevatively recent - I daresay there is an element of being 'influenced'. I also think it is great. However, kids still get pocket money/an allowance and to buy something tangible is important to them, just as it was to us I suspect.

Same with my 17 year old son! He got a ttfone flip phone. I'd find it hard to go back as iPhone is so handy but he loves it.

They're slowly, slowly coming down. A few brands have just released new 35mm cameras so I'm hoping they'll keep going down, but I can get 24 exposures of Kodak ColourMax for about a tenner now which is decent!

My daughter who's 10 asked for a Walkman for her next birthday in may 😆 🤣. Do these even still exist? I blame stranger things for this!!

Yes, there's a variety on ebay, but don't encourage her to get the oldest cassette type! Cassettes were the work of the devil and I lost so much favourite music when they'd get mangled in the machines 😂

My son (14) has a record player and has collected a whole box of records over the year (despite them being £25 a time if not more).

He likes them because he can go into a real shop and flick through the library of records and find the one he wants and then ‘physically’ go and pay. He then has a bag with an actual thing in it. With streaming music the most exciting it gets is putting words into the little magnifying glass icon and pressing return to search for it.

i think it’s really nice to have. You own a record, you don’t own a stream - you rent it.

Not to mention I got to play all of my dodgy 1980’s record collection again - he was less impressed with that 🤣

😆 🤣 😂 thats exactly what i said to my husband when we were talking about it. Remember trying to sellotape the broken bits of the tape back together and the little jump over it in the song? 😆 🤣 😂. I really hope she sees something much better before may!! Wonder whats wrong with our Spotify subscription, surely thats way better than old tapes and then having to teach her how to roll it back in again with a pencil? 🤣.

The planner your DD wants is a Louise Carmen right? Louise Carmen planners, analogue bags and physical media are all current social media trends.
Physical media is because people are realising you can never truly own digital media.
Analogue bags are bags you use in your home full of hobby stuff to keep you offline and more present.
Louise Carmen planners are this years planner trend. There's always one type that gets popular for the year.