Why young people are ditching smartphones for digital cameras, iPods and wired earphones

[Annie]

The BBC sent a culture reporter out to a DJ set with a 15 year old digital camera she hadnt touched since a family holiday to the Canary Islands, and the resulting piece is a genuinely fascinating look at why young people are deliberately reaching backward for tech that predates the smartphone era entirely

The numbers behind this trend are honestly striking, eBay told the BBC that UK sales of iPods and Walkman portable audio players jumped nearly 50 percent in 2025, while searches for iPod minis on the platform are up 48 percent over the last year, refurbished tech site Backmarket separately reports iPods are driving a 48 percent rise in older MP3 device sales between 2024 and 2025, with demand accelerating further into 2026, and a market research report last year put active film camera users globally at 42 million, more than a third of them aged 18 to 30 and largely influenced by social media trends rather than any practical necessity

For 26 year old content creator Lily Redman from South Wales, its genuinely about texture rather than nostalgia for its own sake, she says her phones flash photos look grainy and too high definition compared to the more smooth finished product a digital camera produces, and that people are looking for a bit of grit or something that feels more real, she makes a genuinely sharp observation about how this connects to time perception too, pointing out that photos her mum took of her as a two year old look appropriately old and faded, but photos she personally took five years ago on a phone still look like they were taken yesterday, concluding that phone photos have warped our perception of time in a way film and digital camera photography never did

For 30 year old Cheri Sanih, who runs a Tumblr account about older technology thats recently picked up thousands of followers, the appeal of her mint green iPod is more about deliberate escapism, scrolling through album artwork from 15 to 20 years ago while wanting to remember simpler times and bury into escapism away from a phone thats always getting notifications, she credits the devices enduring popularity partly to its beautiful design and its status as the first bit of technology really catering to humans with a less cluttered interface than anything thats come since

Wired earphones get their own genuinely compelling case from 23 year old Bristol based social media manager Monique Wellman Mason, who switched from wireless earbuds after growing tired of losing them, she jokes about spending two minutes detangling them every time she pulls them from her bag, but loves having a built in microphone that keeps her connected to her phone for work, plus the genuinely practical bonus that wired earphones cost around just 20 pounds, she sums up the whole trend nicely, saying technology only goes up and were always looking for the quickest thing but this is a step back in a way, I love it

Oxford professor of technology and human behaviour Andrew Przybylski offers the piece its most substantive framing, arguing this all traces back to peoples desire on a very deep level to be in control of their experiences, he points out that modern digital life often leaves people suffering from decision paralysis, the inability to choose because there are simply too many options, so when a new streaming series drops, binge watching it automatically often feels like a decision thats made for you rather than one you actually made, whereas turning on a digital camera and adjusting its settings, or curating an album onto an iPod, means you move toward something you want rather than having content come at you, he also references Xboxs server outage in late July, where users couldnt play games even if they physically owned the discs, as a vivid illustration of the frustration behind this whole movement, asking pointedly, imagine if a book worked that way

Digital cameras and wired earphones are back - and 'a bit more real'www.bbc.co.uk

[Drogba]

Phone photos have warped our perception of time is such a genuinely sharp observation, I hadnt thought about it in those terms before but its completely true, a five year old phone photo looks indistinguishable from one taken yesterday while old film photos always carried visible markers of their age that let you place them instantly

[ShadowPilot83]

Przybylskis decision paralysis framing really does explain a lot beyond just gadgets, the same logic applies to why people are going back to physical books, vinyl records, even handwritten journals, its all pushback against an environment engineered to remove friction and choice from every single interaction

[AustinTheory]

The Xbox outage comparison landed perfectly for me, owning a disc that suddenly stops working because a server is down is exactly the kind of quiet erosion of ownership that makes people crave something as simple and self contained as an iPod that just plays the files you put on it, no account, no login, no dependency on someone elses server staying online

[Millie82]

Its worth noting this trend is genuinely accessible on a budget too, wired earphones at 20 pounds and secondhand iPods and digital cameras on eBay make this a much cheaper form of self expression than most tech trends, that probably explains some of the youth driven adoption alongside the aesthetic appeal

[GoalPoacher42]

42 million active film camera users globally with a third of them under 30 is a bigger number than I expected, this clearly isnt just a handful of aesthetic minded influencers, its become a real subculture with actual commercial weight behind it now

[Paul_26]

I think what ties all three of these threads together, cameras, iPods, wired earphones, is genuinely about ownership and boundaries, you own the files, you own the device, nothing gets bricked by a firmware update or discontinued app, and in a world of subscriptions and cloud dependency thats becoming a rare and valued quality

[Grim Callum]

Cheri calling the iPod the first bit of technology really catering to humans with a less cluttered interface is an interesting design critique of everything thats come since, modern phones bury music behind notifications, ads and algorithmic recommendations in a way a dedicated single purpose device just never did

[Seb83]

Monique detangling wired earphones for two minutes every single time but still preferring them over losing wireless earbuds constantly is such a relatable trade off, sometimes the annoying but reliable option genuinely beats the convenient but fragile one once you actually live with both for a while

[Ivory Cass]

Lily's point about grit and something more real resonates with a much bigger cultural moment happening right now, from vinyl to film photography to even the deliberate use of lower resolution or lo-fi filters on phones, theres a genuine backlash against the hyper polished, algorithmically smoothed aesthetic that defined the last decade of social media

[Lucky Dean]

The built in microphone point from Monique is underrated, people forget how genuinely good and simple wired earphone mics are compared to fumbling through Bluetooth pairing issues mid call, sometimes the old tech just objectively works better for specific practical tasks