Technology has been sneaking into almost every corner of everyday life for decades: how we communicate, how we save memories, how we listen to music or how we entertain ourselves.
ada generation has enjoyed its own innovations: from the Walkman to the compact camera, including the Game Boy and the Nintendo DS. As the years went by, many of these devices seemed destined to remain as relics in a drawer, surpassed by increasingly powerful mobile phones capable of concentrating almost all possible functions in a single device.
However, in the era of the smartphone, AI or virtual reality, some of these “relics” are regaining prominence among recent generations. Compact digital cameras, retro consoles or cassettes reappear in second-hand stores or in TikTok videos where the young people who use them have not witnessed their birth or their rise.
Nostalgia or novelty?
The “return” or growing interest in vintage technology could be explained as a new wave of nostalgia.
Alvaro Soler, sociologist and disseminator in social networksspeaks of a “retro utopia”: an idealized look capable of commercializing aesthetics and products from the past. “May we consume again retro technology “It has to do with the consumption of retro culture,” he explains, giving as an example the success of series like Stranger Thingswhich “make us go back to the 80’s, with consoles and arcade games, but also with fashion, music…”. In this way, Soler explains the market’s ability to take advantage of previous designs or products and present them as something attractive and desirable again.
This is precisely one of the nuances that explains the return of retro from places beyond nostalgia. Although some of these devices do awaken memories and have a nostalgic connotation for those who grew up with them, not all the young people who recover them today have used them. In fact, many of them become familiar with these devices through social networks. Soler attributes to these platforms the power that classic advertising had before.
They also come into play influencerswhom Soler defines as “figures of success or in whom you have to see yourself reflected.” In many cases, he adds, a large part of their identity is built through what they consume and display.
This makes those who follow them more likely to be interested in or consume what they show in their profiles, including vintage technology. Thus, although many young people have not grown up with these devices, they can become desirable objectsassociated with an aesthetic or a way of being in the world. What for some is nostalgia, for others becomes a new necessity.
This is the case of Lara, a young woman – who prefers to keep her identity private – who is fond of analog cameras from the 70s (like the Zenit). Although he did not experience either the arrival or the rise of these devices, he confesses in conversation with Xataka find something “unique” about them that attracts you.
A camera not to scroll
The return of this type of technology also has another reading. For Claudia Pradas, psychologist and disseminator on social networksin a young population overexposed to constant stimuli, screens and immediate rewards, “a more limited technology can be psychologically attractive” because “it reduces the load.”
Compared to the mobile phone, which is at the same time a camera, console and music player, these devices have a single functiona restriction that can feel like a relief. “We are constantly exposed to super-overloaded technology that can fatigue us,” he explains, while these devices “can promote relaxation or deactivation of the nervous system, generating well-being.”
Therefore, instead of interpreting this boom as a rejection of the new, Pradas proposes reading it as a search for alternatives: devices that allow us to continue using technology but at a different pace.
The type of experience they offer also influences. “Old” devices force a more physical relationship that moves away from using the smartphone: insert a cartridge, rewind, press buttons, print a photo… For Pradas, that tactile dimension is key. In a context of digital saturation, “a sensory experience beyond the visual and auditory can help us become more rooted in the present.”
Sociologist Soler agrees that the search for disconnection is one of the factors behind this return to previous technologies. Many of these retro consoles, he explains, they do not depend on the internet: they allow you to continue using digital technology, but without constant connection or online services. Something similar happens with photographs. Uploading images to networks or storing them in the cloud does not generate the same relationship with memories as printing them and saving them in an album.
On the Internet, he says, images can become more volatile, get lost among thousands of files or become diluted in the continuous flow of content. Instead, developing photos or physically preserving them creates another way of relating to time and memory, “more tangible and lasting.” In a context of hyperconnectivity, changing memories from the digital environment to the physical dimension can also function as a way to organize and preserve what we really want to remember.
This power of disconnection is corroborated by Elena, a 23-year-old young woman whose playing with practically discontinued consoles evokes the same tranquility as “when you watch a movie you’ve seen 200 times”; The simplicity of these devices gives you the calm that current video games do not achieve.
“Right now (video games) are like a movie, but before everything happened on a very small screen with drawings that could even be in black and white,” he points out. The simplicity and the imperfection that characterize old games—and that extends to the grain of a compact camera or the less clean sound of a vintage player—are part of their appeal. In the face of increasingly perfect and faster devices, these small failures or limitations are perceived almost as a mark of authenticity and humanity.
“Old analog cameras have nothing to do with cell phone photographs. I don’t take photos with my cell phone because for me they lack something, it’s as if they didn’t have a soul. It’s not funny that you can take a thousand photos and you can put a filter on all of them, it’s not at all interesting to me. Analog photography gives a color and a richness that digital photography doesn’t have,” says Lara. For her, the imperfections of these cameras “add a lot of personality to the photos,” “something you will never have with a cell phone.”
At the same time, the use of these devices vintage It can be considered as “an activity in itself.” In a context in which the use of multi-screen is normalized—even watching a movie, some people feel the need to continue using their cell phone—this technology offers escape and concentration at the same time.
Using the smartphone as a camera or music player makes the logic of the multitask: just a gesture is enough to switch from one application to another. However, those who return to old cameras or consoles—those that do not require constant updates or do not even require a Wi-Fi connection—mention being more focused on the activity.
Social networks also echo the disconnection that these types of devices offer. Content creators like Jen Herranz encourage their followers to use retro cameras “so you don’t have to scroll with your phone” or “because it makes you more present.”
An ecological hobby or a new way of consumption?
Among the arguments that are most repeated among those who recover compact cameras, old consoles or players from another era, the ecological dimension also appears. In TikToksome youths They defend these hobbies as a way of reusing existing technology, of extending the life of forgotten devices and avoiding, at least in part, the logic of constant renewal. Faced with the continuous purchase of the latest model, they claim devices rescued from the drawer, second-hand or inherited.
But that story has nuances.
Because, although reusing can be a more sustainable practice than buying something new, the rise of retro can also become another way of consumption. Soler, also a researcher in the Postcapitalist Theory Centerremember that, for younger generations, these objects from the past often reappear not as simple old gadgets, but as desirable products.
This is where, he explains, a logic very typical of current consumer culture comes in, capable of commercializing any era. “The aesthetics of the 80s, 90s or 2000s are packaged, emptied of context and returned to the market as something ‘new’, accessible through purchase,” he explains.
In practice, a hobby that could involve rescuing a forgotten camera at home or turning on a console stored in a drawer can be transformed into a different dynamic: buying a specific model because it has become fashionable or wanting a reconditioned version that is prettier or more “instagrammableThat is, what already exists is not always reused: sometimes it is consumed again, only with aesthetics from the past.
And there retro stops being just a way to reuse and also becomes a new necessity manufactured by the market.
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Image | Jovan Vasiljević
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