I have my music and I want to listen to it
Across Europe, a quiet rebellion is taking shape on shelves and at pop-up events, where young people are reaching not for the newest device but for the oldest ones they can find. Between 2021 and 2024, sales of basic phones surged 148 percent among adults under 25 — a statistic that speaks less to nostalgia than to exhaustion. In an age when every screen demands attention and every song requires a subscription, obsolete technology has become a form of resistance: a way of reclaiming ownership, tactility, and the simple pleasure of a thing that does only what you ask of it.
- A generation raised on smartphones is quietly abandoning them — not for newer models, but for chunky keyboards, cassette tapes, and devices that cannot send a notification.
- The tension is not merely aesthetic: collectors describe a genuine fatigue with algorithmic dependency, streaming fees, and the engineered compulsion of modern platforms.
- Each collector navigates the retreat differently — one grieves the iPod, another turned a grandmother's death into a retro gaming charity, a third uses Betamax tapes to teach teenagers what obsolescence looks like.
- Community has emerged as an unexpected engine of the movement, from 24,000-member subreddits to intergenerational library events where an 80-year-old and a child can share a Mega Drive controller.
- The trend is landing somewhere between cultural preservation and viable commerce, with retro tech crossing from personal hobby into educational tools and event businesses that bridge generational memory.
Pasquale keeps his phone collection backlit by LED strips in his home in Foggia, Italy. His most prized piece is the HTC Dream — the world's first Android smartphone, a chunky 2008 device with a sliding physical keyboard. As a sociologist, he sees these objects not as curiosities but as artifacts of a vanished technological world.
His instinct is shared by a growing number of young Europeans. Between 2021 and 2024, sales of basic phones without internet or apps surged 148 percent among 18-to-24-year-olds. The explanation is simple and exhausted: screen fatigue. Young adults want a device that makes calls and sends texts — nothing more.
But the pull toward old technology runs deeper than reduced screen time. Peter Fuller, a journalist in the UK, still relies on his iPod because streaming has made music feel rented rather than owned. When Apple discontinued the device around 2022, it closed the door on independent listening. For Peter, analog objects — vinyl, Super 8 film, physical keyboards — offer authenticity that buffering and subscription fees cannot.
Miles, who runs a UK pop-up company called Bring Back Retro, came to collecting through grief. After his grandmother died, he organized a 24-hour gaming marathon to thank the hospital staff who cared for her. That single event grew into a vast console collection and two businesses. Now he hosts retro gaming events at libraries where an 80-year-old woman once played Sonic 2 all day, and where children puzzle over the high-pitched hum of old televisions that only they can hear.
Singh Lall, a business professor and film producer, uses his collection — spanning mobile phones, VHS, Betamax, and Laserdisc — as a teaching tool. At school open days, he places a pencil beside a cassette tape to show teenagers what the world has discarded, and to remind their parents of where they came from.
For Pasquale, the phones he collects mark the precise moment before the iPhone reshaped everything. HTC devices with physical keyboards once signaled office workers; Nokia phones belonged to teenagers. These distinctions mattered. Finland's Aalto University launched a Nokia Design Archive last year with a similar preservation instinct. For Pasquale and the 24,000 members of his vintage phone subreddit, these objects represent an era when technology still seemed to promise a better future — before it began to demand one's entire attention in exchange.
Pasquale keeps his phone collection on a shelf in his home, each device backlit by LED strips that glow like a window into another era. His most prized possession is an HTC Dream—the T-Mobile G1 from 2008, a chunky thing with a sliding physical keyboard that was the world's first Android smartphone. As a sociologist from Foggia, Italy, he sees these devices as more than nostalgia. They are artifacts of a technological world that has vanished.
Across Europe and beyond, younger people are turning away from the latest gadgets in favor of the obsolete. Between 2021 and 2024, sales of dumb phones—those basic devices without internet or apps—surged 148 percent among people aged 18 to 24, according to research published in Partners Universal Innovative Research Publication. The reason is straightforward: screen fatigue. Young adults are exhausted by the constant pull of algorithms, the dopamine hits engineered into every notification, the endless scroll. They want their phones to do one thing: make calls and send texts.
But the retreat from modern technology runs deeper than just reducing screen time. Nostalgia plays a role, certainly, but so does something more fundamental—a hunger for tangible, physical objects in a world that has become increasingly abstract and digital. Four collectors spoke to journalists about why they have chosen to look backward while the rest of the world races forward.
Peter Fuller, a journalist in the United Kingdom and an expert on actor Vincent Price, does not call himself a collector so much as someone who uses old technology alongside new. He owns two Super 8 projectors and a Hanimex E400 dual 8 editor. He also has his father's Super 8 camera from the 1970s, which he used extensively during university to make his first short films. But what really frustrates him is the death of the iPod. When Apple stopped manufacturing them around 2022, it marked the end of independent music players. Now everything requires streaming, which costs money and demands an internet connection. "I have my music and I want to listen to it," he explained. "That's why I still rely on the iPod, but also on vinyl." For people like Peter, streaming has homogenized culture, stripped away the immersive experience of discovering and owning art. Analog technology offers a way back to authenticity—something you can hold, press, and hear without buffering or ads or subscription fees.
Miles runs a pop-up events company in the UK called Bring Back Retro, and his journey into collecting began with grief. When his grandmother died, the hospital in Ipswich cared for her with kindness. He wanted to thank them, and the only way he could think to do it was to organize a 24-hour video game marathon. That single event spiraled into a massive collection of gaming consoles and old televisions, and eventually into two separate businesses. Now Miles hosts retro gaming events at libraries and community spaces, turning solitary play into something social and intergenerational. At one event, an 80-year-old woman picked up a controller for Sonic 2 on a Mega Drive and played all day. Children at his events ask what the strange noise from the old television is—a high-pitched hum that adults cannot hear but that bothers kids. Miles finds it hilarious. The people most drawn to these events, he has noticed, are millennials who grew up with this technology. They come to relive a nostalgic era, to remember the televisions in their childhood bedrooms.
Singh Lall, a business professor and film producer in the UK, collects everything from old mobile phones to VHS tapes to Betamax and Laserdisc formats. He is drawn to the aesthetic of retro design and the fuzzy, diffused visual effects of older film technology. But more than that, he uses his collection to teach. At school open days, he places a pencil next to a cassette tape to show teenagers what has become obsolete, and to remind parents of their own past. "We have a complex relationship with technology and we have everything at our fingertips digitally," he said. "The resurgence of old technology represents for me a return to simpler times and less connectivity and dependence on the internet." His favorite object remains his first mobile phone: a thick Motorola brick from the 1980s. It reminds him how far we have come.
Pasquale, an active member of a subreddit dedicated to vintage mobile phones with 24,000 members, collects smartphones from the 2000s era, particularly those that marked the moment before the iPhone took over. Not all old phones qualify as valuable to him—they must have specific features and unique characteristics. As a sociologist, his interest is not purely nostalgic but cultural and historical. He sees these phones as social markers: HTC devices with physical keyboards were used by office workers, while Nokia phones appealed to young people. Many of these devices had mechanical structures and operating systems that no longer exist. Last year, Finland's Aalto University launched the Nokia Design Archive with a similar goal of preserving these now-obsolete objects. For Pasquale and others like him, these phones represent an era when technology had not yet colonized every moment of life, when devices seemed to promise a better future rather than our own disappearance. They anchor him to childhood, to a time when he could not afford such expensive, exclusive devices. Technology keeps advancing, keeps replacing everything. It never goes backward. But for a growing number of people, backward is exactly where they want to go.
Citas Notables
It's a genuine relic of a technological world that has already disappeared— Pasquale, sociologist from Foggia, Italy, on the HTC Dream
The resurgence of old technology represents for me a return to simpler times and less connectivity and dependence on the internet— Singh Lall, business professor and film producer
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Why do you think people are suddenly interested in things that don't work anymore?
It's not that they don't work—they work perfectly well. It's that they do one thing instead of a hundred things. A dumb phone makes calls. An iPod plays music you own. There's clarity in that.
But isn't that just nostalgia? People romanticizing their childhood?
Some of it is, sure. But Pasquale—the sociologist—he's studying these phones as cultural artifacts. They tell you something about how people lived, what they valued. A phone with a physical keyboard says something different than a touchscreen.
What does it say?
That you could own something. That it was yours, not rented from a company. You didn't need permission to use it offline. You didn't have ads interrupting you.
So it's really about control?
It's about control, yes, but also about the feeling of a thing in your hand. Miles talks about an 80-year-old woman playing Sonic 2 all day. That's not nostalgia—that's joy. The game works. The console works. There's no subscription, no update that breaks it.
Do you think this trend will last?
I think it will grow. Every year more people realize that faster and newer doesn't mean better. The question isn't whether retro tech will last—it's whether the companies selling us subscriptions will finally listen.