Why Gen Z are turning their phones black-and-white (Copy)
This fall, hipsters across NYC and beyond are receiving the new print catalog from ultra-cool Brooklyn boutique Outline. The retailer offers no way to shop online – if a customer sees something they want, they can pick up the phone, email the store, or send them a DM via Instagram. This kind of "offline, but not anti-online" positioning is the latest expression of a growing phenomenon we're calling Post-Internet.
In recent years, the presence of the internet has grown to become indistinguishable, and inseparable, from real life. Algorithms now bend our reality, reforming our minds and our opinions by adjusting the flow of our feeds. It seems like everyone is looking for a way out – or, increasingly, a way to live a life that exists both on and off the internet.
By switching their screens to grayscale or monochrome, a growing number of tech-savvy young consumers are seeking not to shut off the flow of information entirely, but to render it less addictive, reducing screentime and improving mental health – a noble goal when our minutes and hours are regularly stolen by a neon waterfall of entertainment we carry in our pocket.
At the same time, Gen Z – and now Gen Alpha – are taking Millennials' vinyl record obsession a step further, driving a revival of CDs. Like a grayscale screen, CDs aren't anti-tech (they are, after all, the original digital medium) but they do replace the instant gratification of Spotify with a slower pace. Simply taking a CD out of a jewel case, placing it in the player's tray and choosing a track, creates a sense of delayed gratification that keeps serotonin burnout in check.
Dating is heading offline too – the perpetual left-and-right swipe, reducing potential mates to a deck of trading cards, is being replaced by social gatherings – from clubs and sports to charmingly old-school notions like themed singles nights. Gen Z is discovering that a side benefit of this kind of dating and flirtation is that, even if you don't find your life partner on a given evening, you at least know that you spent a few hours having fun outside of the house.
Are we finally shedding the veil of the iPhone screen and heading outdoors, to live the rest of our days barefoot on the grass? No – and no one really wants to. But consumers are seeing how pervasive digital media has become, and with the emergence of AI, it may be even more difficult in the coming years to pinpoint exactly where the internet ends and the real world begins.
As the lines between online and offline get blurrier – and the content gets ever stickier – it's clear that people are looking to set boundaries in search of a life well-lived.