Flip-Phone Nation

Dumb Phones, Analog, the Attention War, and Manufactured Nostalgia

Like a lot of 7-year-old girls, I was diagnosed with an early-onset addiction to Barbie. I wanted it all—the dolls, the movies, the posters, the clothes—anything imprinted with the Barbie logo wasn’t safe from my chubby little hands. I was a full-on Barbie hoarder. So naturally, when MP3 players became a thing and Barbie released its own version, I wanted it so badly that I developed a case of temporary sleepwalking, whispering "Barbie MP3... Barbie MP3" to my mom in the middle of the night. Apparently, it was weird and scary, and to this day, no one believes me when I say I barely remember it.

The Barbie MP3 is a true relic of the 2000s. Not only did it connect you to the online game Barbie World through a premium account (endless shopping, pink hair, the world was your oyster), but the MP3 itself was customisable - it came in the shape of a Barbie with a range of hairstyles, clothes, and shoes. I was obsessed.

You had to be there

Although nothing quite matched its level of customization, the Barbie MP3 fit into a broader collection of digital artifacts made in the same spirit. At home, phones came in all shapes and colors: my mom had a red and white Nokia, my dad—true to dad fashion—had a gigantic grey phone with a keyboard attached (for no apparent reason?), and my brother had a simple black flip phone that perfectly mirrored the laid-back nature of a teenage boy. I didn’t have a phone yet, but I did have a very tasteful pink digital camera with a Hello Kitty keychain dangling from it. All our digital devices—MP3 players, iPods, Walkmans, Tamagotchis, Nintendos, you name it—came in a multitude of colors, shapes, and styles. You might have had a similar experience.

The gadgets were distinct by design; each device had a specific function, which necessitated its unique hardware. But it wasn’t just digital devices—the 90s and early 2000s were the pinnacle of unique, tacky, hyperbolic designs and personalization. To put it simply, everything was fun, from personal style to flip phones and cars. The popularity of Pimp My Ride — a show about maximalist car modding— tells you everything you need to know about that era. And when social media platforms like MySpace and Tumblr arrived, the focus was still on ultra-personalization, letting users express their identities through their profiles with favorite music, colors, and curated images. There’s a reason why many look back on that era as a time of visual abominations—aesthetic boundaries weren’t really a thing. But it’s also why many more remember it as a time of fun and creativity, aesthetic boundaries weren’t really a thing.

Again, you had to be there

I love looking back on that stretch of time. My early digital experiences felt so different—more palpable, less pervasive. It was a radically different era compared to whatever is happening between me and my phone now. Like most people born around the 1990s and onwards, I got access to the internet and its boundless wonders when my brain wasn’t even fully developed, my neurons expanding and entangling with each megabyte in a danse macabre.

But there's also the bittersweet realization that this danse comes at an even higher cost than anticipated; trading attention for fun. It’s a violating feeling, knowing that your attention is part of something bigger - a sinister medley of corporate interests and surveillance.

The Attention Economy might not be new, but its monopoly by a handful of corporations is. Since it mainly occurs through a hyper-connected rectangular piece of metal, the solution has seemed pretty straightforward: going back to the other pieces of metal that did not have the capacity to hold our attention so greedily. This is partly how dumb technology has become so popular, with 42% of Gen Z adults and millenials expressing a strong desire to use devices that lack “advanced digital capabilities into their daily lives”.

While there's a clear fight to reclaim our attention, I believe something else is at play: digital and tech has become utterly boring. Inside, outside, hardware, software—they all look and feel the same, don’t they? You and I probably have the same Netflix catalog. Whenever someone my age shows me a Pinterest board for their home, I’m horrified to find it’s identical to mine. Google Maps will basically recommend the same exact type of minimalist coffee shops no matter where you are in the world—encouraging them, in turn, to proliferate in every corner of the earth. And I’ve lost track of what version of the iPhone is coming out next, they all look the same. Digital experiences are now so homogenised that, in contrast, the technology and digital culture of the 90s and 2000s feel like Willy Wonka’s factory—playful, random, personalised.

I’m like the n°1 consumer of those types of coffee-shops tho lol

When I search "Phone" on Pinterest, I mostly find pink, glittery dumb phones that make a wannabe it-girl like me salivate. Chances are, Pinterest has flagged me as such, knowing only devices from the early 2000s match my aesthetic—because phones just don’t look cute anymore. It’s as if only the Y2K era can cater to those craving aesthetically pleasing technology. Even MySpace, early blogs and websites seem like a dream for someone with a Substack and a desire to display their personality on the homepage beyond fonts and limited color palettes.

What I'm saying is that the analog revival is tied to a long-standing Y2K aesthetic—one that cannot find a home in today’s sleek and minimalist digital world. So while many buying dumb phones genuinely want to detach from technology, another part craves the aesthetics of an era that can only be captured through its old digital devices, and these groups often overlap. This is why digital cameras have been experiencing such a revival¹. You see posts on TikTok showcasing the digital cameras themselves, but it's also about the unique feel of what they capture². I've been eyeing digital camera listings for a while because they not only look cool but also anchor me in reality in ways smartphones never could. Smartphones record and sanitize moments, cameras capture memories and life itself³. When

eve

describes the immediate nostalgic power of using a digital camera in her essay, she explains perfectly how "it's an activity to take photos, not something that takes me out of the now"—something smartphones have failed to achieve.

This is what Charli XCX's birthday shots were desperately trying to recreate through digital camera-esque photos, but the presence of smartphones ruins the effect, rendering the results uncanny. It’s as if the memories are stuck in a transient nostalgic space, trying to imitate real moments but failing because of how manufactured it all looks.

But there’s a reason we got here - smartphones and all. As digital evolved, the demand for more efficient and integrated experiences grew—carrying five different devices and hoarding music and movies was not ideal anymore. At the same time, there was a need to capture people’s attention in ways that were both efficient and measurable. So, devices began to prioritize integration over collection, homogenization over self-expression.

I sometimes consider deleting my Spotify account because my algorithm seems more interested in force-spooning me Sabrina Carpenter than letting me gravitate towards her naturally, like I would in a record shop. So recently, when the aux in our car broke, instead of buying yet another one, my eyes lit up with the most genius alternative: “Let’s just buy some CDs.” We’ve been going around music stores shopping for albums and vinyls, while this annoying voice in my head keeps saying, “Wow, just like in the movies.” No algorithm to tell me what to listen to, thousands of choices at my fingertips, and that unbeatable feeling that I’m being an active participant in my life - choosing, rather than being chosen for.

But here’s the catch: every object looks shinier through nostalgia-tinted glasses, making it hard to distinguish those that truly belong to the past from those born out of corporate interests and manufactured nostalgia. Enter Nokia’s latest flip phone in collaboration with Mattel: a $130 pink Barbie flip-phone that aims to “take smartphone-addicted teens back to simpler times.” It’s like a digital Frankenstein, stitched together with longings for past aesthetic devices and hopes that they can also fix our attention spans. The bastard child of my Pinterest feed and I.

To me, it represents a shift in analog, where it's not just about returning to old devices but creating new ones that imitate the past and cater to the desire for disconnection. Basically, the effort to fight online addiction using nostalgic devices has led to the creation of new digital objects that mimic the old, all to align with current corporate interests.

The reason this happened, in my opinion, is partly because addiction to digital is both misunderstood and mismanaged. There's this inherent belief that the only way to avoid being addicted to social media is to have no social media at all, that to avoid endless scrolling, you need nothing to scroll on. But what if reclaiming one’s attention can only be done internally, not externally? At least, it certainly isn’t something that can be fixed by the very entities that created the problem in the first place.

Buying dumb phones and digital cameras is innocent, nostalgic, satisfying, and grounding. The act itself is harmless. The problem arises when curiosity gets translated into new revenue streams, like when a brand-new $130 Barbie dumb phone is marketed to fit the interest for analog.

Where our attention goes, corporations follow. If they know you want a dumb phone, they’ll give you one—even a thousand—in every color you could think of. And just like that, we end up right back where we started. From the moment mass entertainment became available to the average Joe, the attention lost to regular TVs was already an issue. Moving to the next digital device never fixed it - it simply allowed the problem to shapeshift.

Attention is a scarce currency, and it will always be preyed upon. Reclaiming our attention is easier said than done. With tech corporations’ grip on it growing beyond even their own understanding, to the point where life feels indistinguishable from our connected devices, there may be no escaping the Attention Economy, at least not entirely. The only option left might be to reclaim it on your own terms—at least, I know I’ll keep trying to do so.

Because capitalism thrives on selling solutions to the very problems it creates, there will always be a brand popping up around the corner, ready to tackle the next issue, arms open, brand-new Barbie phone in hand. One day, going down the street to buy a new CD for the car, I might find myself in a Spotify-branded record shop without even noticing.

Oh, how ironic.

1. Why Gen-Z is Obsessed With Point and Shoot Digital Cameras - Fast Company

2. Digital camera TikTok revival (see this TikTok and this article).

3. Blurry Realities: why young people are embracing analogue - Medicate