The Power of Pre-Internet Nostalgia

Summary

Podcast Summary: How to Touch Grass – “The Power of Pre-Internet Nostalgia”

Host: Julie Beck (Staff Writer, The Atlantic)
Co-host: Natalie Brennan (Producer, The Atlantic)
Guest: Clay Rutledge (Psychologist and Author, How Nostalgia Can Help You Live a More Meaningful Life)
Date: July 27, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the growing nostalgia for pre-internet, analog eras—especially among Gen Z, who never lived through those times. The hosts and guest examine what lies behind this yearning, the psychological role of nostalgia, the complexities of our current relationship to digital technology, and how looking back might help us renegotiate our relationship with tech moving forward.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Opening Reflections: Words to Describe Our Tech Relationship

(01:19) Julie prompts the co-hosts and Clay to sum up their feelings about technology in a word:

• Clay Rutledge: “Antagonistic. I think of it as an addiction ... similar to how I relate to sugar or anything else that I compulsively overindulge in.” (01:31)
• Natalie Brennan: “Fraught.” (01:33)

2. What Does ‘Touch Grass’ Mean?

(01:58) The phrase “touch grass” is defined as an urge to get off screens and reconnect with real life—often seen in viral internet memes and Gen Z discourse.

• Julie Beck: “Get off the Internet and go outside and touch grass.” (02:14)

3. Analog Nostalgia Trend

(03:08-03:51) Discusses the current wave of people, especially younger generations, gravitating toward analog hobbies, devices, and experiences. Nostalgia is a force not just for personal reflection but for inspiring behavioral change in our tech use.

4. The Psychology and Purpose of Nostalgia

(04:50-05:41)

• Clay Rutledge: “Nostalgia is, in psychological terms, what we call a self regulatory resource. It helps us navigate life in important ways ... it can't help us step outside of that moment and say, you know, there's a bigger picture right now.” (04:56)
  • Nostalgia is forward-looking as much as backward-looking—helping people use positive memories to buffer present struggles and future uncertainties.

5. Gen Z Craving a Pre-Digital Past They Never Knew

(06:43-07:16) Julie shares research from Clay indicating that 60% of Gen Z say they wish they could return to a time “before everyone was plugged in”—a period before they were even born.

• Clay Rutledge: “What we started to discover with that survey is people actually have a longing for the past that predates them ... the majority of them were saying that they longed for a time really before modern technology, but really before they were alive.” (07:16)

6. Why Analog Nostalgia is Uniquely Potent Now

(08:16-09:14)

• Major generational transition from analog to digital creates a potent form of “historical nostalgia.”
• Irony: TikTok and social media are both the source of tech-related distress and the vehicle introducing youth to analog trends.

7. It’s Not About Rejecting Modern Conveniences

(09:14-10:06)

• People don’t want to live without modern advances; rather, they crave aspects of the past they find missing today—particularly control and community.
  • Clay Rutledge: “They love technology, but they want to be in control of it, not feel controlled by it.” (17:00)

8. Personal Stories: Lost Without a Smartphone

(11:10-16:51)

• Julie’s memory: Shares a story about getting lost in Russia before owning a smartphone, relying on strangers for aid, and how vulnerability led to profound human connection.
  • Julie Beck: “I am kind of nostalgic for that memory because it was one of those moments that really restores your faith in humanity.” (14:06)
• Natalie’s experience: Describes a college program that involved six weeks with no technology, culminating in a “Get Lost day.” This manufactured analog experience felt deeply bonding and memorable.

9. Control and Community: What Are We Really Missing?

(16:51-19:02)

• Gen Z’s nostalgia targets two main values:
  • Control: Desire for intentional, limited tech use (e.g., using an iPod just for music).
  • Community: Longing for organic, in-person relationships and shared cultural experiences.

10. Why Now? The Role of AI and Tech Overwhelm

(20:43-22:28)

• The flood of AI/automation heightens people’s longing for embodied, tactile, and real-world experiences.
  • Clay Rutledge: “If machines can do all this cognitive work and maybe even creative work ... now you’re seeing more of this holistic thinking: what is the essence of being a person?” (20:52)
  • Gen Z is driving trends like the resurgence of vinyl, independent bookstores, and in-person game nights.

11. Nostalgia Games: What Are We Longing For?

(22:28-24:47)

• The hosts play a game where they dissect memes and objects of analog nostalgia:
  • Computer rooms: Represented a time when tech use was more deliberate and physically bounded.
  • Google Reader: Yearning for a curated, less algorithm-driven internet.
  • Film cameras: Desire for single-purpose devices and less distraction.

12. Is Nostalgia Regressive or Motivating?

(26:12-28:10)

• Addressing charges that nostalgia is escapist or anti-progress:
  • Clay Rutledge: “Nostalgia increases goal motivation, increases a sense of meaning in life, increases optimism, ... it increases empathy. Most nostalgic memories are social memories.” (26:12)
  • Differentiates nostalgia from “declinism”—the belief that things are getting worse and only the past was good.
  • Nostalgia can actually help people process anxieties and develop hope for the future.

13. From Personal to Cultural Nostalgia

(29:13-30:15)

• Nostalgia is a vector for connection and shared cultural memory—hence, longing for communal experiences like family TV nights or shared music listening.

14. Practical Lessons: Agency Amidst Tech Overload

(30:15-31:30)

• Recommends focusing on the “local and personal”: Create micro-environments of analog or in-person experience (hosting movie nights with physical media, meeting neighbors, etc.).

15. Signs of Change & Gen Z as Possible Leaders

(31:30-34:27)

• Observes a real increase in bookstore and physical media sales, live events, in-person community activities—driven largely by Gen Z.
  • Gen Z reports higher rates of taking breaks from digital devices than older generations.
• Clay Rutledge on Gen Z optimism: “It might be that they're the generation that leads us back to [analog life].” (33:56)

16. Generational Responsibility, Frustration, and Joint Action

(34:27-35:32)

• Natalie Brennan: Expresses frustration with the expectation that Gen Z must “heal everyone’s relationship to technology.”
• The hosts articulate a more collective approach: moving forward with technology is a shared generational task—not just on Gen Z, but all of us.

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Notable Quotes

• Clay Rutledge, on nostalgia’s double edge:
  “People love technology, but they want to be in control of it, not feel controlled by it.” (17:00)

• Julie Beck, on her lost-in-Russia story:
  “I was screwed, and people appeared and they helped me when I really needed it. And that made me feel, like, swaddled tightly in the fabric of human community. And none of that would have happened if I had a smartphone, if I had Google Maps.” (14:06)

• Natalie Brennan’s analog college experience:
  “You are going to share this experience. But I do think extremely fondly about the program ... those whole six weeks really just sparkle with nostalgia for me.” (16:08)

• Clay Rutledge, on technology and control:
  “They want both. There’s something to say intergenerationally ... it creates a dialogue between generations, which ... is something that people feel like they're really missing.” (19:02)

• Clay Rutledge, on the core of analog nostalgia:
  “It’s really helping people get that sense of embodiment ... there’s something about emotion, spirituality, living in the world, having these tactile sensory experiences in person, real contact with other real human beings.” (20:52)

• Clay Rutledge, on misjudging nostalgia:
  “People seem to have this view of nostalgia as anti progress or holding people back from progress. And I spend a fair amount of time trying to disabuse them of that view and show them decades of empirical research. It really isn't holding people back.” (26:12)

• Julie Beck, reflecting on Gen Z's role:
  “Honestly, I think what talking to Clay made me realize is that so many of us are just looking for inspiration on how to move forward with technology in a way that doesn't feel bad because we have to live in 2026. It's never going to be 1996 again.” (35:02)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:19 — Defining our current feelings about technology
• 02:09 — "Touch grass"/the urge to disconnect
• 03:08 — Nostalgia goes viral: the analog trend in 2026
• 04:50 — Psychological purpose and benefit of nostalgia
• 06:43 — Gen Z's longing for a pre-digital era
• 11:10 — Personal stories of being lost without tech
• 16:51 — Control and community: the real object of nostalgia
• 20:43 — AI’s impact and return to embodied experiences
• 22:28 — Nostalgia game: dissecting analog memories
• 26:12 — Is nostalgia escapism or hope? Research insights
• 29:13 — From personal to cultural nostalgia
• 30:15 — How nostalgia helps us take agency
• 31:30 — Is nostalgia manifesting in real behavior?
• 33:56 — Can Gen Z lead us back—and should they have to?
• 35:02 — Collective renegotiation, not just Gen Z's job

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Tone & Conclusions

• The episode mixes humorous banter, honest vulnerability, and serious social/psychological insight.
• Host and guest agree nostalgia isn’t about escape but hope and agency—and it can be a force for positive renegotiation of our digital lives.
• Gen Z, despite being digital natives, may be leading the cultural movement toward a more intentional, analog-infused life—one that prizes control, community, and in-person experience—though it’s a collective journey, not a generational burden.

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For anyone curious about why people pine for analog experiences, this episode offers an empathetic, research-backed, and often witty exploration of both the longing and the path forward.

Transcript

[Clay Rutledge]

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[Natalie Brennan]

A

[Narrator/Promoter]

few months ago, I invited Atlantic staff writer Charlie Warzel onto the David Frum Show. As podcast hosts, we talked about the pressures and temptations of the medium. Outrage often gets rewarded. Nuance does not. Charlie doesn't take that bait. On his show Galaxy Brain, he covers the ways technology is changing how we think and how we live. Not just the obvious stuff, but the subtle ways it shapes what we believe, how we talk to each other, how we see ourselves and our neighbors. If you've ever wondered how smart people end up believing implausible things online, Galaxy Brain is worth your time. It's thoughtful, surprising, and a little unsettling in the very best way. Find it wherever you listen or watch.

[Julie Beck]

If you have one word, it can be a noun, it can be an adjective, it can be any part of speech that you want to describe your overall relationship to technology at this moment in time.

[Clay Rutledge]

Antagonistic.

[Narrator/Promoter]

Complic.

[Natalie Brennan]

Fraught.

[Clay Rutledge]

I think of it as an addiction similar to how I relate to, like, sugar or anything else that I sort of compulsively overindulge in. What's a red? Indentured?

[Julie Beck]

I was gonna say reluctant, but maybe that's not right.

[Clay Rutledge]

Very frequent user.

[Julie Beck]

Okay, that's a lot of words, but we'll take it. I'm Julie Beck, a staff writer at the Atlantic.

[Natalie Brennan]

And I'm Natalie Brennan, a producer at the Atlantic.

[Julie Beck]

This is how to touch grass. Have you heard the young people say touch grass? Switch to a dumb phone. This is Nokia 2780. It's like a term, basically, which is like, get off your phones.

[Clay Rutledge]

Smartphones are evil, they're ruining society, and

[Narrator/Promoter]

we need to just stop.

[Clay Rutledge]

100% disagree.

[Julie Beck]

Get off the Internet and go outside and touch grass.

[Clay Rutledge]

I nominate everyone for the Touch Grass Challenge. Go outside and touch some grass. Like I'm doing right now. Go, go, go.

[Julie Beck]

In this season, we'll be exploring the often fraught, always changing relationship people have with technology and the ways that in this, the terms of the relationship are being renegotiated.

[Natalie Brennan]

Julie the way that I would like to renegotiate my relationship to technology is that I would like to throw my phone in the East River.

[Julie Beck]

Natalie, you could throw your phone in the east river, why don't you?

[Natalie Brennan]

It's not really just about my phone. I want to throw your phone in there too, Julie, but I can't take everyone's phone. So I think what I mean to say is that I yearn for a pre phone era.

[Julie Beck]

I think we're not the only ones who have this fantasy. It's all over. TikTok. What's the biggest trend of 2026 going to be analog? This past year, we've seen the rise of nostalgia switch from iPhone cameras to digital cameras. Here's how to actually be more analog in 2026. First, I want to Analog era is here. And while audiences say they want to go offline, Gen Z millennials openly expressing their desires to break from an online world, find deals. I stopped using an iPhone. And the effects have genuinely been profound. In the past few years, there's been no shortage of people advocating for reducing screen time. But another force that has been inspiring people to rethink how they use their devices lately is nostalgia.

[Clay Rutledge]

We can often feel overwhelmed in the moment and in the challenges we face today, it's hard to see past them. Nostalgia can't help us step outside of that moment.

[Julie Beck]

Clay Rutledge and his colleagues have been studying what's behind this widespread yearning for a time before smartphones and before for social media. Clay's a psychologist who specializes in nostalgia, and he's also the author of How Nostalgia Can Help youp Live a More Meaningful Life. Clay, hello. Welcome.

[Clay Rutledge]

Hi, Julie.

[Julie Beck]

I see you've got an Atari poster behind you. There's some kind of video game that is too small for me to see what it is. What is it?

[Clay Rutledge]

On the shelf? I've got an old Nintendo, the original nes. Then I've got the Robotron arcade game, which is an arcade from the 80s, and the Atari poster. So, yeah, lots of video game nostalgia from different brands and decades.

[Julie Beck]

Oh, man. Perfect. Okay. It's a nostalgia museum at your house.

[Clay Rutledge]

It is indeed.

[Julie Beck]

Clay, just to get started, what is the point of being nostalgic about anything?

[Clay Rutledge]

So nostalgia is, in psychological terms, what we call a self regulatory resource. It helps us navigate life in important ways. We don't know the future, it's uncertain. And so it can also be a great source of anxiety. Nostalgia can't help us step outside of that moment and say, you know, there's a bigger picture right now. Maybe I'm experiencing stress or loneliness or I Just went through some difficult challenge. But my life is full of other types of experiences. And if I had these more fulfilling experiences in the past, then I should be able to have them in the future.

[Julie Beck]

Yeah, I asked you about the past and you immediately started talking about the future. Do people tend to misunderstand nostalgia by assuming, as I did, that it's about the past?

[Clay Rutledge]

So nostalgia, the dictionary definition, is something like a sentimental longing for the past. When you present it like that, then it makes sense that people would assume, well, nostalgia might even be people getting stuck in the past or looking to the past too warmly and not dealing with their present realities head on. Turns out that when people engage in this kind of nostalgic reflection, in a lot of ways they're talking about their issues today and they're thinking about tomorrow. So nostalgia actually has this very forward looking, unexpected, hopeful quality. We often are looking for specific things that can help us with particular challenges and anxieties we're facing. So, and I'm articulating this as if this is happening at some deliberate or conscious level, because I'm talking about more of the scientific study of nostalgia and what we've learned from that kind of empirical work. But in reality, of course, this is just happening almost unconsciously. People are often using nostalgia without even realizing it.

[Julie Beck]

That makes sense to me when it comes to, you know, my own life and my own past experiences. Right. But Clay, what about nostalgia for a time from before you were even alive? There was a stat from a survey you worked on that really struck me, which was you found that 60% of Gen Z wished that they could return to a time before everyone was, quote, plugged in. And the other generation said that too, but they actually lived through that time, whereas Gen Z has no actual memories of a time before the Internet existed. So was that surprising to you?

[Clay Rutledge]

It was when we first found that I was pretty surprised because most of the work, the research in nostalgia, including the research I've done, is focused on autobiographical memory. But to your point, what we started to discover with that survey is people actually have a longing for the past that predates them. Now, of course, if you study art and culture more abstractly, we've long known that people have favorite eras that they're interested in, whether it's the architecture or the music or the fashion. So we've known there's this aesthetic nostalgia that's historical. But what we were surprised to find is that young adults have so much to look forward to in the future. And we typically think of youth as very future Oriented, but the majority of them were saying that they longed for a time really before modern technology, but really before they were alive. And then since that survey, we've just done more and more surveys finding that around 2/3 of gen Z adults say they're nostalgic for a time before they're alive.

[Julie Beck]

Right. So this seems like a little bit more than just a. Like we're bringing low rise genes back. Right. If they're saying they would like to live in the past, I mean, how common is it for generations to yearn that way for a past they never actually knew? Or is something about this unique?

[Clay Rutledge]

Yeah, there's not a lot of research or really any research in previous generations when they were the same age as Gen Z. But we do know from our own work in general, people tend to become nostalgic when they're going through major life transitions or disruptions, or when the world feels particularly chaotic or uncertain. Regardless of whether you're, you know, 20 or 60, sometimes there are sources of cultural inspiration that people want to draw from in a more shared bank of memories that aren't just your own, but the memories we share as a culture. And here's the key thing, I think, and this is the case with Gen Z too. It really isn't the case that people want to live in the past.

[Julie Beck]

Okay.

[Clay Rutledge]

You start asking people, would they give up all of the modern advances? They say no. What they're saying is they have a sentiment for some aspect of the past that they think that we're missing today. I think there is something about Gen Z in this, you know, as, as digital natives who grew up in this era where this major transition from the analog world to the digital world that seems to be sparking a particularly potent type of historical nostalgia. And then the irony is technology really is helping facilitate this, because how are Gen Z adults learning about retro Trends? They're on TikTok. Right. And so it's funny how the technology that on the one hand is the source of frustration and anxiety is also the vehicle through which they're being introduced to the analog world.

[Julie Beck]

Okay, so I was wondering because, you know, when you say you want to return to another era, an earlier era, maybe they're not thinking about the things they would be dissatisfied with in the earlier era.

[Natalie Brennan]

Right.

[Julie Beck]

Like lack of social progress that we have since made, it seems like you're saying it tends to be about something particular that they are yearning for rather than like a holistic desire to go back to all the things.

[Clay Rutledge]

Yeah, absolutely. You know, one of the things That I think people don't appreciate about nostalgic is it's often portrayed as just repeating something and it really isn't. It's more of like a revising. There's a creative process. Humans are really a progress oriented species. We're never content, we're never satisfied, we're always tinkering. We always think things can be a little bit better. And it's. It's frustrating, right, because it often means we're not ever just really happy. But that's also the thing that drives us to positive change. And nostalgia is very much an ingredient of that.

[Julie Beck]

So, Natalie, I can remember really distinctly the last time that I was ever truly lost. It was like two months before I would get my first smartphone. The year was 2013.

[Natalie Brennan]

So you were. How old were you then?

[Julie Beck]

I was 23.

[Natalie Brennan]

Okay.

[Julie Beck]

I was in St. Petersburg, Russia. And what I would do to get around in the days before I had Google Maps available on my phone all the time is I would look up directions on the computer before I left and I would write them down sometimes on my hand.

[Natalie Brennan]

Totally.

[Julie Beck]

I had done this. I'd gotten my directions together, I had gone sightseeing and I was heading back to my hotel, but I was so jet lagged that I fell asleep on the bus. And when I woke up, I had no idea if I'd already missed my stop or not.

[Natalie Brennan]

Oh, no. Do you speak Russian?

[Julie Beck]

I definitely don't, but I went up to the bus driver anyways to try to ask him if we had already passed the stop. A lot of people spoke English, you know, but he got really angry and was like, you can't talk to me while I'm driving. So he wouldn't talk to me. And I'm freaking out. And this young woman behind me, she can see how upset I am. And she speaks English. So she comes up and tells me like, yes, we already passed the stop for my hotel. Lovely woman. She gets off the bus with me at the next stop and she drew me a map on a piece of paper that she had. And she was like, there's this one really long road. You just have to walk on that road the whole way back. And the hotel was on that road. So you would, like, see it, you know, looming in the distance. And I remember she said, it's really far. You're gonna think that you're never gonna get there. But I promise, if you just keep walking on this one road, like, you will get back to the hotel.

[Natalie Brennan]

Oh, my God, I'd be crying. Were you crying?

[Julie Beck]

Oh, for sure, for sure. So, anyway, I set off down the road for a really long time. It felt like miles, multiple. I'm alone. I was traveling alone when out of nowhere, this man comes running towards me.

[Narrator/Promoter]

Nope.

[Julie Beck]

Well, it turns out he's from a cruise ship that is docked nearby, and he is trying to find McDonald's.

[Natalie Brennan]

No.

[Julie Beck]

I tell him what happened, and he says, oh, well, that's the same direction as my cruise ship that I need to get back to. Like, I'll just walk with you until you get back. Eventually, my hotel appears on the horizon finally. And there's really no other word for it. He, like, scampers off into the night. And as he runs away, he shouts, goodbye, Julie. I love you.

[Natalie Brennan]

No.

[Julie Beck]

So, anyway, I made it home safely. And that was the last time I was ever lost in my life.

[Natalie Brennan]

Wow. I'm feeling both jealousy and awe in that. I will. I've never had that experience. I mean, I've been on public transportation, of course, while my phone has died.

[Julie Beck]

Yeah.

[Natalie Brennan]

But I have never been an adult without a smartphone.

[Julie Beck]

I am kind of nostalgic for that memory because it was one of those moments that really restores your faith in humanity. You know, like, I was screwed, and people appeared and they helped me when I really needed it. And that made me feel, like, swaddled tightly in the fabric of human community. And none of that would have happened if I had a smartphone, if I had Google Maps.

[Natalie Brennan]

Yeah. I've only really ever had that experience manufactured for me.

[Julie Beck]

Really?

[Natalie Brennan]

Yes. I went on this program in college. It was called the New England Literature program.

[Julie Beck]

Okay.

[Natalie Brennan]

And it's basically living in cabins on a lake in New Hampshire for six weeks. And when you arrive, they take your phone for the remainder of the program. There's no personal technology, no phones, no computers. You read Emerson Thoreau.

[Julie Beck]

Of course you do. Who else would you read?

[Natalie Brennan]

You visit Walden Pond. And on the second day of the program is Get Lost day.

[Julie Beck]

Okay.

[Natalie Brennan]

In the morning, we learned how to use a compass. And then promptly, we were driven blindfolded, which now sounds like a cult, but it wasn't. To different locations in groups, and then shown on a map where we were and where camp was. And told to get back by dinner.

[Julie Beck]

Wait, wait, wait. Where, like, describe to me the vibe of, like, where we were dropping.

[Natalie Brennan]

Where we were dropped off.

[Julie Beck]

Yeah, Field, field. End of sentence. Field. Okay, okay, okay.

[Natalie Brennan]

In the beginning, you're quite confident that you're. You're on track. And I think a few hours in, it became quite clear to us that we weren't making it back to camp and that we would just find a ride. Later in the day, we would ask somebody to take us back to camp and just kind of spent enjoying and exploring.

[Clay Rutledge]

Oh, wow.

[Julie Beck]

So you just pivoted. You were like, this is never happening. We're not gonna find our way back. Let's just be in this field.

[Natalie Brennan]

We're gonna. We are going to touch grass and vibe.

[Julie Beck]

Okay.

[Natalie Brennan]

I'm sure we were walking for hours. But I think the bigger point instead was to like, get to know each other. You're like placed into vulnerability. You're going to share this experience. But I do think extremely fondly about the program. Those whole six weeks really just sparkle with nostalgia for me. And I really struggle to differentiate between how much of that experience was the no tech of it all and how much of it was just the experience at large.

[Julie Beck]

Clay, what do you think? The thing is that people who are nostalgic for the 90s or the 2000s are wanting to bring forward and revise, as you say.

[Clay Rutledge]

If I could sum it up using two words, that'd be great. I would say control and community. And the reason I'm picking those two words is because we've done, in addition to the surveys, we've done a number of qualitative projects that look at the types of nostalgic related posts that Gen Z adults make on different social media and websites that they frequent. And what you often find is this sense that they love technology, but they want to be in control of it, not feel controlled by it. So it's that more sense of intentional use. And this is why I think you see these interesting trends like Gen Z buying old ipods and you know, they want to have their new iPhone, everybody wants to have the Uber app, and all the different things that make our lives more convenient. But sometimes there's a sense of like, maybe there's a more low tech option that allows me just to listen to music.

[Julie Beck]

Yeah.

[Clay Rutledge]

And the community. I think Gen Z's figuring out that there's something missing in computer mediated social relationships. And on the one hand, the social media is really useful because it helps you organize events, meet people you would have never met. But at the same time, they look at this time period right before smartphones really became dominant, and they said, oh, there's, there's a sense of freedom, there's a sense of organic social life.

[Julie Beck]

You're not looking at your phone the whole time.

[Clay Rutledge]

And they want to build that. In a lot of times, nostalgia is framed in a very zero sum sort of framework, where it's like, oh, you're either for the past or you're for the future. And I think what Gen Z's showing us is they want both. And, you know, there's something to say intergenerationally about this, which is maybe young people are learning about 90s fashions on TikTok. But then what we often find is that sparks a conversation with older generations, whether it's a parent or a coworker, you know, or somebody in their run club that they're like, oh, was life really like this? Did you really do this? And it creates a dialogue between generations, which I think in this era where everyone has their own screens and their own tailored content is something that people feel like they're really missing.

[Julie Beck]

Yeah, I remember my dad always used to talk about that, that sort of, like, shared experience of music because you had to, like, put on a record. And so everybody's listening to the Rolling Stones, like, whether they like it or. And now, obviously, we just have our sort of, like, isolated pods. And you don't know that I'm listening to that same Taylor Swift song, like, 10 times in a row, and you'll never know.

[Clay Rutledge]

Now I know.

[Julie Beck]

Okay. Yeah, I did. Yeah. Now everybody knows. We're gonna take a quick break. When we come back, why is this analog nostalgia bubbling up now? Does it have anything to do with AI coming on the scene?

[Narrator/Promoter]

A few months ago, I invited Atlantic staff writer Charlie Wurzel onto the David Frum show. As podcast hosts, we talked about the pressures and temptations of the medium. Outrage often gets rewarded. Nuance does not. Charlie doesn't take that bait. On his show Galaxy Brain, he covers the ways technology is changing how we think and how we live. Not just the obvious stuff, but the subtle ways it shapes what we believe, how we talk to each other, how we see ourselves and our neighbors. If you've ever wondered how smart people end up believing implausible things online, Galaxy Brain is worth your time. It's thoughtful, surprising, and a little unsettling in the very best way. Find it wherever you listen or watch.

[Julie Beck]

Clay. Why do you think the nostalgia for analog technology is so popular right now? Does all the buzz about AI have anything to do with it?

[Clay Rutledge]

I think AI is part of it. Because if machines can do all this cognitive work and maybe even creative work that we thought was the distinct domain of humanity, now you're seeing more of this holistic thinking of, like, what is the essence of being a person? And this nostalgia, I think, is really helping people get that sense of Embodiment of, like, you know, this isn't just cognition. There's something about emotion, spirituality, living in the world, having these tactile sensory experiences in person, real contact with other real human beings, just with, like, all the

[Julie Beck]

parts of life that are more than just being a brain in a jar, basically.

[Clay Rutledge]

Yeah, that's a great way of putting that. And if you look at a lot of the consumer nostalgic trends, many of them driven by Gen Z, they're very much that. Right. They're the rise of independent bookstores, the growth of music festivals, book clubs, game nights, all tech technology that's not online, that you have to. I was talking to somebody the other day about retro video games, and they were saying, well, one thing that's really cool is you have to sit next to each other to play, like two players.

[Natalie Brennan]

Yeah.

[Clay Rutledge]

You're not playing online. And so I think there's this idea that even if it's technology, even if it's like video games or music. You mentioned vinyl records, which, you know, one of the big drivers of vinyl record sales is Gen Z. There's these low tech, retro tech trends that really seem to be about being out in the world, handling things, engaging with people. That's a big driver of this.

[Julie Beck]

Natalie, let's play a little game where I name a thing that people might be nostalgic for and then try to psychoanalyze what it means about what they actually want from their relationship to technology.

[Natalie Brennan]

Okay.

[Julie Beck]

Okay. My first one, I see a lot of memes about people missing the days when people had computer rooms in their home. Like, picture a big wooden entertainment center with a big monitor. The shelves are all covered in CD ROMs. And then the meme says something like, we used to respect the computer. What does this mean?

[Natalie Brennan]

This is really giving that control element that Clay was talking about in that we still want to honor our computer. We love computer time. Right. But I think we miss that separation in which your technology wasn't on you at all times. Right. My phone is kind of just a mini computer at this point, so I think we like having some separation of, like, now it's time for me to go in the computer room, and when I'm done, it's done. Does that resonate with you?

[Julie Beck]

Yeah, it's a deliberate choice to go in the computer room and sit your butt in front of it and use it and then leave.

[Natalie Brennan]

And then leave.

[Julie Beck]

I think you're onto something. Okay. I am personally very nostalgic for Google Reader, which, for those who may not know, it was an aggregation service for websites, RSS feeds, which doesn't sound fun, but it was basically in the late 2000s. I would use this to follow all my favorite blogs and cooking websites and news sources, and it was all in one place. What do you think I'm actually longing for here?

[Natalie Brennan]

Okay, well, I think for me what comes up here is feeling like the Internet isn't any more curated towards what I want to see. So, for example, like I'll open my Instagram app and I no longer see posts by my friends and family who I follow, but instead I see a lot of pushed posts. The algorithm just sends me what it thinks I want to see. And so maybe you're yearning for that time where the Internet was curated to your niche hobbies and what you are

[Julie Beck]

actually interested in as opposed to just a bunch of slop.

[Natalie Brennan]

Okay, I wanna ask you one.

[Julie Beck]

Okay.

[Natalie Brennan]

I am also one of the analog gen zers who love to shoot film and collect old cameras.

[Julie Beck]

Thoughts, I don't know about you, but sometimes I pick up my phone to take a picture of probably my cats, and before I know it, I'm like sucked into a million other things on my phone. So I think maybe there's also something about when you wanna take a picture, you just wanna take a picture. And taking that function out of the everything device and letting it just be its own thing, maybe it's that crushed it. Clay. I was fascinated to learn that like back in the 17th to 19th century, nostalgia was considered a disease and like doctors tried to cure it with leeches. I read that there was this one American doctor who kind of thought the way to cure it was just bullying people, like shaming them with public ridicule. And obviously we no longer think nostalgia is literally a disease, but I think a thread of that negative attitude remains. I feel like I sometimes hear other people talk about nostalgia as though you're trying to hide from reality and maybe, you know, you should be a little embarrassed. Do you see that reaction from people when it comes to this current cultural yearning for a pre digital era that okay, it's not a disease, but maybe it's still not good for you?

[Clay Rutledge]

Yeah, definitely. People seem to have this view of nostalgia as anti progress or holding people back from progress. And I spend a fair amount of time trying to disabuse them of that view and show them decades of empirical research. It really isn't holding people back. We all have to adjust to change and nostalgia helps people navigate that in the best way that they can. Even people who don't think Nostalgia is a barrier to progress. Oftentimes you see it characterized as a waste of time, like it's a trivial thing and it's a distraction at best. Actually, nostalgia increases goal motivation, increases a sense of meaning in life, increases optimism, it makes people more creative, it increases empathy. Most nostalgic memories are social memories. So nostalgia actually pushes us towards each other.

[Julie Beck]

When you're saying that some people are seeing nostalgia as an impediment to progress, do you think some of that has to do with the sort of make America great again brand of nostalgia, where, like you're saying, people are looking to the past to potentially bring things into the future, but sometimes what they want to bring into the future is, for instance, like stricter and more stereotypical gender roles.

[Clay Rutledge]

So declinism is the view that things are getting worse and the past was better, whereas nostalgia really is just more or less warm feeling for the past. And I think the two are often conflated. We also find overwhelmingly that most of the time, nostalgia in general makes us see the humanity and other people, or another way of saying it is nostalgia might be helping people wrestle with declinism and hopefully in a more productive and constructive way. You know, a lot of Gen Z might feel like, oh, things are going in the wrong direction and their future is going to be worse than the future of previous generations. And there's certainly a lot of data to support them. Nostalgia is helping them feel agentic and say, well, you know what? We can change that. We can do something else.

[Julie Beck]

It just feels surprising when you see an era that was not a great time for a lot of people, recast as something to be nostalgic for.

[Clay Rutledge]

Right. There are people that have nostalgia for Covid, which, again, not that long ago, not that fun. Famously not that fun. But you know what, what's interesting is that wasn't that surprising to me when I first started doing this research. I was a professor at the University of Southampton in England. And Southampton, the city that was heavily bombed during World War II as a port city, and a good chunk of the city was destroyed. Not a good time. When we were doing this research, this was a little over 20 years ago, we were collecting nostalgic narratives from older British adults. Many of them were young children during that time. And they had this nostalgia. Yeah, but what it was is they were saying, well, this was a time that was defining character. Defining it wasn't a pleasant time, shaped our character, shaped our view of the world, shaped our ability to appreciate what's important in life.

[Julie Beck]

So how does this sort of personal individual nostalgia right then grow and end up becoming a cultural moment or an Internet trend.

[Clay Rutledge]

As a lot of times what people are really looking for with nostalgia is an opportunity to share memories. Oftentimes nostalgia is portrayed as this very isolating personal experience. After all, this is in your head. You're experiencing this emotion. But people love opportunities where they can talk about nostalgic experiences, Particularly ones where they might have their own idiosyncratic memory of, but it was shared with other people. I think this is why people have a nostalgia for television where you had to wait, everyone had to watch the show at the same time, and then the next day we could all talk about it. People are looking for ways to make contact over shared experiences where their personal nostalgia is woven into a broader cultural nostalgia that connects us.

[Julie Beck]

And we've talked about control a good amount and obviously we can't actually travel back in time to an era when nobody had smartphones. Sam Altman is going to keep making new iterations of ChatGPT and I have no control to stop him. But do the things that we're nostalgic for. Hold any lessons for how we can exert the control that we do have over the role tech plays in our lives.

[Clay Rutledge]

When the broader world outside of yourself, when you scale out, when it feels like you don't have any control over that and it can be anxiety provoking you if you just focus your attention on your corner of the world, we actually do have a lot more control. Agency often happens at a local and at a personal level. You can help your neighbors, you can help your family, you can help your friends, you can be involved with those things. And even media engagement's a way to remind ourselves of that. It's like, yeah, I don't have control over the next Internet iteration of a particular technology, but I can go to that retro store down the street and buy some Blu Ray discs and have a movie night at my house and have some people over. And so I think people are really are really seeking that kind of experience.

[Julie Beck]

Are you seeing people actually acting on this pre digital nostalgia?

[Clay Rutledge]

There is an increased sales in physical media. The live music market is growing and mass attendance is up. Like young people going to church. Number of independent bookstores and the number of chain bookstores like Barnes and Nobles is growing. There does seem to be something changing in our culture that's a push back towards the in person and the analog clay.

[Julie Beck]

I've noticed many times in this conversation that you're very optimistic about Gen Z, which is not how I often hear people talking about that generation, especially when it comes to tech. So I'm curious to hear a little bit more about how you're thinking about it and whether Gen Z is kind of leading this trend for other generations.

[Clay Rutledge]

My thinking on Gen Z has really evolved, so I'm way more bullish on Gen Z than I used to be. So I'm a psychologist. And so when all of this research was coming out about these growing mental health problems that young people were facing and how Gen Z reported higher rates of depression, anxiety, loneliness, pessimism for the future, like everyone else, I was like, this is, this isn't good. Young people are supposed to be the ones that are optimistic. They're supposed to be the ones that, you know, that are look to the future with possibility. And that didn't seem to be the case. But then I started really studying this historical nostalgia and started seeing like, yeah, Gen Z has their challenges and maybe mental health is one of them, but they're not just sitting there doing nothing about it. They're using their creativity and the problem solving capacities that all humans have to do something about it. And I feel like this historical nostalgia that they're engaging aging is just one example of that. It's not people my age that remember that time. It's Gen Z that are saying, hey, like maybe we're spending too much time online. And so for instance, there's surveys showing that Gen Z are the generation most likely to report disconnecting from their digital devices. So now I have a different view. It's, you know, it's not a certain view, of course, it's an optimistic view though, that Gen Z might not only be doing better than we think they are in navigating their challenges and having the agency to do so, but they actually might lead us out of this mess. They might be the ones that remind the rest of us that there is an in person, real world life. So, you know, I often say that it's common for people to feel sorry for Gen Z and worry that as, as digital natives they were born too late to really appreciate the analog world. But in reality it might be that they're the generation that leads us back to.

[Julie Beck]

Sounds like you're not so sure, Natalie.

[Natalie Brennan]

I said I wanted to throw my phone in the east river and suddenly now I am tasked with healing everyone relationship to technology.

[Julie Beck]

Not just you, just you and your entire generation are responsible for the rest of us.

[Natalie Brennan]

I don't know. I get so frustrated about this because I feel like I hear it all the time. It's the same thing with climate change. Like, we'll be the ones that need to fix all of it. I'm just like, this list is getting a little bit long. We've got a lot to fix now.

[Julie Beck]

Honestly, I think what talking to Clay made me realize is that so many of us are just looking for inspiration on how to move forward with technology in a way that doesn't feel bad because we have to live in 2026. It's never going to be 1996 again.

[Natalie Brennan]

Right. I think as a joint mission, then I can get behind that when, like,

[Julie Beck]

Gen Z doesn't have to be the leader. Nobody's the leader, nobody's the follower. We're just figuring it out together.

[Natalie Brennan]

Yeah. Or even bigger picture, when I feel like this is just on each one of us individually versus, you know, something that we're all just, like, trying to renegotiate together. When it's an individual mission. I think that's maybe when I go escapist mode. When I go, like, fantasize about throwing the phone in the river. Want to go back in time, back to those New England woods, to no phone.

[Julie Beck]

Back to your fields, back to your compass.

[Natalie Brennan]

Yeah, back to my grass.

[Julie Beck]

That's all for this episode of how to Touch Grass. This episode was hosted by me, Julie Beck, and co hosted and produced by Natalie Brennan. Our editors are Claudina Baid and Jocelyn Frank. Fact checked by Hazela Salim Peier. Our engineers are Rob Smirciak and Miguel Cadezcal. Rob also composed some of the music for this show. The executive producer of Audio is Claudina Baid, and the managing editor of Audio is Andrea Valdez. Next week, a priest or a partner, a therapist or a friend. Those people have natural limits. They get tired, they push back. But the chatbot doesn't. These programs are trained to be endlessly validating and endlessly educated.

[Natalie Brennan]

Agreeable.

[Julie Beck]

Turning to AI for help with anxiety could actually end up making you more anxious. That's next time on how to Touch Grass.

[Narrator/Promoter]

A few months ago, I invited Atlantic staff writer Charlie Warzel onto the David Frum Show. As podcast hosts, we talked about the pressures and temptations of the medium. Outrage often gets rewarded. Nuance does not. Charlie doesn't take that bait. On his show Galaxy Brain, he covers the ways technology is changing how we think and how we live. Not just the obvious stuff, but the subtle ways it shapes what we believe, how we talk to each other, how we see ourselves and our neighbors. If you've ever wondered how smart people end up believing implausible things online. Galaxy Brain is worth your time. It's thoughtful, surprising, and a little unsettling in the very best way. Find it wherever you listen or.