Craving Connection, Some Gen-Z Students Unplug

You know the rap on Gen Z students: Our attention spans have been ravaged by TikTok and texting. We can’t read, or we don’t want to. We’re more isolated, anxious, and antisocial than past generations at our age — partly because we’ve lived large swaths of our lives through screens.

As a 22-year-old who just graduated from college, I can attest that all of that is true. But despite the stereotype of Gen Z as phone-addicted, soft-shelled teens who grew up with iPads more readily on hand than books, lots of students embody a more restrained relationship with technology than you might think.

By the time Gen Z-ers roll into college, many are keenly aware of the negative effects digital technology can have on our attention spans and mental health. Some students are taking steps to loosen its tight grasp.

That means unplugging. Some people listen to vinyl records instead of streaming music, while others have deleted their social-media accounts. Some shoot photographs on film cameras, tap away at typewriters, and flip through paper-and-cardboard books. Some of my peers, as The New York Times has reported, have even ditched their smartphones altogether, opting instead for old-school flip phones.

What’s behind the growing preference for analog? It seems to be more than a battle against screen addiction, or even a taste for vintage aesthetics. It’s a craving for connection, both social and tactile — to feel and experience things, to be present in a given moment. In other words, as some Gen Z-ers might put it, to drop the screens and “touch grass.”

‘A ritualistic appreciation’

“It feels like we’re harkening back to a time,” said Leo Ackerman, “when things were more appreciated and given a bit more weight.” Ackerman is a sophomore at Lansing Community College, in Michigan, where he’s the president of the Vinyl Record Club, which meets for an hour and a half every other Tuesday to share greasy pizza and some good old-fashioned music.

On two turntables atop a DJ cart covered in stickers, students take turns playing tracks by bands like Joy Division and Sublime. The artists that students bring in depend on the meeting’s theme, which Ackerman selects each week. Recent themes include “law and order” (songs about crimes) and food songs (including “A Taste of Honey” by The Beatles).

“It’s kind of a ritualistic appreciation of the art,” Ackerman said. “We just come together and … appreciate and really think about the stuff that we’re listening to.”

They take note of the track sequencing, album art, and themes of each record. On the surface, it’s about the music. But it’s also about connecting with each other.

“There’s this isolation that I feel has kind of taken over people around our age,” Ackerman told me. “People feel very alone and very online.”

Sharing physical records makes relationships feel more real, Ackerman said.

“These are real people who make music that you can touch and hold, and you’re bringing it [to] the friends who you know and cherish in real life,” he said.

Hundreds of miles away from Lansing, in Washington, D.C., Ed Holly is also keeping the vinyl tradition alive. I noticed his record player in the background of our Zoom call, his bedroom walls adorned with posters for artists popular before he was born, like Metallica and the Notorious B.I.G., and newer ones, like Mac Miller and Tame Impala.

But Holly and I didn’t talk about music; we talked about books. The Georgetown University senior said he has swapped out “doom-scrolling” for reading books each morning and night. Although he reads a lot for school (he’s an English major), he finds it important to carve out time to read for fun, too — a rare act for people our age.

“You just need to put the phone away sometimes,” Holly said.

Holly helps run the university’s “Lattes and Lit” book club, which, according to its website, promotes reading for pleasure. Around 440 students, faculty members, and staff have signed up for the club’s email list, and 10 to 20 people show up for each meeting, said Beth Marhanka, the head of outreach and engagement for the Georgetown’s library.

Elsewhere in the library, Marhanka said students flock to the Maker Hub — partly to use the 3D printers and laser cutters, but also for the more hands-on stuff available: sewing, woodworking, and book-binding materials.

Melissa Jones, a literature liaison and reference librarian at Georgetown, said she sees a significant number of students who, when given the option between an e-book and a printed book, select print.

“There’s this recognition in many of our students that there’s something about the physical environment that actually helps with their focus,” Jones said.

At the University of Florida, students have been all over a typewriter available to borrow from the Architecture and Fine Arts Library, according to the access-services manager, Lori Johnson.

“I think they just love getting in touch with how it was before all of the productivity and the noise,” Johnson said. “It’s so novel that they just want to learn about it.”

In other words, some Gen Z-ers just want to slow down. The digital age has arrived at an unprecedented “scope, scale, and speed,” said Roberta Katz, a Stanford University anthropologist who researched and wrote a book about Gen Z. The high-speed influx of information buzzing in our pockets can lead us to feel weary and overwhelmed, she said.

“Going to a slower methodology, as it were, can provide some comfort,” Katz said. “A break from the rapidity.”

Fringe Benefits

That move can come with unexpected benefits. Emmet Thompson, a recent graduate of the University of Montana, swapped his iPhone for a Nokia flip phone during his junior year. “I spent too much time on it,” he said. “I remember it feeling like, what are we doing here?”

It was a year of bliss. The flip phone made him feel more grounded. It also earned him social currency. “I got this girl’s number at a park, and she thought it was really cool,” Thompson said. “I was like, ‘Yep, I’m the man.’”

Thompson now works in Austin, Texas. His job in cybersecurity sales has required him to begrudgingly re-adapt to smartphone life, so he bought a janky old iPhone off a friend for 20 bucks. The back of the phone is shattered and the screen sometimes emanates weird colors, but it gets the job done. He barely uses it anyway.

For Luke Nowlis, ditching his iPhone wasn’t about aesthetics or nostalgia, or even social clout. It’s just more practical, he said. He probably would never have realized this if he hadn’t suffered a concussion in high school and been forced to go phoneless for two months.

“It was rough at the time, but then I realized I liked it more,” said Nowlis, a freshman at Loyola University Chicago, where I heard he’s known as the “flip-phone guy.”

“I would have to find ways to entertain myself that weren’t just going on my phone,” he said. “I always had more fun when I had to do that.”

Yes, there are tradeoffs. He’s less immediately reachable, so sometimes he misses out on plans. But he said that liberates him. He’s become more independent, he said, more capable of connecting. In elevators, when other students look down at their phones as a crutch, he strikes up a conversation.

I find this all very cool and enviable. It’s like when someone tells you they’re taking a “dry January” break from drinking, and you admire them for it, but you don’t really want to do it yourself. Still, since talking to Nowlis, I’ve begun practicing some of his habits. When I walk from the bus stop to work, I try not to stare down at my phone. I take my headphones off.

I’ve noticed more things — the way the flowers on a certain tree changed from green to pink and back again within two weeks, or little snippets of strangers’ conversations.

And it’s got me thinking: Maybe unplugged Gen Z-ers like Nowlis and Thompson are onto something. Among a pool of people with their heads in the digital cloud, some analog students may be charting a path back down to earth.