Smartphones and AI have altered the educational experience in ways that we are probably only just beginning to grapple with. When Grit Matthias Phelps, a German language instructor at Cornell, noticed that her students were using AI and online translation platforms “to churn out grammatically perfect assignments,” she decided to push back by bringing dozens of manual typewriters into her classroom.

Asking her students, “What’s the point of me reading [an assignment] if it’s already correct anyway, and you didn’t write it yourself?” she invited them to experience what writing and thinking “were like before everything turned digital” by giving them an analog assignment. (Delightfully, she brought in her own 7- and 9-year-old children to serve as analog “tech support.”)

Students and teacher discovered:

• Manual typewriters were not “intuitive” to a smartphone generation unacquainted with carriage returns and the need for pinky-finger strength.
• Students had to “think more intentionally” because they could not just delete and correct their mistakes. (One student said, “I was forced to actually think about the problem on my own instead of delegating to AI or Google search.”)
• The exercise led to more interaction with fellow classmates.

Although this particular analog exercise was instructor-initiated, there are growing reports that Millennials and Gen Zers are experiencing “digital fatigue” (also called “digital burnout” or “digital exhaustion”), defined by overwhelm from “always-on screens, pinging notifications, instant streaming, and endless scrolling.” According to one poll, from 78% to 81% of adults in those two generations “wish they could disconnect from digital devices more easily”—and their “digital detox” searches are way up.

Reportedly, this fatigue is leading to a resurgence of “personal and human” analog technology—“physical, tactile devices … such as film cameras, vinyl records, landline phones, and even physical books”—that provide “a sense of trust and longevity” rather than convenience. Others characterize the analog resurgence as “cultural resistance” and “quiet rebellion—a conscious act of reclaiming agency in an age where algorithms shape our tastes and screens mediate our experiences.”

If this is truly a meaningful trend, it is music to our ears at Solari, where we have steadily promoted the need to retain analog options for reasons that range from privacy and sovereignty to resilience. And of course, one of the best analog options of all, and one that we regularly celebrate, is—cash!