My two cents on the "analog bag" and the "going analog" trend

Some days ago, I came across this video by Australian youtuber Drama Kween, where she was commenting on a new Tiktok trend named "analog bag":

Now, the analog bag is just a "branch" of the much broader trend of "going analog", namely replacing online hobbies and entertainment forms with an analog or offline counterparts, aiming to reduce one's screentime and phone addiction.

Some of its most popular examples include using digital cameras instead of your phone camera, having a "dumb phone" just to call and text instead of a smartphone, carrying an Ipod instead of using music streaming services like Spotify, and so on.

Therefore, the "analog bag" is a bag, often a tote bag, that contains all those anlog objects so that you can carry them with you and not look at your phone when you're outside.

Like most Tiktok trends, however, it got taken to the extreme, as Drama Kween herself pointed out. We see people with enormous bags, full of all the craft kits you could imagine, as well as the analog replacements for all the apps on a smartphone.

The youtuber highlighted some important paradoxes: first, all these people were flexing their analog lifestyle by posting it online on Tiktok, the ultimate brainrot app.

Secondly, the "analog bag" trend paved the way into a new flavour of overconsumption: many creators started recommending bags and items that you could find on Amazon or Tiktok shop, some not-so-analog marketplaces. Using an "analog" method, a.k.a. going to physical shops, would have required more time, and a level of patience that these users could possibly not have anymore.

Leaving aside some creators that claim to have "invented" the analog bag, whereas it's basically what most people were carrying around before smartphones were a thing, are "analog bags" mostly harmful?

No, but there's a thin line that we might cross when thinking about our personal "analog bag". I'll explain what I mean, using my personal experience with analog alternatives and my experience as someone who carries her whole house in her bag.

First of all, some of them are impractical. If you follow these creators to a T, you will be back to doomscrolling in no time.

I've seen videos of people carrying around whole boxes of puzzles, a ton of marker pens for their coloring book and even watercolor painting kits. Where on Earth are you going to have enough space and time to do all of that (coloring book aside)? Maybe if you're at the tables of a picnic area in a park, sure, but are there that many other occasions to do that? And, if you find the right situation, good luck not getting your outfit stained!

What I mean is, by packing your bag like this, you're setting yourself up to failure. You'll be carrying around your heavy ass bag during your day, frustrated because you packed so much and you cannot do any of the things you brought with you. The next day, you'll be back on your phone.

The thing with hobbies is, if you have interests but not a plan, you will never stay consistent, and that goes for all the activities you want to do. So, if you want to build an analog bag, prioritize smaller and practical objects, like a camera, a sudoku book, a novel, a newspaper, yarn and knitting tools, or a journal.

This post by user @mozielife on Instagram is a good example of a practical "analog" bag. Sure, the travel mahjong set may be a bit over the top, but it takes little space and allows you to travel lightly.

Now it's time for an unpopular opinion, but I feel like most of these creators chose some of their items for their analog bag (not all of them) just because they were analog.

It should be quite obvious, but I'll say it anyways: your analog hobbies won't save you from your phone if you don't care about them.

Last year I bought a coloring book in order to have more "analog" hobbies. For context, I have always loathed coloring when I was a child, especially coloring books. Guess how it ended this time? Exactly: I did not go past the first page.

Hobbies are supposed to be things we enjoy in the first place, so why should be force ourselves into an activity we're not curious about just because it's analog?

This tendency can also lead to demonizing hobbies that are just as good for the brain, but are not analog by nature, such as playing videogames. If you're genuinely interesed in playing videogames, then you don't need to switch to more "analog" hobbies you don't care about.

Your house also has its importance: if you do not have much space, you can only have a limited amount of craft tools with you.

Which brings us to the biggest limits of this trend: it's very much focused solely on hobbies.

While it's amazing to start out somewhere in stopping (or reducing) doomscrolling, and hobbies are certainly great alternatives, they are not just the only part of your life that can be improved to get a more "analog" life.

One of the simplest swaps you can do is replacing your phone with an analog alarm clock. It's also mentioned in this article by The Guardian that summarizes the main ways to fight your phone addiction.

I have personally tried it out and, although most analog alarm clocks have god-awful sounds, it allows me not to be on my phone for at least the first 15 minutes that I wake up and get out of bed faster.

Another thing unrelated to hobbies that you can do, if you're still in school or at university, is to take notes on paper instead of using an Ipad. Yes, I know, I've seen the trend of the Ipad aesthetic notes some years ago (does it still exist?), but going back to pen and paper for your notes might be a good way to integrate analog media into your daily life more seamlessly.

For example, if you're worried about your screentime but love videogames, instead of switching to analog hobbies you can swap your Ipad/computer notes with paper ones.

Ultimately, the analog bag and the whole "analog" movement is not harmful per se, but it's always important to prioritize balance and what works for you.

You may not be able to swap every single app on your phone in favour of its analog counterpart, or (crazy!) you could even find its digital counterpart more practical to you, and that's perfectly okay.

As long as you're not doomscrolling on social media for hours, frying your brain with short-form content, polarizing news from questionable sources and all sorts of harmful pipelines.

Now I want to hear your opinion: what do you think of these trends? Have you "gone analog"? Tell me in the comments and subscribe to stay updated!