As screen fatigue grows, a new trend is swapping smartphones for crosswords and sketchbooks – turning the humble bag into a tool for offline living. So-called analogue bags, filled with activities such as knitting, novels and journals, have become the unexpected accessory of the season, championed by millennials and Gen Z as a way to reduce screen time.
The term was coined by Sierra Campbell, a 31-year-old content creator based in California. “My biggest fear is that I’ll lie on my deathbed and regret how much time I spent on my phone,” she says in a TikTok video. The idea has paradoxically become hugely popular on social media, with users posting videos talking through the contents of their analogue bags and sharing tips.
David Sax, author of The Revenge of Analog, approves. “Our phones have everything you could ever ask for, so you need an alternative to hand in order to fill that void,” he says. The trend forms part of a wider backlash against doomscrolling and the pressure to always be online. According to Ofcom, the average adult in Great Britain checks their phone every 12 minutes.
Campbell says the catalyst came from reading Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit, which outlines three components of a habit: cue, routine and reward. Rather than trying to eliminate a bad habit, he argues it is more effective to keep the cue and reward while changing the routine. For Campbell, this meant reaching for a bag of screen-free activities instead of her phone.
Pete Etchells, a professor of psychology at Bath Spa University, argues that rather than being addicted to our phones, we have simply formed habits around their use. He hopes the rise of analogue bags is “a shift in how people understand their relationship with technology”. The trend suggests people are attempting to change their relationship with screens for the long term, not just a brief digital detox.
