being offline is cool now?

Emma Chamberlain· Host0:00

For the last few months, my algorithm has been feeding me content about one particular conversation, and at first, I thought it was hyper-specific to me. But as it continued to fill my feed day in and day out, especially on YouTube, I started to realize, wait, I think this is actually a bigger cultural conversation that's happening in general, and it piqued my interest. This particular conversation is the conversation around being offline. I can't tell you how many video essays I've watched about how being offline is the new cool, the new status symbol. Why I ditched my phone and got a flip phone. Well, I guess that's still a phone. Why I ditched my smartphone to get a flip phone. Why I started listening to music on my old iPod. How I picked up analog hobbies after iPhone addiction and so on and so forth. This seems to be the cultural conversation of the moment right now. Being offline, which on the surface level is wonderful. For years, I've been talking about how we all gotta get offline a little, you know? But not that that's an original idea. I've just been chiming into a larger conversation that's been starting to build, you know, especially with, like, psychologists and stuff online who are like, "The phone's really bad. Be careful." And I think because I have a job on social media, perhaps I became sensitized