10/07/2025
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Teens and twenty-somethings may have grown up consuming media on their phones, ordering food on apps and using rideshares, but some have had enough. 🔗 https://on.wsj.com/434crRC
Driven by a desire to escape screens and reclaim a sense of control, they are resurrecting digital cameras, flip phones and CDs. It’s not unusual to see them roaming the aisles of a record store or doing sidewalk photo shoots with digital cameras, as if they had traveled back to the early 2000s.
Hunter White, a 25-year-old data engineer, said he collects CDs to escape the domination of streaming services, which he believes underpay artists and have inconsistent offerings. He sources discs from garage and estate sales, thrift shops, record stores and vendor events, and listens on a player Sony introduced in 2002.
“People, especially in Gen Z, are just tired of not owning anything,” said White, a self-described member of “the music nerds of the internet.”
