At the dawn of 2026, social media influencers at home and abroad proclaimed it the year of the “analog lifestyle,” a call to reduce digital connectivity as smart tech and screen time dominate a person’s attention span.

Selly Tan, an influencer from California, said people are “craving something real again,” and vowed to print her photos, read more books and magazines and take up hobbies that don’t need Wi-Fi.

Rosie Okatcha, an influencer from the U.K., proclaimed the year would be “The Age of Analog” with consumers swapping music streaming for iPods and vinyl records, and choosing crafting over doomscrolling.

Sanchi Oswal, an influencer from Germany, said in a post she felt going analog would reduce her “exposure and reliance on digital stimuli” and, in particular, to her phone.

For a generation that grew up in an entirely digital world, dependence on technology is a familiar habit that some are trying to break.

“From noon to 5 p.m., I’m looking at screens all day and then I’m going home and I’m just looking at my phone, scrolling on social media,” said Lillie Beacope, a senior at USC enrolled in a class on entertainment, marketing and culture. “I just feel like there’s not a chance for us within our day-to-day lives, to really get a break from technology.”

Spend any time outside, and you’ll see people of all ages are constantly on their smartphone or other digital devices for day-to-day tasks including communication, translation, navigation, delivery services, planning and entertainment. According to Pew Research Center data released in 2025, an estimated 91% of U.S. adults own a smartphone, up from 35% when the center first surveyed smartphone ownership in 2011.

The goal of the “analog lifestyle” trend is to wean people off constant digital connectivity by doing tangible activities that help a person reclaim their time.

But the smartphone isn’t the villain in this story, it’s a tool, said Natalia Khodayari, a postdoctoral researcher in the UC Davis Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.

“It’s a handy tool, but this tool can be challenging to manage,” she said.

Why now?

Smartphone dependence has existed for years, but experts say it was compounded for people when the COVID-19 pandemic forced people indoors for weeks and months on end.

“People were upset, depressed and scared,” and all they had were their phones, Zoom and immediate family, said Karen North, a professor of digital social media and psychology at USC.

But years removed from the lockdowns, people are starting to notice how compelled they still are to look at their phones for information, to shop, or for nothing at all.

“It’s almost like biting your nails or another nervous habit,” North said.

Not only can the device itself be addictive, but many phone apps are designed to capture and keep a person’s attention, though people are becoming increasingly aware of this, said Dr. Anna Lembke, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford.

“There are enormous opportunity costs to engagement on these platforms that suck [people] in, where they end up spending way more time than they plan to or want to,” Lembke said. “It’s very clear from survey studies that people are less happy now than they were 15 to 20 years ago.”

This, however, won’t be the first time people have tried to exit the online world, even if just temporarily.

In 2010, Mintel, a global market intelligence and research agency, promoted a “switching off” trend because it anticipated consumers would want to take significant breaks from their digital devices because modern technology had created “inescapable levels of connectivity.”

But the fear of missing out, or “FOMO,” that comes with disconnecting can be equally daunting, some say.

“It kind of sucks to be accessible all the time and having to reply to everything, but at the same time I think in the digital age where you are so readily accessible, to not respond is then to not be a part of a community,” said USC senior Maya Din.

Experts say these feelings are coinciding with the advent of the internet, digital media and this concept of 24/7 access.

People are trying to make sense of their unhappiness, which is leading them to “making a valid connection between their online lives and their overall psychological state of being, which is not good,” Lembke said.

Studies have shown a correlation between heavy digital dependence and mental health challenges including depression, anxiety and stress.

Even though the concept of stepping away from our digital lives isn’t new, North said TikTok challenges and social media trends “tell us, ‘It’s not just you, it’s everybody,’” and here’s what you can do about it.

How is the ‘analog lifestyle’ trend different?

The analog trend is a different way to kick the digital habit because by embracing old technology and spending time on crafting projects experts say people are trying to be entertained or relax in ways that don’t involve being online.

The goal of this trend “is a desire to rebalance time and energy and reduce distractability and related stress,” said Khodayari, whose research focuses on the mechanisms of attention and emotion.

Generally, it’s really easy to get distracted given the diversity and convenience modern-day life offers.

“Imagine when there exists one space which houses your work, relaxation, communication, music, daily planner and food services, it can be quite challenging for individuals to really stay present towards one activity or one goal on a day-to-day basis,” she said.

In 2018, a study published in the National Library of Medicine observed how many times 216 participants checked their smartphones over the course of 56 days. The study led by Dr. Larry Rosen, professor emeritus and past chair of the psychology department at Cal State Dominguez Hills, found that participants unlocked their phones more than 60 times a day for three to four minutes each time, which equaled a total of 220 daily minutes of use.

Not surprisingly, the analog lifestyle is being adopted by young adults and younger generations as a way to be more mindful, more intentional.

“I think that’s a really big theme here, is creating boundaries,” Khodayari said.

How to reduce your digital connectivity

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to reducing or creating a boundary with your digital life. But as it happens, sometimes suggestions on how to go about it have to be spread online.

Influencers are posting about their “analog bag,” a canvas bag filled with craft supplies or purchasing a refurbished iPod to participate in this trend.

The recommendation has increased the search for “iPods” on EBay more than 1,200 times an hour globally between January and October 2025, according to the company. The iPod third-generation models saw a 50% increase in average sales price from global EBay users in 2025 compared with 2023. The iPod Nano third generation saw a 60% increase, while the iPod Classic sixth generation had a 40% increase.

In terms of crafting, Market Research Future, a global market research company, is projecting the craft supplies market to steadily grow from $42.83 billion globally in 2025 to $64.95 billion by 2035 that’s due in part to “individuals seeking creative outlets.”

You don’t have to spend money to participate in the analog lifestyle trend because making a drastic change or taking up a trendy hobby might not be helpful because it’s not something you’ll stick with long term, Khodayari said.

If you want to really stick with reducing your overall digital use, start with small adjustments to your habits, she said.

“Do something that makes a change that you really feel you can be consistent with,” she said.

Here are some common small adjustments people make to their routines to live the analog lifestyle:

•Remove your phone from view when you’re working on another task. Put it in a drawer or in another room entirely.

•Remove an app from your phone’s home screen or delete it entirely.

•Mute or stop unnecessary notifications.

•Swap your doomscrolling time on social media with another activity such as a walk, a craft, reading or cooking.

Related Articles

Winter rains turn Death Valley National Park into fields of golden blooms

Grammy winner Lila Downs returns with a message for a polarized moment

Survey: Gatorland heads list of top roadside attractions in US

In ‘George Falls Through Time,’ a modern man meets a medieval talking dragon

A traditional sausage in the shape of a horseshoe is ‘ironed’ for dryness in southeastern Serbia

America is having a collective freakout about jobs — specifically, that soon AI will do everything and leave everyone unemployable. This concern is not necessarily misplaced, but it is better understood as part of a larger worry: that one of the country’s most critical resources, human capital, is eroding.

A large, diverse and highly skilled labor force is what made the U.S. an economic powerhouse. Now both the stock and value of its human capital is degrading, and almost no one is doing anything to stop it.

The biggest threat to America’s human capital is fewer humans. As the population ages and migration declines, the size of the labor force is shrinking. More broadly, a shrinking population means fewer workers and consumers — and, in many rich countries, more young people working to pay for the costs of older workers’ retirements and the government’s debts. This is a big threat to economic prosperity that the U.S. has usually mitigated though immigration, which is not a likely solution this time.

There is another way a country can get by with a shrinking population: if its workers become more productive. If a young worker is so smart and skilled he can produce the output of three workers, then an aging workforce is less of a problem. In the 20th century, as technology made workers more efficient and people became more educated, human capital in America became much more valuable.

There are some preliminary signs that productivity is rising now. After years of middling numbers, labor productivity increased in 2025. But these encouraging numbers aren’t providing much comfort, because people are worried that AI will be so productive that the need for human workers will decline anyway. If technology displaces workers, then the value of their human capital can be wiped out entirely.

Again, I am not saying this isn’t a valid worry — only that it is as old as time.

In the past, technology not only made labor more productive, it also increased the demand for labor. Some jobs were lost, but new and better ones were created; wages and employment went up. Some people who work in technology argue that this time is different, but it is way too early to know for sure.

First, widespread AI-induced job loss, or even a lack of hiring, can’t yet be seen in the data. Many industries that use AI are the same ones doing the hiring. It is true there is less job growth overall, but much of that can be explained by cyclical changes to the economy and a fall in migration.

Second, a lot of the speculation about the end of jobs is coming from people who’ve never worked in the jobs they presume will disappear. You never know what a job entails and what it takes to be good at it unless you’ve done it. A wealth manager, for example — one of the jobs said to be on borrowed time — doesn’t just write reports and pick stocks. They (the successful ones, at least) cultivate relationships and function almost as therapists. Those softer skills may become even more valuable as AI becomes more prevalent, freeing up time to spend on deeper relationships and more clients. In that case, AI could make human labor more valuable, and people will still have jobs.

As in the past, the most important question may be how we manage the transition to a new technology, which is often long and difficult. A mismatch between skills and technology could mean a short-term decline in human capital, even if productivity numbers increase.

Historically, the mismatch was addressed through education, which improved with each generation, enabling workers to work with new innovation. But education may no longer be serving the same purpose — as more of the population goes to college, it may be reaching a point of diminishing returns. Even more concerning is that educational standards are weakening at both the secondary and post-secondary level. Too many graduates have weak critical thinking skills and are facing technology that is getting smarter faster than they are.

Paul Krugman famously said, “Productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run it is almost everything.” That “almost” is crucial: Even if U.S. productivity increases, if its human capital degrades, it will be in trouble. Even high productivity numbers may not be enough to pay the government’s debts, and there will be many people unhappily and under-employed.

That scenario is not inevitable. AI cannot by itself improve America’s economic and demographic growth. That will require better education that trains students to think rigorously, as well as immigration that prioritizes highly skilled migrants. What’s required, in other words, is a strategy to improve our human capital.

Allison Schrager is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering economics. A senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, she is author of “An Economist Walks Into a Brothel: And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk.”

Related Articles

Trudy Rubin: Beware the similarities between the wars in Iraq and Trump’s Iran war

Nolan Finley: Tyranny doesn’t end when tyrants are killed

Thomas Friedman: How to think about Trump’s war with Iran

Noah Feldman: Decades of presidents ignoring the War Powers Act led us here

Callais, Routledge: The economic common ground America isn’t talking about

The gravest power entrusted to any American president is the authority to command the armed forces. With that authority comes a constitutional tension that has defined our republic since its founding: Congress declares war. The president conducts it.

When an administration moves toward open conflict — deploying forces, launching sustained strikes or widening military engagement — without explicit congressional authorization, it raises serious constitutional and strategic concerns. The framers did not divide war powers casually. They feared concentrating too much authority in one individual, especially in moments charged with fear, urgency and national emotion.

Article I gives Congress the power to declare war. Article II makes the president commander in chief. The design was deliberate: debate before bloodshed. Shared accountability before sustained conflict.

History, however, shows that presidents of both parties have tested and stretched that boundary.

Harry Truman committed U.S. forces to Korea under a United Nations mandate without a formal declaration of war. Lyndon B. Johnson relied on the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution to escalate in Vietnam, a broad congressional authorization that later haunted the nation. George W. Bush secured congressional approval for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Barack Obama conducted extended operations in Libya under NATO authority without a specific new war authorization. Presidents of both parties have used the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for Use of Military Force to justify actions far removed in time and geography from their original purpose.

In other words, this is not a partisan issue. It is an institutional one.

Supporters of swift executive action argue that modern threats move too quickly for prolonged congressional deliberation. Missiles travel faster than legislation. Cyber warfare requires an immediate response. Terror networks do not issue formal declarations. There is truth in that.

But there is also danger in normalization.

When presidents increasingly rely on executive authority to initiate or expand military conflict without clear, updated authorization from Congress, the threshold for war quietly lowers. Debate becomes optional. Public accountability becomes diluted. And the American people, whose sons and daughters serve, are left reacting rather than participating through their elected representatives.

The War Powers Resolution of 1973 attempted to rebalance this equation, requiring notification to Congress and limiting unauthorized deployments to 60 days without approval. Yet administrations from both parties have viewed it as constitutionally questionable or practically flexible.

The trajectory matters.

A republic drifts when precedent replaces principle. If one president expands executive war authority, the next inherits and often builds upon it. Over time, what was once extraordinary becomes routine.

This is not an argument for paralysis in the face of threat. The president must retain the ability to defend the nation swiftly. However, sustained conflict, particularly against state actors, across multiple theaters and with foreseeable escalation, demands more than executive interpretation. It demands congressional clarity.

The cost of war is measured not only in treasure, but in trust.

When the constitutional balance erodes, so does public confidence. And when confidence erodes, unity fractures precisely when it is most needed.

The question is not whether a president can act. The question is whether we are preserving the constitutional guardrails that ensure such action reflects the will of the nation, not merely the will of one office.

In matters of war, speed is sometimes necessary.

But shared authority is always essential.

— The Baltimore Sun

Related Articles

Mihir Sharma: Why we should worry about the other war on Iran’s border

How DHS retreated on immigration tactics after minneapolis

Faith leaders push for access to ICE detention centers during Lent and Ramadan

Trump, Minnesota and U.S. lawmakers grieve with families during return of soldiers killed in war in the Middle East

Pentagon’s chief tech officer says he clashed with AI company Anthropic over autonomous warfare

The St. Paul Public Schools board will interview and select a candidate to fill a vacant board seat on Tuesday.

Five candidates will be interviewed to fill former board member Jim Vue’s seat on the seven-member board. Vue, who had served on the board since 2020, resigned effective Feb. 17. The new member will start on April 10.

Tuesday’s meeting is open to the public and will be held at 6 p.m. at the district’s administration building at 360 Colborne St. in St. Paul. It also will be livestreamed at spps.eduvision.tv/LiveSched.aspx.

The selected candidate will serve the remainder of Vue’s term as an interim board member through January 2027. The seat will be on the ballot in November and the new member will hold it for a four-year term. In order to be eligible for the interim position, applicants interviewing Tuesday must indicate they have no plans to run for a seat in the November election.

Board Chair Uriah Ward and board member Halla Henderson are the only board members whose terms end in December. Other current board members’ terms go through 2028.

The board, and SPPS administrators, work to establish a budget for the district. In June, the board unanimously approved a $1 billion budget for the 2025-26 school year. The board will vote on the 2026-27 budget no later than June 30. As of February, the district expects a budget shortfall of approximately $21 million for the 2026-27 school year.

Vue’s term was set to go through 2025 but was extended through December of this year due to a change in election years. In discussing his resignation, Vue said he did not plan on serving beyond his four-year term.

The board’s resolution to fill the seat originally stated that two to four candidates would be interviewed. However, board members voted last month to interview all five candidates.

Among the requirements, candidates must be a resident of the school district for at least 30 days and may not be an SPPS employee. Board chair Ward recused himself in February from the candidate selection due to a potential conflict of interest — candidate Lesley Lavery is the co-chair of the dissertation committee overseeing Ward’s doctoral dissertation at Valdosta State University in Valdosta, Ga. He also abstained from the motion to interview all five candidates.

The candidates

Here’s a rundown of the candidates, who all live in St. Paul:

Robin Feickert

Feickert is a claims technician and training specialist with Wilson-McShane Corp., a financial services company in Bloomington. She has one seventh-grader in the district.

She is a former aquatics director and director of healthy living at the YMCA of the Greater Twin Cities and former aquatics director with the St. Paul Jewish Community Center. She earned her bachelor’s degree from St. Olaf College before attending dentistry school at the University of Minnesota. Feickert has volunteer experience with the Friends of the St. Paul Public Library, the American Red Cross Twin Cities-area chapter and Special Olympics Minnesota.

Lesley Lavery

Lavery is a professor of political science at Macalester College with a specialty in K-12 public education policy. She also formerly chaired the college’s department of political science. She is a parent of two children in the district and was an elementary school teacher in California through Teach for America. She also has volunteered with the district.

Her research has been published in journals such as the ILR Review, the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, and Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. She also published a book in 2020 titled “A Collective Pursuit: Teachers’ Unions and Education Reform” through Temple University Press.

Lavery received her bachelor’s degree from Willamette University in Salem, Ore., and her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Brandon Lowe

Lowe is an assessment, data and research coordinator with the Burnsville-Eagan-Savage school district. He previously worked for Orange County Public Schools in Orlando, Fla., as an assistant principal of instruction, assessment coordinator, instructional coach and teacher.

He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Central Florida in Orlando and his master’s degree in educational leadership from St. Leo University in St. Leo, Fla. He then received his doctorate in educational leadership from the University of Central Florida.

Beth Mork

Mork is a hospitalist at M Health Fairview and a parent in the district. She previously worked at the Raiter Clinic in Cloquet, Minn., as a family practice physician. She is treasurer of Humboldt High School’s Parent Teacher Organization and has volunteered with West Siders for Strong Schools. She also has been involved in several district committees.

Mork received her bachelor’s degree from Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, and attended medical school at the University of Minnesota’s Duluth and Twin Cities campuses.

Carson Starkey

Starkey is a labor union organizer and financial secretary for the Northern Midwest Regional Council of Carpenters’ Local 2055. He has two children in the district and has volunteered in SPPS. He also teaches a class on the labor movement through SPPS Community Education.

He earned his bachelor’s degree in political science and government from Minnesota State University Moorhead and his Juris Doctor at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law.

Starkey notes that he is an Iraq War veteran and public policy expert on his LinkedIn. He has worked on Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party campaigns and worked for the DFL during midterm legislative campaigns in 2010.

While in Illinois, Starkey was director of the labor union-funded nonprofit, the Illinois Fair Trade Coalition. He also was involved in University of Illinois Chicago free legal clinics.

He is a former member of the city of St. Paul’s Labor Standards Advisory Committee and former commissioner on the city’s Human Rights and Equal Economic Opportunity Commission.

Related Articles

St. Paul Public Schools district-wide online learning to end March 13

St. Paul Public Schools has spent nearly $1M on virtual learning, other support for immigrant families

St. Paul Public Schools executive chief of schools to leave district

Minnesota school districts, teachers union sue to block immigration enforcement near schools

St. Paul Public Schools, others cancel classes Friday due to frigid weather