The latest must-have accessory is a “stop-scrolling bag” – a tote packed with analog activities like watercolors and crossword puzzles. We spend hours glued to our screens. “Analog bags,” as they’re also called, are one way millennials and Gen Zers are reclaiming that time. “I basically just put everything I could grab for instead of my phone into a bag,” including knitting, a scrapbook and a Polaroid camera, says Sierra Campbell, the content creator behind the trend.
The 31-year-old keeps one bag at home in Northern California, carrying it from room to room, and another in her car. The trend has quickly spread on social media, part of a bigger shift to unplug. Roughly 1,600 TikTok posts were tagged #AnalogLife during the first nine months of 2025 – up over 330% from the same period last year, according to TikTok data shared with Axios.
“It speaks to an incredible desperation and desire for experiences that return our attention to us, that fight brain-rotting, that are tactile … that involve creating over scrolling,” says Beth McGroarty, vice president of research at the Global Wellness Institute.
I think the problem is that we’ve forgotten how to just do nothing and be content with it (or even a bit bored with it). While I think unplugging is good, this just seems like replacing one kind of attention addiction with another.
It’s not attention addiction. Note that it’s supposed to replace consumption with creative / problem solving activities. If you’re addicted to watercolors, at least you will be getting better at the craft. If you’re just consuming online content / doomscrolling you’re just wasting time.
This is probably a good methadone, though. It’s way easier to kick a watercolor addiction than an addiction to an app purpose-developed by a whole team of engineers to string people along with the minimum possible dopamine drip for as long as they can manage.
Yep. Encouraging a whole new generation of casual artists, makers and readers can only be seen as a great thing. I would just add that we all need to remember how to slow down, and understand that’s good and necessary to do so every so often.
- sent from one of my 117 open tabs
But silence reminds me of the impending actual and factual and imminent terror and doom about to strike us all!