Gen Z ditches smartphones to put on and shoot cameras as old tech makes comeback: ‘Gives off a certain vibe’

You are teaching old school.

Gen Zs are turning their backs on their smartphones — and are grabbing their parents’ point and shoot cameras instead.

The latest and hottest phone photography technology is losing its cool at a time when the younger crowd finds itself increasingly fascinated by all things old — from second-hand clothing to designer gadgets. shipments to vinyl records and cassettes.

“Everyone’s photos look the same on social media and have for years, even with the quality improvement with every iPhone,” Courtney June, 24, told Fast Company.

“A camera from 2007 gives off a certain vibe that something like an iPhone can’t produce,” said the digital camera fan from Pennsylvania.

At the Paris Olympics, soccer star Megan Rapinoe was spotted taking photos with a camera available in the stands, while model Alexa Chung recently showed off her point and shoot on Instagram.

“It” girls Bella Hadid and Emma Chamberlain are also proponents of retro tech, while “The Bear” star Ayo Edebiri brought hers to the Emmys.

Even on TikTok, creators praise digital cameras – like the Canon G7X – as superior to the iPhone, as influencers like Alix Earle have set the trend for their picture-perfect social media feeds.

In fact, some models are so popular that they aren’t available for purchase for months, forcing Zoomers to scour used sites to find one.

And the point-and-shoot obsession has fueled a film frenzy as well.

The Guardian reports that Kodak has seen demand for film double in recent years, while Harman, the UK’s only 35mm film maker, announced a multi-million dollar investment in a new product as the camera craze grows.

And, this summer, the Pentax 17 was released—the first 35mm film camera produced by a major company in more than two decades.

According to Paul McKay, co-founder of UK-based film product distributor Analogue Wonderland, Pentax “had to bring engineers back out of retirement – to teach younger engineers,” he told the newspaper.

In an age of rapidly developing technology—that is, photographic equipment designed to produce sharp, vivid, and essentially flawless images—it seems counterintuitive to carefully develop grainy film or shoot imperfect photographs.

But that’s part of the allure.

“Even mistakes are romantic — light streaming into the first few frames of a new roll, red-eye and grain,” Emily Dinsdale, arts and photography editor at Dazed, told The Guardian.

With the proliferation of AI-generated or deceptively altered images, she believes people trust film cameras more than digital art.

“It goes back to the idea that pictures on our phones aren’t as special as pictures taken on film,” she said, adding that “digital photography and smartphones have really changed the currency of images.”

In a recent survey conducted by McKay, he found that the most common reason for giving up digital entirely was that it allowed the person behind the camera to slow down.

“There’s a conscience,” he explained. “People talk a lot about mental health in this generation when they talk about film photography.â€