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.
Lot’s of look-at-me!'s and comments about “wasting time” in this thread.
To the look-at-me’s: congrats. You’re doing great and we’re all very proud.
To the folks concerned about wasting time: what’s wrong with that? Does every moment of one’s like need to be spent doing something constructive? Furthermore, how do you decide what is and isn’t constructive? A few centuries ago it was agreed that reading was not merely a recreational waste of time, but actually harmful to individuals and society (look up the “Reading Mania” if you care to).
I argue that, if you don’t mind being vapid, go ahead and browse your phone and argue on social media sites. If you want to be an interesting conversationalist: read, write, and quietly reflect. If you simply cannot do nothing, then knit some socks on the bus. But whatever you do, take care not to do it for the sole purpose of “not wasting time”.
Or, you know, books!
Ok Boomer.
If only more boomers read books…
Wait, scratch that, if only more people read books. 🤣
The 31-year-old keeps one bag at home in Northern California, carrying it from room to room, and another in her car
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.
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.
But silence reminds me of the impending actual and factual and imminent terror and doom about to strike us all!
this seems to just be subbing one obsession for another. if you have to create a bugout bag because you have a scroll addiction, I think that maybe warrants a better look at properly managing your own behavior.
just put the damn thing down and read a book, or paint something. you don’t need to declare war on smart phones. or even eliminate them from your life. just take some responsibility for your device use.
i mean strong emotions lead to collective change. telling a person they should Not express all this emotion and Not talk about it like they do just isolates the person into not feeling it’s a big trend. also increases self-shaming. then it never happens for those who obviously have been unsuccsessful so far. /info
