Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Kayleigh Donaldson | Miscellaneous | February 24, 2026
How many times a day do you instinctively reach for your phone? I'm afraid to check myself in case it fully reveals what I'm terrified to admit: that I, like almost everyone else I know, an addicted to this bloody thing. Often, we don't even know we're doing it. We'll be waiting in line at the shops or watching TV or talking to friends, then in a microsecond lull in the action, we put our hand in our pocket or bag to pull our phones out. It's now so commonplace, and we've now acknowledged how much it sucks, that some people even have dummy phones (essentially pieces of oblong-shaped plexiglass) to reach for to crave the addiction. Yes, we now need the phone versions of nicotine patches to get through our lives. For some people, especially younger generations, the solution has been to go analogue, and to distract ourselves with something slower and more creative.
I wrote before about how "cozy hobbies" had grown in popularity with Gen Z-ers as part of a strategy to wean oneself off the endless cycle of dopamine doom-scrolling. Instead of relying on your phone to provide endless hours of nightmarishly addictive entertainment, people were looking into craft projects and activities that required calm and commitment. The analog bag is essentially that in travel form. Social media users have shared how they are seeking to curb their casual phone use by ensuring they have something else to do whenever five minutes of free time comes their way. Maybe they have a tote bag with some puzzle books in it, or a crochet project they're working on. You can choose pretty much whatever you want for your own analog bag: watercolour kits, novels, embroidery rings, a colouring book, etc. It just has to be something you can easily grab and commit to in those periods where you'd usually fall into the rabbit hole of swiping up.
As with many online trends, everything old is new again. Oh, the hot new thing is crossword books in your bag or going to a café to knit? Been there, done that, and it was awesome, thank you very much. I already do something like this in my day-to-day life, albeit not with its own separate container. I always have a book, some puzzles, and maybe a half-finished crocheted hat in my messenger bag for those long bus rides or coffee breaks where getting away from my laptop for an hour or so is the entire point. But the conscious trend we have right now, one designed to combat an active tech addiction, does add a new layer to our hobby hunt.
We're trying to swap out one habit for another, hoping that going cold turkey on doomscrolling can be sated with something more satisfying and less mentally corrosive. It's not just about avoiding the addictiveness of TikTok and YouTube shorts but cleansing our minds of the slop that has polluted our online lives. In the months since I wrote about generative AI ruining all of our hobbies, the issue has only gotten worse. Every platform is engulfed by AI ads, content, and straight-up deceit (that or gambling mechanisms, which is even more depressing.) It's inescapable, ugly as all hell, and pushed on us as the inevitable future we must embrace. Extracting oneself from this spiral of addiction has never felt more necessary, radical even.
But it is hard work to fix a bad habit. Ask anyone who's tried to quit smoking, drinking, or fizzy drinks (hi, it's me. No, it hasn't gone well, why do you ask?) This is one that will require us to rewrite so much of our modern lives, of how we communicate with one another and view our place in the great ether of society.
It can't be viewed as just another trend, and that's the part where I cannot help but feel a little weary about the concept of an analog bag. Why is it that we have to give these concepts a fun faddy name to get people interested? And why does it always end up being just another excuse to sell us stuff? Browsing analog bag content led me to a hell of a lot of Amazon affiliate links, as is the norm for every fleeting trend the algorithm tries to fling our way. This is already becoming achingly aestheticized and homogenised, a sea of the same totes (always the bloody Trader Joes one) and Murdle books that look unused but pristine for promotional content. How helpful as a tool for living a consciously online life can this be if you're still shaping it to be perfect online content? I'm reminded of how adult colouring books, a perfectly sweet hobby with calming appeal, has become just another online fad used to shill expensive markers and demand a perfect and commodifiable brand for casual users.
Still, if carrying around a bag with some books and notebooks in it helps some people to decrease their daily phone time by several hours then it's a step in the right direction. I've never felt more aware of how rotten online life is than I do in this moment. A lot of the time, it's just not fun, and yet it's all so easy to find oneself hours into a mindless binge of instant satisfaction that dissipates as quickly as it arrives, like a dopamine slot machine where every try is a loss. Curbing that gnawing compulsion in any way we can is a net positive for everyone who isn't a soulless tech bro CEO. None of us want to get to the end of this life and regret how much of it we spent looking at slop instead of touching grass. Maybe we need to embrace an idea that cannot be endlessly regurgitated into content. But does such a thing even exist?
