The backlash against constant connectivity is no longer limited to people deleting an app for a weekend. A broader slowtech movement is taking shape around older devices, minimalist hardware, and tools that help people use screens with more intention.
The idea is not that every screen is harmful. It is that many products have become so convenient, optimized, and always available that users are looking for boundaries wherever they can find them.
Old devices are becoming new boundaries
Tony Fadell, known as the father of the iPod, recently saw a Back Market advertisement for the iPod Shuffle inside New York City’s 28th Street Subway Station. The poster promoted the device with the promise of “Zero screen time.”
For Fadell, the moment was strange because the iPod Shuffle was a product he designed over 20 years ago. Around him, people were using wireless Bluetooth headphones and phones that can stream music from libraries with over 100 million songs. Against that backdrop, Steve Jobs’ early iPod pitch, “one thousand songs in your pocket,” now sounds like a product from a different technological era.
Yet that is exactly why the iPod Shuffle has become interesting again. It does less. It offers fewer choices. It cannot pull users into messages, feeds, recommendations, or notifications while they are trying to listen to music.
Joy Howard, CMO of Back Market, told TechCrunch that people are “very oversaturated and overstimulated” and want a more mindful relationship with technology. Back Market placed the subway ad because, according to Howard, demand for supposedly obsolete tech is growing.
Why friction now feels useful
For years, consumer technology pushed toward removing friction. Devices became more powerful, apps became faster, and algorithms became better at predicting what people might want next. Slowtech turns that logic around.
Howard described the shift clearly: “The ‘fast tech’ up until now has been all about eliminating friction… [Now], people are seeing friction as a way to create boundaries for themselves.”
That helps explain the renewed interest in wired headphones, retro gaming consoles, CDs, digital point-and-shoot cameras, and iPods. These products can feel appealing because they do not try to turn every action into a longer session.
A point-and-shoot camera does not upload directly to an Instagram story. A retro gaming console does not serve gambling ads. An iPod does not automatically choose the next track through a recommendation system. In each case, limitation becomes part of the appeal.
That appeal is especially visible among younger generations who have always lived alongside social media and smartphones. For them, older devices can offer a form of novelty: a tool that performs one job without competing for the rest of their attention.
The problem is design, not just willpower
Austin Murray has seen both sides of the mobile shift. Around the time Fadell first pitched the iPod to Steve Jobs, Murray founded JAMDAT, one of the first mobile gaming companies. The company quickly went public and was sold to Electronic Arts for $680 million.
Murray is now building MOQA, a screen-time reduction app. He told TechCrunch that when JAMDAT was pitching in 2000, 2001, people laughed at the idea of playing games on a cell phone. Today, he sees the consequences of mobile design in his own family and community.
“When everyone is doing the same thing — meaning everyone, the average screen time is like five hours probably on a phone every day — it’s not a willpower problem. It’s a product design problem.”
The desire to cut back is widespread. TechCrunch reports that about 53% of American adults say they want to reduce their screen time.
Writer Calvin Kasulke has taken a practical route. He pays for Opal and Freedom, two apps designed to limit screen time and social media use. His goal is not to block communication with people he knows, but to avoid wasting time doomscrolling.
Kasulke also pushed back against the idea that screen reduction is a moral performance. He said he does not feel smug about using two apps to manage his phone use. His position is more specific: screens are not inherently bad, but the way he was using his phone was worse for him.
Minimal phones, screenless wearables, and AI bookmarks
Some users are moving away from iPhones entirely, choosing flip phones, e-ink devices that run Android software, or minimalist touch-screen hardware like the Light Phone. Light co-founder Kaiwei Tang told TechCrunch that customers have said for the last 10 years that they feel more free after switching to the Light Phone.
Tang also said the device is getting more attention among young people, including a community of 20- to 35-year-olds. That surprised the company.
Still, Murray is cautious about the future of “dumb phones.” He noted that many daily tasks now assume smartphone access, including banking, going into a hotel, or using credit cards. That makes a total retreat from smartphones difficult for many people.
Other products take a less extreme path. Fadell said people want digital convenience without the annoyance of being always connected. He also said, “We need less screens, not more of them.”
That idea appears in the market for screenless wearables. American spending on fitness trackers grew 88% year-over-year, according to market research firm Circana, which credits screenless wearables like the Oura ring and Whoop wristband as key sales drivers. These products reduce direct screen interaction, even though users still need a smartphone to see their data.
The same tension appears in newer hardware such as Mark, a $159 AI bookmark. Its pitch is that readers can avoid pulling out a phone to take notes while reading. Mark founder Eason Tang described the product as an analog tool connected to design, film, books, and literature.
There is an obvious contradiction in using AI to escape phone distraction. But the logic is also clear: once a reader opens a phone to capture a thought, other notifications can interrupt the original activity.
Control is the real product
Slowtech does not have one strict definition. Some people want old media devices. Some want minimalist phones. Some want apps that block other apps. Some are open to AI if it helps protect attention rather than consume it.
The movement also overlaps with frustration over hardware that stops receiving support. Back Market rehabs discontinued laptops and resells them with USB keys that can install ChromeOS Flex, turning supposedly obsolete hardware into functioning Chromebooks. Howard also described a developer finding ways to keep unsupported devices working, including a rice cooker.
The common thread is control. People are not simply nostalgic for older gadgets. They are responding to a digital environment where phones, apps, operating systems, and product cycles can shape attention, habits, and even the useful life of hardware.
As Howard put it, people want tools that serve them rather than dominate them. That is the central promise of slowtech: not a rejection of technology, but a demand that it stop taking more time and attention than users meant to give.