Words by Liliana Gaggiano
I grew up in a digital world, and as a 20 year old university student studying business and marketing, I spend my days immersed in social media; the analytics, algorithms and marketing techniques.
Working in a digital industry makes me crave something slower, and I find myself drawn to a more analogue lifestyle. I love spending summer afternoons lost in a book, feeling the pages turn slowly between my fingers. I love practicing yoga in the fresh morning air, feeling cold grass beneath my feet. I crave creating with a pencil in hand rather than a computer screen in front of me. I’m not anti-technology, I’m celebrating a way of living that moves at its own pace in a world that’s increasingly digital. So when I close my laptop and pick up a book, it’s a chance to block out the noise and simply be.
Writing for Ramona magazine, whose print edition launches this April, feels like the perfect opportunity to celebrate the tangible in our digital world.
As a Gen Z, choosing to embrace analogue over digital can feel isolating. When my little cousins talk about the latest TikTok trend, it’s like they’re speaking a new digital language and mine no longer translates. In a culture that encourages constant oversharing on social media, opting out even partially can feel like arriving late to a conversation everyone else is already having. But I’ve been wondering whether this sense of alienation isn’t a flaw in analogue life at all. Maybe the discomfort I feel is proof that I’m paying attention differently.
Paying attention differently means noticing what screens can’t convey: the texture of a book cover, the natural sounds of pages turning, the weight of it settling in your hands. These small sensations anchor you in the present in a way a computer screen never could. You remember where a passage lived in a book, while with digital content there’s no texture to feel and no instinctive memory of where something is. Everything is flattened into a weightless search bar.
The only thing analogue insists on is intention. Every time you pick up a book instead of opening an app, you are making a small but deliberate choice, something the digital world rarely asks of you. Algorithms decide what you see next. Autoplay decides what you watch. The digital environment is designed to remove the friction of decision, which may feel convenient but can quietly become a form of compliance. Analogue puts that friction back and there is something powerful about it. In a world optimised to make consumption effortless but endless, the small act of picking up something physical and staying with it feels less like a lifestyle preference and more like a way of staying yourself.
And I’m not alone in this craving. Everywhere I look, people are returning to vinyl, handwriting letters, buying physical books, launching print magazines. There’s a movement happening, a societal shift for things we can hold, keep, and return to. It might look like nostalgia from the outside but in reality it’s a decision to stay present in a world designed to pull us elsewhere.
We still need the digital world, don’t get me wrong. Here I am, writing this on my computer at my desk, but beside me sits a book I’ll pick up the moment I’m done. Maybe that’s what analogue life actually looks like in 2026, not completely disregarding technology, but making a conscious choice to return to something slower, something you can actually hold.
And I wonder what happens if more of us choose this.
Pre-order your copy of Ramona’s print anthology here.
