Title: Gen Z Wishes It Were 1997

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We're going to end the show today with a guest and your calls on nostalgia for the time before cell phones. Are you nostalgic if you lived in the time before cell phones for that time? Call up and tell us why and what exactly you're nostalgic about. 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692. The other piece of this is some reporting that we'll refer to, and we'll have the writer as a guest, that Gen Z people who grew up entirely with phones in their lives, obviously, or at least available to them, are also increasingly nostalgic for a time that they never knew before cell phones, let's say pre-2000.

Does this sound like you? No matter your age, if you are Gen Z, even younger, do you feel yourself sometimes being nostalgic for what you imagine life was like before the era of the smartphone? 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692. If you're older than that and you do remember that time, what about it are you nostalgic for? 212-433-9692. I'll tell you one little drill I did with an audience a few years ago when I was doing a public appearance. I asked, "How many of you think that the ubiquity of cell phones has made our society worse?" Everybody's hand went up. I said, "How many of you are willing to give up your cell phones? Do you think your life would be better today if you just give up your phone?" Nobody's hand went up.

That's the dilemma that a lot of people are dealing with. In theory, there's nostalgia for the pre-times. In practice, there's maybe enough convenience, enough interest, enough whatever that people are getting from the phones, because they don't want to give up their individual one. No matter what your age, if you're nostalgic for a time you didn't live through because you're Gen Z or younger, or if you did live through a time before cell phones, or let's say at least smartphones, what is it exactly that you're nostalgic for? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

We'll take your calls when we come back and your texts, and talk briefly with Clay Routledge, who wrote an op-ed about this for The New York Times. Stay tuned.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, as we're going to get to your calls and texts in just a sec here on no matter what your age, are you nostalgic for an era before the smartphone, whether you lived in that era or not? Ryan in Rockland County, hang in there. We're going to start with you in just a second, but I want to talk to the person who wrote the op-ed in The New York Times that spurred this call in. It's Clay Routledge, social psychologist and author of Past Forward: How Nostalgia Can Help You Live a More Meaningful Life. Hi, Clay. Thanks for coming on.

Clay Routledge: Hey, Brian. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: What were you getting at?

Clay Routledge: One of the things I think that's interesting is I've been doing this research in nostalgia for over two decades now. Most of that work was really focused on our own personal memories and cherished experiences from our lives. Then I started to discover through various projects that people actually express a lot of sentimental feelings towards a time that predates them. Then, of course, we did some research, and we found Gen Z, in particular, seems to be especially nostalgic for a pre-digital era. That really captivated me.

I think it really showcases what you illustrated in your previous anecdote, which is it's not that just like people don't want to give up their cell phones, but they recognize some frustrations with the way cell phones have changed their society. Nostalgia isn't really people saying, "I want to go back in time. I want to live the way we lived in the past." What they're saying is, "There's something about the past that I would like to pull forward and incorporate or integrate into my life in a way that helps me balance innovation, technological progress, societal advancement, with some things from the past that may be are useful to hold onto."

Brian Lehrer: Based on your reporting, are people in any number from Gen Z acting on this in any way? Do they even have the power, given everybody's dependence on technology, to go analog or acting on it in any way?

Clay Routledge: Yes, there's actually a lot of really interesting trends on this. That was part of what sparked the survey. Before we started asking people about the historical nostalgia, I was reading these articles of like, "Oh, Gen Z is driving a lot of the vinyl collection purchases." A lot of young people are buying records. Gen Z is actually one of the bigger drivers of purchases of physical books. I was just at a concert a couple of weeks ago, and it was a bunch of young bands, local bands. I went out to the merchandise table to just see what they had. T-shirts, CDs, things like that.

I was surprised that one of the bands, which was a bunch of Gen Z-ers, you could only buy their music on cassette tape. They were exclusively selling cassette tapes. I had to get on Amazon, and I study nostalgia all the time. I had to get on Amazon to see that you could even buy a cassette player. I was like, "How do you even listen to this music?" Again, this isn't in any way overwhelming other trends of digital consumption, those are prominent, of course, but what we are seeing is all these threads of young people saying, "Hey, you know what, instead of just playing video games, we should go buy board games."

If you go to board game stores or game stores or comic book stores and things like that, you will see a lot of them are thriving with board game nights and with trivia nights and with different young people coming out and saying, "I want to get back in touch with real life. As much as I enjoy technology, there's something about the analog. There's something about the in-person. There's something about real life that maybe we're missing that we could use a little bit more of."

Brian Lehrer: Clay Routledge, thanks for your thought-provoking op-ed in The Times, and thanks for joining us about it for a few minutes.

Clay Routledge: You're welcome. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Ryan in Rockland County, you're on WNYC. Hey, Ryan.

Ryan: Hi. Longtime listener, first-time caller. Really happy to share my thoughts here. I'm a 25-year-old. I would say I'm very attached, if not addicted to my phone. Something that I wish for is a bit more of a separation between what phones are intended to be used for, which is communication, and very addictive social media apps. While I am very grateful for the recent technological advances, I can FaceTime my grandmother while she's on a trip to Israel in two seconds. On the other hand, there have been countless nights where I've spent the wee hours of the morning just scrolling my night away.

I am nostalgic to-- back in 4th, 5th grade, I received my first phone ever. It was a sliding phone, an Intensity II. There was really no social media at that time, and I think there was a bit more of a separation between the activities we did online and what we used our phone for. Unfortunately, the way these social media companies make their profits is by keeping people on the platform, but I have thought about, on numerous occasions, downgrading to a phone with internet connection.

Brian Lehrer: Ryan, I'm going to leave it there. I really appreciate all your thoughts in our limited time. I want to get some other people on here. Here's a text. "Yes, yes, yes. Gen X here. So nostalgic for a world without group chats. The ability to get lost and disconnect without literally leaving the grid, and everyone being able to do that." Madison in Carney, you're on WNYC. Hey, Madison.

Madison: Hi, Brian. I'm 29. I'm kind of on the cusp between the regular cell phone and the smartphone era. I remember when we used to only be able to have a limited amount of texts per day and wait until after a certain time of day when it was maybe a little more easy to text. There was something about the mindfulness of how we were communicating and what we were communicating that I think could be really useful today. Where we're having to think about, "Do I really need to text this person right now? Do I really want to use all of these characters and say it in this way?"

I think a lot of times, people are communicating without thought or not really taking the time to pause and say, "Hey, is this really what I want to say or how I want to say it?" I think that's something that I have been thinking about lately, and maybe I'm a bit nostalgic for.

Brian Lehrer: Madison, thank you very much. Here's a text from a listener who writes, "I am nostalgic for a time when we weren't on call or available 24/7, 365. We weren't beholden to the phones, didn't waste all day with social media. If someone called in the middle of the night, it was a real emergency." Then they add, "One of the things that I would miss about them, though, is GPS." I would say to that, listener, don't forget, you don't have to be beholden to your phone. You can turn your ringer off when you go to sleep and your text message sounder and everything else. Remember, the phone still works for you, and you don't work for the phone or the people who are trying to get in touch with you.

All right, let's get one more in here. We heard from two callers in their 20s, so let's hear from one older caller. How about Colleen in Tewksbury? You're on WNYC. Hi, Colleen. We got about 30 seconds for you.

Colleen: Hey, I'm going way back. Nostalgic may not be the word, but I do miss the fact that way back, with regular phones, before caller ID, et cetera, we made prank phone calls. I can't tell you the hours and hours of great fun we had after school. It was good, clean fun, sitting around, dialing the phone, seeing how long we could keep someone engaged on the phone, and we just belly laughed, and it was really fun.

Brian Lehrer: That's hilarious.

Colleen: I mean, okay, the distance and time--

Brian Lehrer: Hasn't that advanced into the world of deep fakes?

Colleen: No, that's a whole ball of wax. I'm leaving that one in your report.

Brian Lehrer: Colleen, thank you very much. Thank you, listeners, for your calls and texts, and again, to Clay for the op-ed and talking about it for a minute. That's The Brian Lehrer Show for today, produced by Mary Croke, Lisa Allison, Amina Srna, Carl Boisrond, and Esperanza Rosenbaum. Zach Gottehrer-Cohen, who produces our Daily Politics Podcast. Juliana Fonda at the audio controls. Stay tuned for Alison.

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