The Analog Revival: Why Coaches Should Pay Attention
Have you caught yourself wanting a landline again? Eyeing a flip phone, a film camera, or a vintage-style appliance instead of the smart version? If so, you're part of something bigger than a personal quirk — you're part of what's being called the analog revival, and in 2026 it's become one of the most talked-about cultural shifts of the year.
As a business coach who's spent the last decade helping coaches book clients without hustle-culture tactics, this trend caught my attention for a reason that goes beyond curiosity. It confirms something I've believed — and built my entire business around — for years: people don't actually want more automation and more noise. They want more connection.
What is the analog revival?
The analog revival is a documented cultural movement away from constant digital consumption and toward physical, tactile, offline experiences. It's showing up in consumer behavior, not just social media aesthetics: dumbphone sales rose 25% in 2025, and craft retailer Michaels reported a 136% jump in purchases over a recent six-month period.
This isn't limited to older generations feeling nostalgic for "the way things used to be." Research shows over 70% of younger adults are now actively incorporating slow living into their day-to-day lives. People report that excessive screen time leaves them overwhelmed, anxious, and dissatisfied — and they're doing something about it.
Common ways people are "going analog" right now include:
Dumbphones and flip phones
Landlines
Film cameras and Polaroids
Vinyl records, CDs, and radio
Paper planners and journals
Board games and puzzles
Real watches instead of smartwatches
Vintage or vintage-style appliances
Print books
Handwritten letters
Slow fashion and vintage shopping
Home-cooked meals with people, instead of eating out
Arts and crafts as a hobby, not content
Why we're drawn to nostalgia right now
It's worth asking why this is happening now, and psychology has some real answers.
Researchers describe nostalgia as functioning almost like an emotional immune system — when we feel disconnected, uncertain, or lonely, our brains reach for nostalgic memories to restore a sense of stability and connection. Interestingly, one of the most reliable triggers of nostalgia is boredom, which psychologists increasingly define as the feeling of having lost control over your own attention. That description lines up uncomfortably well with what an hour of mindless scrolling actually feels like.
Nostalgia also serves a deeper function around control. Even when circumstances feel out of our hands, revisiting memories of times we navigated challenges gives us a present-day sense of agency. And notably, much of what people are nostalgic for isn't passive — it's memories of doing something: making the call, planning the dinner, driving across town because you wanted to see someone. In other words, nostalgia often points back toward moments of architecting connection ourselves, rather than having content and interaction algorithmically delivered to us.
What this means for your coaching business
Here's where this stops being a cultural observation and becomes a business strategy.
The dominant advice in the coaching and course-creator space keeps pointing toward more: more automation, more AI tools, more funnel complexity, more tech layered on tech. But the exact people coaches are trying to reach are craving the opposite. They want to feel like there's a real person on the other end — not another notification, another automated sequence, another polished sales funnel.
This is a big part of why I've built my own business the way I have: no discovery calls, Voxer-based coaching instead of another Zoom call on someone's calendar, and a brand that reflects my actual life rather than a produced version of it. It's also consistent with what I found during my own 90-day Instagram experiment — reach declined significantly during the second half of the test, yet I still booked multiple clients, because algorithmic reach was never actually the thing driving results. Relationship was.
The takeaway isn't to throw out your tech stack or buy a flip phone. It's that in a moment where people are actively craving what feels human and controllable, the coaches who lean into real, relational, less-automated ways of connecting are positioned to stand out — not despite being lower-tech, but because of it.
One small shift to try this week
You don't have to overhaul your entire business to apply this. Pick one place where you could make a client interaction more human, more direct, or less automated — and try it this week. That might mean replying personally instead of with a template, sending a voice memo instead of an email, or picking up the phone instead of scheduling another call through a booking link.