My Semi-Analog Week

Illustrated by Heather Han

In the spring, while writing about the influence of multitasking on content production, I stumbled across a horrific little study. Meant to explore the neural processes associated with media multitasking, the study observed that individuals who tend to spend more time consuming multiple forms of media simultaneously often have “smaller gray matter density.”

I won’t pretend to understand much of the study or the effects of variation in gray matter density, but the line has been clanging around my head ever since. I’ll be flipping between tabs on my laptop, saving my spot in an article to check Instagram, listening to a podcast while scrolling through emails—and there it is, a mosquito’s buzz at my ear: smaller gray matter density. 

And I have been harboring suspicions that my digital media intake habits have been adversely impacting my cognition. Since college, my attention span has shriveled. I’m constantly distracted by a din of disordered questions—What is our high school quarterback up to now? How many calories were in that ice cream sandwich I ate yesterday? Was Don DeLillo hot in his twenties? Technology has removed all friction between the rise of these intrusive quandaries and the opportunity to pursue them, and my resolve has weakened. The ruts leading down that old road of internet rabbit holes are so jagged and tall, once I’m veering, reversing course is next to impossible.

There’s more. I rarely make it halfway through reading an article before being assailed by the desire—no, compulsion—to start another one. In my dependence on the online Merriam Webster thesaurus—always open on my laptop—my ability to come up with synonyms on the fly has atrophied. The prospect of making a decision, even one as minor as choosing which online publication to peruse, looms insurmountable. 

My life is commanded by an anxiety that I’m doing the wrong thing at the wrong time and also that I’m never doing enough. I blame Big Tech. More accurately, I blame my bad digital media habits, fueled by Big Tech.

The solution bloomed, all sunflowers and bliss: I’d go analog! And I’d write a damn good essay about the process. How easy, how clean: I’d simply quit tech and all the sickening trappings of a digital existence.

I imagined a week of books and vinyl. I’d be a free soul. Immersed in the honest labor of physical discovery, I’d come to appreciate art in a whole new way. I’d unlock parts of my brain blocked since childhood. Colors would be more vibrant, scents more aromatic. My mental faculties would sharpen. Food would taste richer, orgasms would be more encompassing.

. . . and then I grabbed my phone. It was time to maintain my Duolingo streak.

Having recently moved to a new country to start an MFA, I’ve been extra reliant on my phone lately, using it to plot routes, find events, and keep in touch with friends. My inbox is constantly clotting with emails from my department, my bank, my phone provider, my job, my mom—and they all demand responses. 

The New York Times app pulsed with breaking news updates. This might not be so easy.

While I’d love a reprieve from the digital world, I also love affording rent and food and being able to interact with my loved ones and read the news. A full digital blackout would not be an option.

Okay. Back to the drawing board. “Semi-analog” had a nice ring to it.

First, a note on diction

To come up with the mechanics of the experiment, I’d have to come up with a working definition of semi-analog, which meant a quick etymological detour and subsequently, a discovery that I’ve been, uh, misusing “analog.” 

Writing in Fortune, Luba Kassova identifies Gen Z’s proclivity for analog as “an act of defiance in the face of the formless digital world and a cry for respite from the enormous noise perpetuated by the 24/7 social media cycle.” 

In tandem with (or more accurately, as one of) Kassova’s Zoomers, I tend to behold the phrase “analog” as a catch-all for physical media, and thus consider it oppositional to Big Tech and the digital realm it stewards. But the practice of employing “analog” as an antonym to “digital” is based on a misunderstanding. It’s absolutely true that digital technology is not analog technology (as any audiophile will tell you). “Digital” serves to describe any technology that stores and reproduces data through solid values (digits). “Analog,” meanwhile, refers to an alternate means of capturing and storing information through “analogous” physical quantities. 

“Plenty of older (and current) technologies are analog,” Rob Loukotka writes in Fringe Focus, “Just be sure to ask yourself if that device has variable signal/data, or if that device is just really old . . . Sound waves being converted into an electrical signal is analog, a film negative is not.”

The goal of my experiment being to distance myself from digital media, it would have been more appropriate for me to dub this my “semi-anti-digital” week. But, in honor of the transitory nature of language (and my own stubbornness), I decided to stick to “semi-analog.” Sue me.

The rules

In lieu of accurate terminology, I opted for concrete goals to guide my actions. Going semi-analog wouldn’t mean trashing my smartphone or eschewing the Cloud, but I was interested in a partial “break” from Big Tech. The goals were to 1) impose strict limits on my use of digital technology; 2) avoid media multitasking (specifically digital media); and 3) replace digital media with physical (or analog) media as much as possible.

Recognizing that much of my work is dependent upon internet access, I settled on a compromise in homage to my childhood. Up until high school, when I got my first clunker of a laptop, internet access was limited to the family desktop, which sat in the corner of the living room. Having lived on laptops and smart phones for over a decade now, it’s hard to recall a time when my internet access was limited to specific physical spaces, but for more than half of my life, this was just how it was.

Finding the concept of an “internet corner” rather charming, I figured it was time to return to the 2000s and establish a fixed point in our apartment for all of my online activities; I’d think of it as my FTZ (free tech zone). And as we have no desk, my FTZ would be the kitchen table. Here was where my laptop was to live (when I wasn’t in the office or classroom, which would also be FTZs). And as for my smartphone, well, if it wasn’t in physical contact with the tabletop, it would be functionally a dumb phone—used exclusively for calls, texts, and taking photos. 

In the interest of avoiding media multitasking (and maybe recovering some of my gray matter), I came up with a couple simple rules: I could watch TV (but not YouTube), or have my phone open, or use my laptop at the pre-established FTZs, but never at the same time. With audio media, there’d be a little more leeway. I decided that music could be used in tandem with other media, but—in a nod to the truly analog—records were to be prioritized. Glancing at our meager record selection, I decided to budge a little and allow digitized music, but only so long as it was in a format also accessible via analog (full albums and E.P.s only—no algorithmically-generated playlists and no podcasts—and never through headphones).

With regard to social media, my initial inclination was to shut it all down. My few social media accounts live exclusively on my phone (excepting Discord and Reddit, which I limit to browser use only), and as my phone would be dumb once away from the kitchen table, there’d be very few opportunities even if I were to keep the apps open. I considered my Rolodex of accounts. I’d canceled my Twitter/X years ago and had been too lazy to restart Bluesky after accidentally logging out and forgetting the password in 2024; I’d never joined TikTok, and Facebook’s AI-spangled feed made me nauseous. Really, the only social media that maintains any hold upon my soul is Instagram. 

Saturday night, set to begin my flirtation with digital freedom the next morning, I clicked the pink camera icon, indulged the algorithm’s magnetism for a couple of sickening minutes, then hit “uninstall.” Pretty painless.

Of course, there were the more niche, social media-adjacent apps, namely Strava and Duolingo, to consider. While I liked tracking my runs on Strava and considered the occasional “kudos” from old cross-country teammates a nice means of athletic encouragement, I figured I could handle a week away. 

Duolingo produced a stronger hesitation. I’m no polyglot. I harbor no delusions that in my daily dates with Lily, Vikram, Eddie and the rest of the Duolingo cast, I’ll achieve anything resembling Spanish proficiency. But still . . . I glanced at my streak: 471 days. I couldn’t just let that fall to the wayside. Sheepishly, I wrote an addendum into my plan: Duolingo was fair game, provided I completed my daily lesson at the kitchen table. 

Rules established, I found myself faced with a new question: How to track the process? In a perfect world, I’d journal freely and constantly, taking note of each moment I find myself forced to adjust a habit to fit my new limitations and analyzing my response. But who has time for that (certainly not people who stupidly schedule their semi-analog week so it falls during their first week of grad school)? Also, no one should be forced to read that. 

Instead, I settled on a more rudimentary, reflective means of qualitative analysis, stealing from the rose/thorn/bud method. During the first and second half of the week I’d note my:

• Analog rose: a pleasant side effect of the experiment.

• Technological thorn: a challenge that arose (or if I flat-out failed and broke my rules).

• Existential bud: a reflection on the general experience.

Apps uninstalled, kitchen table cleaned, schedule committed to a physical planner, I was ready to roll.

First Half

Analog Rose: Three-and-a-half days into the process, I was leaning into the little moments of respite from digital technology (especially on my phone). There was a simple pleasure in the physicality of flipping a record halfway through an album, or paging through a print magazine on the bus. I was also starting to enjoy my new wake-up ritual of lying in bed and watching the gentle wave of tree-tops and birds out my window—far more meditative than my typical routine of doomscrolling while half asleep.

Technological Thorn: Turns out I’m more reliant on Google Maps than I thought. Late to my first class Tuesday morning, and unsure which buses would get me to campus and when, I committed my first flagrant rule breakage and checked the bus schedule. There wasn’t enough time, and the stakes were too high, I told myself. Turns out the bus stop I needed was two blocks away. I shoved my phone deep in my backpack in disgust.

Existential Bud: When meeting new people in 2026, it’s standard to exchange contact information. Sure, phone numbers or WhatsApps are fine and good, but it seems that—at least among twenty-somethings—the preferred medium remains Instagram. Perhaps asking for one’s IG feels a little less intimate or intrusive than requesting a phone number. The Instagram follow establishes a willingness to orbit short of committing emotional labor (as a 28-year-old from a city infamous for its emotional distance, I fucking cling to this shit). This is to say, I’ve spent a good deal of this week trying to explain why my Instagram app is currently out of commission while typing my username into other people’s search bars.

Second Half

Analog Rose: Since starting my semi-analog week, I’d been curious what it would feel like to run without tracking, and on Friday, I contrived to find out. I still carried my phone as an emergency measure, and kept reaching for it whenever I hit a stoplight, as I’m accustomed to pausing Strava for such interruptions. But by the third light, I was finding the whole notion of running untracked thrilling. No one would ever see how fast (or slow) I was; my mileage was a secret kept between the pavement and my body. It was liberating.

Technological Thorn: In a perfect world, I’d only have one tab open on my computer at a given time. As an editorial assistant, this is not an option. I knew going into this week that my work would prove one of the greatest impositions to my semi-analog aspirations, and I’ll admit, in the office, my media multitasking was about as bad as ever. Though I was technically only ever using one screen at a time, the tab shifting necessary for fact-checking and answering Teams chats felt genuinely unhealthy. 

Existential Bud: For the last day of my semi-analog week, I felt a need to do something big, to really test my resolve in the face of “the formless digital world.” Thankfully, my creative non-fiction instructor presented me with the perfect opportunity by assigning us an 11,000-word essay, which she secured in a lovely spiral-bound packet containing physical copies of every reading we’d have during the term (I was genuinely elated). Popping a Wes Montgomery record on the turntable, I plunged into the essay, committing to read the whole thing in a single sitting (no screen recesses allowed). Were it a lesser text, maybe the whole experience would have gone differently, but luckily, the piece, a roving epic of a personal essay by Sheila Heti, was sublime. I rode alongside Heti for over an hour, sobbing and giggling in equal parts. Toward the piece’s end, Heti describes taking LSD and witnessing a pleasure-gathering god, observing:

Anything that spoiled your own pleasure, like, for instance, guilt that helped no one when you were trying on clothes, or impatience to be done watching a movie when you had work to get back to . . . could be considered neighbors of sin.

Beside the excerpt, I scrawled frantically in the margins: When I consider these “potential pleasure” eaters, I think of phones and how they tug us away from the beauty of experience.

It had taken a semi-analog week and an hour of straight, screen-free reading to commit to paper what I’d known all along: My relationship with digital media and my phone specifically is cheapening my ability to experience life.

Now what?

I’ll be honest: I did this experiment on easy mode. The adjustments I made were primarily just that—adjustments. My computer usage was basically the same, save a few location shifts and a paring down of applications. As far as experiments go, my methods were far from scientific, and my results were thoroughly inconclusive. 

This being said, aside from a couple of Google Maps-related issues, I never regretted my digital scaling back. Upon reinstating my social media (I know: I’m weak), I discovered that I really hadn’t missed much. And what I did miss wasn’t all that important. My life sans newsfeeds and livestreams was plenty full—probably more full.

Going analog is simply not an option for most of us (it certainly isn’t for me), but if this week taught me anything, it’s that a little distance from the overwhelming demands of the digital world goes a long way. And now, I’ll be off the shut my laptop, leave the kitchen table, and go for a run. Where I’m going and how fast? I’ll never tell.