I was born in 1998: late enough to grow up with the internet, but early enough to remember life without it. My childhood straddled two worlds—afternoons riding bikes with my friends and evenings refreshing Facebook on the family computer. My first phone flipped open and barely texted. By high school, I had an Instagram account and no idea how much it would cost me: my attention span, my ability to read long portions of a book without reaching for my phone, my sense that the real world is socially realer than “online.”
So watching kids today—and as the Gen-Z mom of a 10-month-old baby—I feel something like grief. I know how bad it is for me, so it will be worse for them. They’ll never remember learning to operate a touchscreen; they scroll before they speak. When they grow up, their idea of friendship will be a string of emojis and TikTok dances. It’s not their fault. We gave them this world.
But now, a growing number of parents, teachers, and even former tech executives are trying to turn back the clock. The new trend in children’s toys is not more innovation, but less. Simpler, slower, nostalgic—analog.
This revival isn’t just happening in niche corners of parenting subcultures, like MAHA moms on crunchy parenting forums, or screen time–shaming Boomer blogs. It’s emerging from the very heart of Silicon Valley and expanding into a full-blown product ecosystem.
