The ‘Digicam’ and What It Reveals About Our Society

Teens worldwide are choosing to trade in their iPhones, equipped with the newest camera technology, for cameras that produce images as if they were taken with a potato. Digging through their parents’ drawers or spending a thousand dollars on cameras of grainy quality, this phenomenon has taken over. 

In an age of ultra-HD phone cameras and algorithmic filters, it might seem counterintuitive that Gen Z is turning back to grainy film and chunky digital point-and-shoots. Yet walk into any high school hallway, urban thrift store, or TikTok comment section, and you’ll see a clear trend: analog is in. The return of disposable Kodaks, Canon PowerShots, and camcorders isn’t just aesthetic nostalgia — it’s a mirror reflecting our current political and cultural state.

A Rebellion Against Perfection

At its core, the resurgence of film and early digital tech is a quiet rebellion. We’re living in a hyper-curated digital world, where every Instagram story is filtered, edited, and manicured for maximum aesthetic value. Instagram, a popular photo-sharing platform, has turned into a highlight reel, and the film photos are a perfect counterattack for a culture that strives for perfection. Gen Z, who grew up watching influencers sculpt their lives into brand campaigns, are craving something rawer — something real.

Film’s imperfections — the light leaks, grain, soft focus — are the point. They're a protest against the algorithmic demand for constant perfection and the mental health crisis born from social comparison. It’s a low-key but powerful form of resistance: opting out of the polished feeds and curated identities that define 21st-century digital life. Film also invites people to be intentional about their photography, and truly think about what they want to capture about the moment. 

Nostalgia as Resistance

The revival of retro tech isn’t just about aesthetics; it’s about agency. Nostalgia is often dismissed as regressive, but for Gen Z — a generation shaped by climate anxiety, economic precarity, and political gridlock — nostalgia can be radical. Early digital cameras weren’t built to harvest user behavior. They didn’t feed into facial recognition or sell your metadata. In that sense, using a 2005 camera in 2025 is an act of reclaiming technological intimacy. It's an anti-corporate, pro-privacy move — a small but intentional effort to opt out of the commodification of our daily lives.

There is something to be said about the nostalgia trends that coexist with their modern counterparts. The rise of thrift shopping paralleled to the rise of fast fashion just doesn’t make sense. 

But here’s where it gets tricky. When nostalgia becomes aestheticized, does it lose its meaning? The rise of “thrift store” fashion in mainstream retailers (such as Urban Outfitters selling faux-vintage tees at marked-up prices) blurs the line between anti-consumerism and commodification. The look of sustainability, individuality, or retro rebellion gets packaged and sold back to us.

We’re witnessing what could be called ethical signaling — the performance of conscious consumerism without necessarily engaging in its politics. A thrifted outfit might look sustainable, but if it's curated purely for Instagram clout, has it lost its edge? And when fast fashion brands start mimicking secondhand trends, do they cancel out the values those trends were meant to represent?

Ultimately, the parallel rise of nostalgia and hyper-modern consumer culture reveals something deeper: we are living in contradiction. Young people today are both deeply critical of capitalism and deeply enmeshed in it. We want to protect the planet, but we also want next-day shipping. We crave uniqueness, but we also crave inclusion. We want to slow down, but we also want more options, more aesthetics and more self-expression.

Rather than dismiss these tensions as hypocritical, it might be more honest to see them as human. Navigating life under late capitalism is messy. So maybe the resurgence of retro isn’t about escaping the present — it’s about making peace with it. Or at least, trying to.