What’s Wrong With Retro?

One of my trademarks in life is liking “old things” — old TV shows, old movies, in-print newspapers and listening to the radio. All of these things are considered “old soul” to my fellow Gen-Z members.

I grew up watching TV from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s and still enjoy them to this day. My parents instilled in me the love for reading, and that included physical copies of books and newspapers (yes, I still read the local newspaper, even if it’s online five out of seven days a week). I did not have a phone until middle school, and even then, my music selection was whatever I recorded on the phone’s voice recorder app (anyone else remember doing this?). Thus, the radio was my main source of musical listening.

Despite being an adult and having access to more modern entertainment and e-readers and online news sources, I still love the so-called “old way” of certain things. The whole world has gone digital, “on-demand” and “updated”. We see it in apps, the way we consume media and how we view entertainment.

I agree that technology and updates make many things simpler. Spotify makes life simple when I want podcasts and music, my laptop and phone make communication and schoolwork easier, research for classes has never been easier and, yes, I am writing this article on my computer using spellcheck and submitting it to be published online.

So, yes, technology helps make life easier.

However, there are many disadvantages of technology and changing up how things are done. Everything being digitalized means we are constantly on our screens — for entertainment, for work, for communication and basically everything else. I am one of those people who hate a QR code menu at a restaurant. I hate that everything has to have an app and that the app is often very difficult to use. And, speaking of apps, why do they always need consistent updates every few months? The old way worked just fine. This might sound like a grandmother talking, but changing everything every few months, not just every few years, can seriously throw a person off.

The loss of physical media is another way the world has changed. I clearly recall pre-COVID when newspapers would print seven times per week. That seems excessive now, six years later, when finding a newspaper that prints even once or twice a week is an enigma.

Finding another Gen-Z member who listens to the radio is another example. Personally, I get sick of my own music every so often (does anyone else feel like they’ve exhausted music choices?). I also don’t have the option to connect my phone to my car speaker, so the radio is my go-to when commuting. Often it’s music, but I’ll listen to talk radio as well.

Streaming platforms have overtaken television. No one likes the expense, but most people won’t cut them entirely. They are easily accessible, have plenty of options and can personalize viewing.

Are we all the better with these improvements? Streaming a TV series makes it easier to binge-watch and lose hours upon hours invested in a show, whereas in past viewing experiences, the TV channel would air one episode of the show every week. It would take months to complete a season. While this sounds painful (and it is), I think it was initially a smart idea. It cuts down on binging, helps us fight the need for “instant gratification” that we all suffer with in today’s society and allows for more quality entertainment. If shows can only put out one episode a week, then they are forced to make every episode the best it can be to keep the show on the air. With only three TV channels on the average television set, there weren’t as many opportunities to produce new shows. They had to be the best or else get canceled.

As for music, I still love my Spotify and YouTube, but when I just need something easy and on in the background, I turn on the radio. DJs help break up the music, and talk radio is easier to listen to than podcasts if I’m working on a different task and listening at the same time.

Here is my question: radio and TV and newspapers cater to the “older generation”. There are more baby boomers (those born between 1946-1964, approximately) than any other generation. They provide about 76.4 million people to the population, according to the Population Reference Bureau. Yet, increasingly so, we see these “old people” trademarks being overrun in an attempt to cater to the youth. Modern music stations that die out because we stream our own music, talk radio trying to draw in younger listeners by pushing out the older ones and stopping the production of in-print newspapers because most young people get all their news digitally. Streaming services advertise for younger people because they know how to use the platform and keep paying for multiple services, despite the inconvenience.

If the way we consumed media in the past is difficult, why push out the people who want to use it for the sake of “modernization”? If I, as a person born during Gen-Z, enjoy newspapers and talk radio and using cable TV, why does it have to be updated? I don’t need app updates for something that works just fine. I don’t want to see in-print newspapers die out. I like listening to the radio and I like that the radio still caters to older listeners (you never know what you might learn). I like old TV shows on cable and don’t want seventeen different TV subscriptions where I can’t find anything to watch anyway.

The world needs to stop “keeping up with the Joneses” and just let everyone be content with what we already have. As the old saying goes, “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.”

Watch old movies. Listen to the radio. Read newspapers and enjoy what we already have. Don’t hurry off to the next best thing. Don’t let what’s “in” push out what’s “old” just for the sake of being updated.