The new year inevitably brings with it a new cultural trend to obsess over and 2026 is no exception.
The rise and return of physical media is a movement taking social media by storm, preaching the importance of self-education and sustainability in modern, digitalised culture. But with a great cultural shift comes, not only the trending desire for self-improvement, but the impending risk of hyper popularity and destructive overconsumption.
DVDs instead of streaming subscriptions, MP3 and record players instead of music subscriptions, digital cameras instead of mobile phones; the trend of physical media is a reversion into the past. This resurgence of going analogue and having physical elements to modern life is the direct outcome following artificial intelligence substituting human connection and creativity. The accessibility of digital media has become embedded in everyday life, as we even put television shows and music in the background when fulfilling a simple task. Our dependency on the digital and fears of AI’s capabilities have embarked us on this cultural shift from the digital into physical media: from one extreme to another.
Through the immediacy and unthinkably wide outreach of the internet, all it takes is just one social media influencer to deem something ‘the next best thing’, and production companies and consumers alike adopt a herd mentality. Going analogue means intentionally avoiding digital media, which leads to the temptation to overbuy in order to fill the void of the internet. This leads to the question of if physical media is destined to fall to the same fate as all the other consumerist trends that dominated the internet even just last year: Labubus, Owala bottles and Sonny Angels to name a few. This phenomenon encourages economic prosperity at the expense of unhealthy consumerist habits, leading to DVDs and books being pushed by companies and the media, only to end back up in our landfills and charity shops once the next trend comes along.
The website Overconsumption.org is a movement recognising the significant impact social media has on encouraging trends and consumer culture. It states that the internet’s ‘accessibility also reinforces consumer culture and significantly drives overconsumption, where individuals purchase and acquire products excessively beyond their needs’. Overconsumption has become an endless cycle promoted through social media, and even with physical media promoting going offline, it’s still promoted through the digital. It’s the rapid increase of needing to physically own items, which problematically encourages overproduction and therefore overconsumption.
To diminish the negative impact the physical media trend will have on our consumption and waste, committing to sustainable changes to incorporate physical media and going offline is the answer. Instead of overbuying books that won’t be read and vinyl records that won’t be played, utilising spaces such as libraries for not only books, but DVDs and CDs also, is the key. Visiting charity shops instead of purchasing brand new items helps suppress overconsumption, as well as borrowing items from friends and family.
Overconsumption.org also suggests committing to ‘“No Buy Month” challenges [which] are gaining traction as a way to reduce unnecessary consumption’.
Physical media discourages the overuse of digital media and technology and should be praised for its initiative towards human connection. However, with any mass cultural shift there comes the risk of overconsumption and its greater social impact. Instead of being perceived as the next trend to hop on, physical media should be consumed and used as intended, rather than collected for aesthetic purposes and later discarded.
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