Pick the Tech That Makes You Happy, Not Just the Newest Shiny Thing

For the price of an iPhone I bought a flip phone, a PlayStation 1, a retro gaming PC, a record player, a movie projector, two cameras and all the tech I need for a lifetime of happiness.

Back when I used a smartphone, I always bought the cheapest one available. I’d hold onto it, sometimes held together by duct tape, until it fell apart. Meanwhile, most people I know have expensive iPhones, often upgrading every year or two. In practical terms, their phones and mine could do the same things—take photos, browse the web, run apps—though mine might have been a bit slower and took slightly grainier pictures. For that small difference, people were spending hundreds, sometimes over a thousand dollars each year. And for what? Marginally better photos and milliseconds saved opening an app?

What baffles me the most is the fact that the phone did nothing to make them any happier. If anything, they may be missing out on other things they could enjoy more with that money. Over the last year, I decided to spend on tech that truly brings me joy. I bought:

• A Nokia flip phone - $70

• A used Sony EOS M Camera - $130

• A used Pentax K1000 analog camera - $100

• A vinyl record player and speakers - $250

• A used projector and screen - $80

• Combined nearly one thousand DVDs, VHS tapes, video games, vinyl records, and CDs - $100 (a local thrift store sells 10 DVDs, VHS, Games, and CDs for 1 dollar on Fridays)

• A retro gaming PC - $100

• A Playstation 1 $70

Add it all up for a grand total of $900, the cost of half an iPhone 16. That’s pretty much all the tech I need to make me happy for a lifetime, and people think I’m weird when they learn that I don’t spend 6 hours a day scrolling on my phone.

This isn’t some sort of buying guide, I’m not saying you should buy the same things as me, but my advice is that you buy the tech that makes you happy. If that is an iPhone 16, go for it.

An important point to keep in mind when picking tech for happiness is that it doesn’t have to make sense to anyone else, and in my experience, it rarely does.

This is the TV in my office. I prefer it over any high-tech 8k TV with a million movies available with the click of a button.

A while back I was at a party and I walked up to a couple of friends of mine that were chatting. One of them had just bought a new TV and they were discussing the 8K resolution. As I had just joined them, they looked at me for input and served a puzzled look when I told them I couldn’t really tell the difference between 4k, 8k, and even Full HD most of the time, and I didn’t really care. I told them I prefer to watch VHS tapes on my old 32-inch CRT, and they thought I was making a joke. I went on to explain that I like film grain and even the fuzzy sound of old tapes. That I like the ambiance of an old CRT TV in a dimly lit room. Nothing I said registered. Obviously (in their mind), 8K is better than 4K which is in turn better than full HD and so on.

If you still don’t see where I’m coming from, I’d recommend that you check out Old Time Hawkey, a massively popular Canadian influencer who makes videos where he cooks and pretends to serve the viewer a nostalgic meal like grilled cheese or pancakes, often served with a can of soda or a milkshake and the catchphrase “Here you go buddy”, and always accompanies by a movie on VHS or a retro video game.

If I had to choose between watching a movie in a cozy cabin on an old CRT or on a massive 100-inch 8K screen in a stark, minimalist room, there's no question what I would pick.

For me, it’s all about feelings when comparing new and old tech, not about specs. We’ve forgotten that technology has the ability to make you happy, or at least it used to. And the reason it did wasn’t because we spent a massive amount of money upgrading last year’s shiny thing for an additional megapixel or slightly higher resolution.

If someone asked you why you bought a certain product and you told them it was “because it makes you happy”, you would think that made a lot of sense to most people. If you told them “Because it’s newer than my current thing” without any further explanation, that makes less sense. But in the real world, it almost seems like it’s the other way around. Buying something simply because it’s newer is much more common and even more acceptable.

Not only has the acquiring of new tech become less intentional and more passive, but the technology itself has become passive. Scrolling on social media, or browsing through Netflix isn’t an active choice anymore, you’re just going through the motions.

If you think I’m wrong, imagine how we used to pick out movies in the 80s and 90s. I grew up with a video rental store as a next-door neighbor. My parents would let me rent one movie over the weekend, and I could spend hours going through the entire selection, looking at the covers. IMDB wasn’t there to help you pick a movie and you had to go by your impression of the cover and your gut instinct. This also developed my taste in movies because I wouldn’t just watch movies with a high IMDB or Rotten Tomato score, and I would have to make up my own mind if I thought it was a good movie or not. When I finally made my choice, the whole family would gather or my friends would come over to watch the movie, even if it was a bad pick it was better than watching whatever was on the few TV channels we had. I’d watch the movie at least twice over the weekend, I had, after all, spent $5 and had to get my money’s worth.

Today you pick up the remote and push the Netflix button while you apathetically scroll through thousands of movies, pick one, and leave it on in the background while you scroll on your phone, each member of your family on a different screen.

One thing I’ve found that’s really strange about the whole process is that the same movie cover in physical and streaming format will have a completely different impact on me. On Netflix, I’ll scroll past thinking “Meh”, but picking up the movie and holding it in my hands will get me excited to watch it, and I can’t fully explain why. What I find even more interesting is that it seems to have the same effect on my 3-year-old son, who is mostly indifferent to our “smart” TV, but also gets very excited about picking a DVD to watch.

For me, the return of physical media to our home has made it more alive, and happier. The feeling of picking out a vinyl record and putting it in the player sure beats listening to a random Spotify playlist on the Sonos (which never works anyway). Picking a movie together on a Friday night and watching it on the projector while eating popcorn and pretending to be at the cinema sure beats endlessly browsing through Netflix. And playing old Nintendo or Playstation games on the CRT together sure beats playing whatever live-service slop the video game developers make these days.

In the end, my advice is that when considering buying something, whether it’s tech or anything else, ask yourself: Do I need this? do I want this? and does this make me happy?