The smartphone era created an attention crisis. Slowtech is fixing it

Published 18 June 2026 · tech

When Tony Fadell entered New York City’s 28th Street Subway Station, he did not expect to come face-to-face with an for a product he designed

When Tony Fadell entered New York City’s 28th Street Subway Station, he did not expect to come face-to-face with an for a product he designed over 20 years ago. But there it was: a five-by-four-foot poster promoting the iPod Shuffle, luring passersby with the promise of “Zero screen time.” “The first thing was, I thought, ‘Wait a second, did somebody not change the ad?’” Fadell, known as the father of the iPod, told TechCrunch. “For somebody like me who knows that thing intimately, it’s like seeing your kid’s picture.” As Fadell stood in the train station, he was surrounded by people wearing wireless Bluetooth headphones to stream music on their phones, effortlessly accessing music libraries with over 100 million songs. This technology that we take for granted makes Steve Jobs’ early iPod tagline — “one thousand songs in your pocket” — sound antiquated. A Back Market ad in the New York City Subway Image Credits:Tony Fadell (opens in a new window) The postage-stamp-sized iPod Shuffle, which relied heavily on shuffle playback and offered little control compared to today’s streaming apps, should not appeal to a modern audience. But we have become so entrenched in technology that our various devices, apps, and algorithms mediate our every experience, from grocery shopping to dating. We’ve built smartphones that can do almost anything, but we’ve also created a constant connectedness that has become more exhausting than enriching. “People are very oversaturated and overstimulated, and they really want to have a more mindful approach to what they’re doing with their tech,” Joy Howard, CMO of Back Market, an online marketplace for refurbished tech, told TechCrunch. “There’s this fatigue that we have with the need to optimize every single aspect of our life.” Howard and her team were responsible for the iPod Shuffle ad that Fadell was so shocked to encounter. But Howard says that demand is growing for this supposedly obsolete tech — if these devices weren’t driving sales, the company wouldn’t have shelled out for a premium ad placement in a hectic New York City subway station. For younger generations who have never known a world without social media and smartphones, there’s a certain magic to wired headphones, retro gaming consoles, CDs, and digital point-and-shoot cameras. They crave experiences that aren’t trying to monopolize their attention. Old-school cameras can’t upload photos to your Instagram story, retro games don’t spam you with gambling, and iPods can’t automatically play music that you’re algorithmically destined to enjoy. That’s the whole point of this movement, which Howard calls “slowtech.” “The ‘fast tech’ up until now has been all about eliminating friction… [Now], people are seeing friction as a way to create boundaries for themselves,” Howard said.