By the numbers: Search interest for the original iPod and particularly the iPod Nano spiked in the Twin Cities last year and this spring — even though Apple discontinued the product line in 2022, according to Google Trends data.

• eBay users worldwide searched for iPods more than 1,300 times per hour during the first half of 2026, per internal data shared with Axios.

• Apple did not respond to requests for comment.

How it works: Older tech tends to be "single-purpose," says Cal Newport, a computer science professor and author of "Digital Minimalism." "All you can do with an iPod, for example, is listen to music."

• Smartphones, by contrast, bundle music, messages, social feeds, news and more, making it "nearly impossible to control your technology use with any consistency," Newport says.

What they're saying: "The act of playing my music, with the sole purpose of listening to music — no ads, no apps, no distractions — makes my brain feel brand-new again," says Gen Zer Shaughnessy Barker, who started using an iPod Classic last year after scouring eBay and Facebook Marketplace.

Between the lines: ​​The MP3 revival also taps into so-called "friction-maxxing," as younger people embrace more hands-on experiences over algorithmic ease, says Libby Rodney, chief strategy officer at The Harris Poll.

• Think: Manually loading a set number of songs onto an iPod instead of letting a streaming app curate a playlist for you.
• "We're moving away from total, seamless, convenience culture and back to finding meaning in friction," Rodney tells Axios.

The intrigue: Some students are even using iPods to get around phone bans at school, the New York Times reports.

Reality check: Music streaming isn't fading anytime soon.

• U.S. on-demand audio streaming reached 1.4 trillion song streams in 2025, up from 1.3 trillion the year before, according to Luminate, an industry data firm.

The bottom line: What goes around comes back around.