By Movieguide® Staff
Tech reviewer Arun Maini — better known to his more than 20 million YouTube subscribers as Mrwhosetheboss — posted a 59-second Short on May 12 asking what plenty of commuters have been quietly wondering: why is everyone suddenly wearing wired earphones again?
“There’s so much AI now, so many things that are digital and not real to people anymore. I think people want tangible touch points,” Shelby Hull, founder of the Instagram account Wired It Girls, told CNN.
The numbers back her hunch. Wireless earbuds still ruled 2025 at roughly 66 percent of the market, according to Future Marketing Insight, but wired headphone sales jumped 20 percent in the first six weeks of 2026 — a sharp pivot after five straight years of decline.
The reversal has picked up celebrity wattage along the way. CNN reports that Anthony Edwards, Steph Curry, Drake, Lily-Rose Depp, Harry Styles, Zendaya and Charli XCX have all stepped out lately with a cord dangling from their ears.
Hull launched her Wired It Girls account in 2021 after a Vogue piece celebrated model Bella Hadid’s “humble” loyalty to the wire. Five years later, the account reads like an unofficial chronicle of the comeback.
Related: Are Our Earbuds Hurting Us? Here’s What the Experts Say
“She’s obviously wealthy, she can afford AirPods, but she always stuck to the wire,” Hull said of Hadid. “And there was something so effortless about it: very cool, very unbothered to keep up with the latest tech trends. She didn’t care.”
Affordability matters here. Apple’s wired EarPods retail for about $25, while the cheapest AirPods start at $159 and the over-ear AirPods Max climb to $669.
The fashion magazines have noticed, too. Vogue’s “In the Bag” segments with Dua Lipa and Ariana Grande last year both featured wired earbuds, and New York Magazine’s December cover story showcased celebrity duos including Ben Stiller and Karl-Anthony Towns sharing a pair on the subway.
Chad Brown, founder of the NBA Fashion Fits Instagram account, told CNN that the cord has quietly become part of every rookie’s uniform.
“Everything goes in cycles…It’s nostalgic,” Brown said. “It’s an accessory, it’s part of the fit…Any guy that’s recently drafted is probably going to be wearing wired headphones.”
There’s a practical case, too. Wired buds don’t need charging, won’t roll down a subway grate to their death and don’t randomly drop the call when you’re trying to take your kid’s school pickup off speakerphone — a frustration Los Angeles Lakers guard Marcus Smart cited recently when explaining his pre-game preference.
“The Bluetooth ones are a little difficult,” Smart said in a video shared by the Lakers. “Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they fall out, sometimes they disconnect, sometimes they lose power, sometimes you forget to charge them.”
The deeper pull, though, seems to be cultural. Wired earphones fit alongside the broader Gen Z embrace of analog living — dumbphones, instax cameras, vinyl, knitting, even VHS tapes — a generation reaching for something it can hold.
Movieguide® has tracked the same impulse from another angle. Last June, Movieguide® covered the rise of “appstinence,” a Gen Z movement to delete social apps, downgrade smartphones and rebuild attention spans worn thin by the feed.
The wired-earphone moment isn’t a digital detox, exactly, but it rhymes with one. Trading a sleek wireless pod for a tangled cord is a small, public way of signaling that the newest thing isn’t automatically the best thing — and that less convenience can be worth choosing.
For parents watching how their kids relate to technology, that’s a quiet bit of encouraging news. The cool kids no longer believe more screens, more wireless and more frictionless connection equal more life. Some of them are starting to suspect the opposite.
And as Hull put it: “I just really long for that more analog experience. I think a lot of people do.”
Read Next: Why Gen Zers Are Turning Towards ‘Analog Lifestyles’
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