Your camera roll called. It's getting ridiculous.
I have thousands of photos on my phone. Most of them I've looked at exactly once, the moment I took them. Sound familiar? You're not alone. A 2026 study by Popsa, which surveyed 8,000 people across the UK, US, France and Germany, found that around 70% of smartphone photos are never looked at again.
We've never taken more photos. And we've never looked at them less.
The pendulum is swinging back
Something is shifting, especially with younger people. Film cameras, disposables, vinyl. Fortune reported this year that around 35% of the world's roughly 42 million active film camera users are aged 18 to 30, and US vinyl sales passed $1 billion in 2025. A generation that grew up with everything on a screen is choosing things they can actually hold.
It isn't nostalgia for the sake of it. It's wanting something that doesn't disappear with a swipe.
Why a printed photo feels different
It makes you choose. You can't print 14,000 photos, so you pick the ones that matter. That little act of choosing is half the magic.
It lives somewhere. On the coffee table. Passed around at Christmas. Pulled out by a four-year-old who wants to see "when I was a baby".
It doesn't need a password, a charger or a cloud subscription. It's just there, waiting for you.
And it changes how you feel about the moment. The same Popsa research found almost half of people felt more emotionally connected to their memories after printing them.
Why I started MEMS
I'm a nana at heart. I print my photos after every holiday and every year. When I came home from a big backpacking trip, I printed everything and went looking for an album to put it all in. Everything I found was either daggy or flimsy.
I wanted the nostalgia of the albums we grew up with, without the daggy album. So I made one: linen-bound, self-adhesive, beautiful enough to leave out, and made to last.
How to start (without it feeling like admin)
Don't start with your whole camera roll. Nobody has time for that.
- Choose one chapter. One trip, one season, one year.
- Pick the 50 you'd be sad to lose. Print them in standard 4x6.
- Fill it in an afternoon. One Sunday afternoon. One year of memories. One album.
- Leave it out. On the coffee table, where people will actually pick it up.
Our Mini holds exactly 50 prints, so it's the easiest place to start. When you're ready for a bigger chapter, our Large Keepsakes hold up to 320.
Life is happening now. Keep some of it.
Hanna x
