Cassette tapes are making a comeback with Gen Z. Do they know the pencil trick?

For a generation that’s grown up with streaming music, the act of holding a physical recording is something a lot of young music fans have never experienced.

My teenage son asked for a turntable, to play what young people these days now call “vinyls.” His almost-new turntable and the one LP he’s bought sits on his dresser. Meanwhile, he’s constantly listening to music on his phone through AirPods.

His slightly older sister is content to listen to Spotify.

So, news that more and more members of Gen Z are purchasing cassette tapes by current hitmakers, including Taylor Swift, Charli XCX and Ariana Grande, is enough to both intrigue and cause my parental finger to start wagging.

For a (former) kid, who got his driver’s license when he was young enough to install an 8-track player, and who remembers the joy of creating cassette mixtapes for car trips, I felt obliged to inform my daughter of the potential drawbacks.

To her credit, when I pulled Green Day’s “Dookie” cassette out of my pocket and asked her if she knew what I was holding, she did say “a tape.” I didn’t push my luck by explaining it was a convenient analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback.

I haven’t owned a home or car cassette player since before she was born, but still have a big garbage bag of cassettes that I keep in my big plastic tub that also holds my vinyl. If I do the math, I owned my last turntable in 1997.

The Wall Street Journal says more than 430,000 cassettes were sold in the U.S. last year, about five times the number bought nearly a decade earlier, citing data from Luminate.

Music lovers today enjoy the immediacy of a quick click on a playlist to change songs. I had to explain the minutes we spent rewinding and fast-forwarding cassettes.

And, in a moment of teaching her how to fend for herself, I pulled out a bit of the tape, twisted it, then asked, “Uh oh, how would you fix this? It happens often with cassettes.”

Intuitively, she put her index finger in the cassette sprocket and turned it a few times, which spooled the tape back to its proper position.

And, almost as reflexively, I demonstrated how a pencil is the proper tool to quickly try to reel a balking ribbon-thin tape back into its plastic case without folding or turning over the tape.

Feeling that I sufficiently demonstrated the downsides of the cassette tape, I’m fairly certain she won’t be asking for a cassette player in her car.

That’s a relief, because I don’t think she’s ready for “the talk” about the dangers of a car cassette player eating a favorite tape. I know I’d prefer to never repeat that nightmare.

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