On my last vacation, I took more photos with a cheap compact than with my mirrorless camera. I spent an entire week without checking emails or reading the news on my iPhone. For seven full days, I felt liberated.

But when I read a recent article on digital minimalism that included the camera among a list of “dumb tech,” I was only slightly annoyed that my favorite piece of technology was being subjected to middle-school-level taunting. The other part of me? I felt nostalgic for that low-tech, disconnected vacation.

As the camera phone improved, the compact camera market tanked. Only a few high-end model compact cameras remained, as simple point-and-shoots were replaced by the devices already in pockets. Today, our smartphones tend to have two or three cameras rather than just one – and yet the point-and-shoot market is skyrocketing.

Some of the compact camera’s resurgence could be because, yes, many point-and-shoots still have better image quality than smartphones, with longer lenses and larger sensors. But part of the compact camera’s seemingly inexplicable popularity is due to the trend towards digital minimalism.

Digital minimalism sounds like a misnomer. After all, its proponents carry around a flip phone, a notebook, an MP3 player and a compact camera instead of one single smartphone. But minimalism isn’t about the number of devices but the level of connectivity – and the level of distractions that come with it.