The Amish are known for their old-fashioned lifestyle. Here’s the real reason they reject technology.

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Many people are fascinated by the Amish community. A big part of the fascination comes from the people who look and live as if they’ve been frozen in time. It turns out, the reason it appears that Amish people are stuck in the past is not that complicated.

People travel from all over the country to visit “Amish Country,” to get a glimpse into the Amish way of life. The community is located in south-central Pennsylvania, in Lancaster County, where they keep to themselves. In 2026, the religious sect still gets around on horse and buggy.

They don’t take part in any modernization, including zippers on their clothing. People today associate the Amish with being isolated from the outside world, but that wasn’t always the case. PBS reveals in a recent documentary that the Amish used to live in town with other communities until the early 1900s.

Sociologist, Donald B. Kraybill, tells PBS, “I think for the first hundred years from the mid-18th to the mid-19th century, the Amish felt more at home here.”

“Amish people shared a lot of lifestyle similarities with people who are not Amish. And so they were living in a largely Pennsylvania German culture where people spoke Pennsylvania German or Pennsylvania Dutch,” an unidentified voice is heard saying in the short clip.

Fleeing persecution

When the Amish came to the colonies, they were already accustomed to existing in isolation. The group practices a religion called Anabaptist, a form of the Protestant religion that was considered “radical” in the late 1600s. Their belief in adult baptism and the rejection of infant baptism made them targets during the 16th century.

“Baptism, adult baptism was a capital offense, and they got the medieval equivalent of the electric chair,” Kraybill recounts. “2,000 to 3,000 died as martyrs. The government appointed Anabaptist hunters that would go out looking for them, so they would hold services in caves, hold services in the woods at night, and basically became an underground movement. And that has really stayed in the DNA of Amish culture and Amish history.”

Protecting and prioritizing connection

While the Amish enjoyed living life among their neighbors, the Industrial Revolution brought change. The clothing began to change, not only in style but also in the means of production. No longer were dresses and trousers being cut and sewn by hand. Machines made the process much quicker and less personalized. These changes made the group uneasy as the garments were seen as flashy and immodest according to the PBS documentary.

But it was the invention, and subsequent spreading use of the telephone, that caused them to retreat into community isolation.

“And it was with the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the fads and the fashions that were becoming available. That’s what troubled the Amish mind and troubled the Amish soul,” Kraybill reveals. “The focus on the Amish society is on the community, always on the community. In American life, the focus is on the individual getting ahead. Freedom of individual choice, making a name for yourself, self achievement. All of those are in direct opposition to key values of the Amish way of life.”

The sociologist further explains that community, humility, and putting yourself under the authority of the church were all key parts of Amish life. These differences became a stark contrast between the Amish and their neighbors.

Kraybill shares, “The first item of technology that created an issue was the telephone. Because if you have a phone and you can call, why visit? Why go and see the person?”

According to PBS, by 1910, the Amish had banned having telephones in the home but allowed the use of public phones. The idea isn’t to avoid all technology, but to have a “firewall” between the Amish and technology. Amish people may still get around with a horse and carriage, but they will ride in a car being driven by someone else.

“The main core of Amish motivation is to keep the local church together,” Kraybill says. “If you give someone the keys to the car, they’re going to go off to the city. Young people will often get jobs. So to the Amish way of thinking, the car will fragment our community. It will splinter the community. It will pull us apart.”

In the world, not of it

The Amish community is aware that the world has changed drastically since the 1800s. This doesn’t stop them from continuing to keep things as analog as possible. Buttons, clasps, and hooks instead of zippers. Tilling farmland with animals pulling equipment instead of a machine. Using oil lamps instead of electricity, and sewing clothing by hand instead of purchasing from a store. These are all ways the Amish keep things simple.

“They’re in our world, but they’re not part of our world. They’re in the world but not of it, and that’s what they want to be,” Anthropologist, Karen M. Johnson-Weiner explains to PBS. “They are working together to actively live according to Christ’s teachings, and the majority of the world is not doing that.

So the sense is that we are pilgrims passing through this world on the way to the eternal world. We don’t get attached to this world. We don’t get attached to the things of this world. We do our best. We try to serve God, and then we hope that will mean we’re worthy of salvation.”