Floppy disks, landlines, and file folders. Your icons might be stuck in the past. 2025 calls for fresh symbols that speak to modern users.

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Which icons to NOT use in 2025

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Either I’m becoming a boomer or the proposed icons super confusing.

The world is full of old references that are no longer used for their original purpose, and yet still convey their useful meanings. There’s no need to adapt to a new word, simply because the old reference is no longer valid. The word simply takes on the new meaning.
For instance, you “roll” down a window, and yet nobody under the age of 50 has probably even been in a car where that makes any actual sense, and yet everyone knows what it means because that’s what it’s always been called.
This should also apply to icons. It doesn’t matter what they originally represented, or that the original reference is deprecated. The icon means what the icon means.

I didn’t agreed with the phone and file folder. The old ways of representing phone is much more universal that even the smartphone itself used the same old telephone icon for calling. As for file folder, their new way of abstract representations of “data” is still confusing, i will only accept when they come up with a good representation.

An envelope icon representing mail, may be obsolete, yet more companies still offer an email address over a WhatsApp, Facebook or Twitter. You need an email address to set up those accounts, so why force people onto platforms which only a percentage of customers use?
The phone icon, a telephone was used for that, making a call. A smartphone does a myriad of things now so which function of a smartphone is this conveying?
Yes younger people may not know what a floppy disk is, but we didn’t change it to a USB flash drive did we?
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Some non computing icons have been around for years. Denoting the time would still have a clock or watch, yet many people don’t have a watch.