Who Writes Letters Anymore?

In a sense, social media is ruining our communication. Not only because we are drawn in to it, and consumed in the latest tweets, and posts, but we are using social media as a main source of communication. For many people, if they haven’t seen a friend in a long time, they hop on Facebook, see what they have been up too, and send them a quick personal message. A decade ago, that wasn’t a thing. People would write those friends letters and send them in the mail, not over the internet. Sadly, hardly anyone actually uses a pen and paper for communication these days.

The reason many people don’t write letters is because it isn’t fast. It would take at least two days until they got the letter and another two days for a response. It is so much easier just to get on Facebook, twitter, or email, and shoot them a message there. The problem with that is it isn’t exercising our social skills that much. When you write a letter on paper, it takes a lot of thought. If you mess up, or decide you don’t want to say something, you have to start completely over, so why not just use social media?

Whenever someone gets a personal letter in the mail they usually get pretty excited. On Facebook if you get a message, it is just another day. You get Facebook messages way more frequently than letters. Because of this, a Facebook message doesn’t hold the same amount of meaning as a letter. If I were to write a letter it shows I care about that person and what they are doing enough to take the extra time and hand write a letter. By doing that I open myself up for them to see my imperfect spelling, imperfect grammar, imperfect punctuation, and imperfect handwriting. That all adds to the meaning of a letter.

Social media takes that meaning away. It allows us to escape all imperfections and talk to someone with not much thought at all. In twenty seconds you could write a comment, hit post, and it is for all to see. In a letter, it is an intimate conversation between the writer and the reader, not the world. That is how it should be. We all should take some time, and the next time we want to send a message via social media, stop. Sit down, write it out on paper, and send it in the mail. I bet that conversation will be one of the best you have had in a long time. (WC 432)