Gen Z is handwriting letters, the rest of us should to

Younger generations are driving an old-fashioned comeback: handwritten letters. According to Business Insider, Gen Z and millennials, tired of the emptiness of digital life, are driving a full-blown letter-writing renaissance. They're joining snail-mail and pen-pal clubs. They're writing to old friends. They're trading pen-pal addresses on TikTok and Instagram, and they're devoting time to write and decorate envelopes — and wait weeks for handwritten replies that provide a simple human connection emails can never match. Digital gains, but… We all love what digital technology has allowed us to do. I'm able to keep in touch with more friends than I ever could have with traditional letters. Every now and then I am able to track down a long-lost friend on social media and re-engage through email. The digital world has allowed me to make new friends, too. A while back, I made a call to an editor at a big-city paper whom I'd never spoken with before. I called to pitch my column. We chatted for a spell and he agreed to review samples of my work. A few weeks later he began running my column in the papers he oversaw. Early on, we began swapping email about the column and writing in general. One night, the fellow sent me an instant text message. We chatted back and forth electronically for a good long while and have been friends now for more than 20 years. Still, there is nothing to compare to getting handwritten letters in the mail from old friends. Letters in my attic I've kept every letter I ever received and keep them in a large cardboard box in my attic. About 12 years ago, when I moved back to my house in Pittsburgh from Washington, D.C., I was moving items into storage when I came across the box again. In it I found a letter I received in 1985, a year after I graduated from college. It was from a fellow I'd gone to Penn State with, who went on to become an editor in Bangor, Maine. It was written on a light-blue final exam booklet with great wit and humor. As I read it that Saturday about 12 years ago, it brought me back 15 years — brought me back to exactly who I was when I was 23. I laughed out loud as I read it. I also found a stack of letters in pink envelopes from two ladies, Bonnie and Tracey, who attended the same college as my friend Griff. I'd never met them before, but he had them send me a letter once during our freshman year. A robust correspondence resulted between 1980 and 1984. As I reread those letters, I laughed so hard tears tumbled down my face (and Bonnie and I went on to date for a spell the following year). I spent hours that Saturday rereading the dozens of letters I'd received over the years. It was amazing to me how much living I had done and forgotten about. A Saturday that started off with a focus of getting my storage in order — the dull chore of organizing storage — became one of the most uplifting Saturdays of my life. My grandfather's handwriting A few years ago, while organizing my office files, I came across a letter my grandfather wrote back in 1924. He wrote that eloquent letter to his best friend's wife, consoling her on the loss of her mother. His word choice and sentence structure were pure eloquence. His cursive handwriting was artful — perfect penmanship. What amazed me most is that it looked nearly identical to my dad's perfect handwriting, which he mastered under the stern guidance of Catholic nuns in the 1940s. Well, my grandfather wrote that letter when he was 21. Since he died at 34, when my father was only 3, it is among the most cherished items I have from a grandfather I never got to meet. Time to Pick Up the Pen Yeah, we all love email and text messages and cellphones, but I cherish handwritten letters. The handwritten-letter trend that is being resuscitated by younger generations is a positive step. Kudos to Gen Z and millennials for recognizing that the warmth of ink on paper still beats the cold glow of a screen. All of us should follow their lead. Let's sit down with a nice ballpoint pen and some parchment paper and write to an old friend. When that friend unexpectedly receives it in the mail, it will produce a surge of happy energy we could all use a lot more of right now.– Copyright 2026 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. See Tom Purcell's syndicated column, humor books and funny videos featuring his dog, Thurber, at TomPurcell.com. Email him at Tom@TomPurcell.com.