When the bell rings at a high school near Chicago, the room suddenly becomes very quiet. Not because the students are paying attention, but because the Wi-Fi isn’t working. No cell phones. No computers. The English teacher sighs, digs through a drawer, and pulls out a box of emergency supplies. Inside are notebooks, pens, and some old ballpoint pens with faded logos.
“Let’s write this out by hand,” she says. People in the room are groaning. The girl at the front holds her pen like it’s a strange little tool, like a dart or chopsticks. A boy raises his hand and says, “Can we just type it later?” My handwriting is… not a thing.
Gen Z is slowly losing a skill that has been around for 5,500 years.
You can see it right away when you walk into almost any middle or high school today. Laptops are open, thumbs are flying on phones, essays are typed into Google Docs, and feelings are sent to DMs instead of diaries. Handwriting is at the edge of the picture, like an old filter that no one uses anymore.
You see it in everyday life. A 19-year-old at the bank is having trouble signing a form because he has only ever “signed” by dragging his finger across glass. A college student printing out lecture notes because writing them down by hand takes too long and hurts their wrist.
One teacher in the UK said that when she asked her Year 9 class to write a full page in pen, a lot of them stopped halfway through because their fingers were cramped and their eyes were wide open like they had been asked to run a marathon without training. *We’ve all been there, when you realise that a simple physical action feels strange.
From old clay tablets to cursive that is no longer used
For about 5,500 years, people have been writing down their thoughts on surfaces, from Sumerian clay tablets to teenage notebooks full of lyrics and heartbreak. For most of history, writing by hand was more than just a skill; it was a way to show that you were an adult. You weren’t really part of the world until you could write your name in ink or charcoal.
Gen Z is the first generation to grow up without always having to do that basic thing. And in a way, they’re right: you can live, study, work, date, and fight online without ever writing anything down. That’s a big change from everyone who came before.
Maya, who is 17 and from Austin, is one. She has a lot of voice notes and chats on her phone, but when her grandmother died last year, the family found a box of old letters. Blue ink that has faded, looping cursive, and postcards from places that don’t look the same anymore.
Maya looked at them like they were old things in a museum. “I don’t have anything like this,” she said. Her own feelings are spread out over WhatsApp threads and disappearing snaps. Not a shoebox. Not a pile of notebooks. All she has is a cloud account and a long list of digital noise that she probably won’t read again.
Can we save handwriting without going back in time?
The good news is that this isn’t about banning screens or getting all nostalgic about fountain pens and ink stains. For Gen Z, saving handwriting can be as easy as bringing it back into important moments.
The “one-page rule” is a small, useful thing to do. Fill out just one page of a notebook every day or even every week. No prompts, no stress, and no pretty spreads. Just a brain dump: what made you mad, what you loved, and one thing you wish you had said out loud. The trick is to make it short enough that it doesn’t feel like homework but real enough that it feels like you’re talking to yourself.
A lot of teens and adults don’t like to write by hand because they think people will judge them. “My writing looks bad.” “I’m moving too slowly.” “It looks like a kid’s.” That shame comes on quickly, especially if their last memory of writing on paper is a red pen fixing every loop.
It helps to stop expecting perfection. Notes can be messy. Words can bend. You can print, write in cursive, and doodle in the margins. The connection between the hand, the page, and the thought is what matters. Parents and teachers can provide low-stakes environments, such as collaboratively composed grocery lists, small handwritten notes on the refrigerator, or a “no grading, no marking” journal in class dedicated solely to contemplation.
This is less about keeping cursive alive and more about protecting a slower, deeper way of talking to others and to ourselves.
Lucas, 21, says, “Every time I write something by hand instead of typing, my thoughts change.” “It’s like my brain stops running and starts walking. I remember how I really feel, not just what I can write in a caption.
- Start with one handwritten page a week. That’s all it takes to get the habit going.
- Add emotion to it: For big things like apologies, thank-yous, confessions, and decisions, use pens and paper.
- Mix analogue and digital wisely: Use type for speed, write for depth, and let each tool do what it does best.
The real endangered species is deeper communication.
People who are worried about Gen Z “losing handwriting” are often really worried about something bigger going away. The long messages that take a long time. The private areas where feelings don’t go away in a day. The physical signs of a person who lived in a certain year, in a certain room, and with a certain pen.
That’s probably the real question: what will a 20-year-old today leave behind that a grandchild can hold in their hands one day? Screens light up and then go dark. Accounts are deleted. Businesses go out of business. A notebook that is kept in the back of a drawer can last through a lot of digital changes.
This doesn’t mean that Gen Z is shallow. They deal with more conversations, more feeds, and more identities that overlap than any other generation. Their feelings are very strong and complicated. The issue is not that they experience diminished emotions; rather, their instruments frequently fail to accommodate the expansion of those emotions.
Bringing back handwriting isn’t about making the past seem better than it was. It’s about giving people one more way to go deeper in a world that values speed. A pen won’t fix every communication problem between generations, but it can slow down just enough to let a different kind of honesty come out on the page. Sometimes that’s all a skill needs to stay alive.
| Important point: | Detail: | What it means to the reader |
|---|---|---|
| Gen Z is writing less and less. | About 40% of people don’t write more than short notes by hand very often. | Helps you figure out why your kids, students, or friends have trouble with writing and drawing. |
| Writing by hand changes how you think | Studies have shown that writing by hand can improve memory and cognitive processing. | Encourages you to choose handwriting wisely for learning, planning, and thinking. |
| Small habits can bring the skill back to life. | One-page journals, handwritten letters for important events, and low-pressure notes | Gives you simple, realistic ways to get back into writing by hand without giving up technology |
Questions and Answers:
Is it true that Gen Z is losing the ability to write by hand?
Not completely, but a lot of people don’t use it very often, so speed, legibility, and stamina are going down. They can write, but they don’t depend on it as much as people used to.
Does writing by hand help you learn more than typing?
Several studies suggest that handwriting helps you remember and understand things better, especially when you take notes, because it makes you process and summarise information instead of just copying it down.
Should all schools teach cursive writing again?
Cursive can be helpful, but the more important thing is to practise writing in any way that is clear. Writing by hand, whether in print or cursive, is what really helps your brain.
What can parents do at home that doesn’t feel like extra homework?
Use handwriting in everyday life: birthday cards, notes in lunchboxes, shared to-do lists, and a family message board. Keep it short, friendly, and not graded at all.
Is it true that digital communication is “less deep” than letters written by hand?
It can be deep, but the format makes you want to get to the point quickly. Writing by hand usually makes you slower and makes you think more about what you’re saying. You can say what you really mean in more ways when you use both.
