We Are Meant to Write Down Our Ideas

A New Year, and our first blog post in 2026! One year has passed since the start of this blog, and for the first of the year, I want to talk about something that these digital world of ours, which is slowly (not so slowly actually) being eroded by visual and audio media and AI systems—handwriting.

Recently, I was reading an article on the decline of all sorts of mental activities I took for granted when I was a youngster in the 1990s and early 2000s. Across the world, there is a near universal decline in the number of people reading and writing by hand for work or enjoyment. The generation most affected by this trend seems to be my generation (millennials) and the younger generations (Gen Z and Gen Alpha). Millennials, the generation that lived and experienced the digital and analog divide as we grew up, while still reading a significant amount, will often still use a laptop or smartphone to write down ideas (or in this case, type down ideas) instead of using a pen and paper to write. Similar trends definitely affect all generations as well—it is just very convenient to have a digital device for writing instead of lugging around a notebook and pen everywhere.

Ask yourself: out in public spaces, how many people do you see writing down anything with a notebook and pen? Nowadays, the most common sight in cafes, restaurants, and public spaces are people with their nose buried—does the idiom apply to this?—in their smartphones, tablets, or laptops (with earphones) typing away, or more likely, watching the current trendy show from any of streaming services available these days.

All these audio and visual conveniences have greatly reduced the number of people writing anything down, and connected to this, there is a reduction in the number of people reading as well. The nature of culture nowadays focuses so much on speed and convenience that “slow” activities like writing or reading is too impractical compared to typing, audio recording, or taking photos of interesting or informative things.

A detriment to human experience

This is actually a detriment to the human experience. We are physical beings, and for us, the best way to think and learn is in physical, active, and hands-on activities. Much like manual drafting and drawing, the physical act of writing creates more defined and concrete mental connections in our minds, so it is far stronger and easier to remember when we learn by practice than just by watching a video or listening to a podcast. This is because the brain is able to recognize and accept physical inputs far more effectively than any other input because again, we are physical beings.

I will not deny how much more efficient and easier it is to use the computer to type out and write blogs like this (obviously, I’m writing in a computer right now), but a return to some form of regular use of handwriting in daily life can be a good exercise for mental health, engaging our minds and hands together to create ideas by hand. It is also a nice break from all the videos and AI visuals to which digital media expose us at almost every moment of the day. As a deliberate way to act on this, I wrote the initial ideas of this post in a notebook before typing it out in my computer. Another plus: my writing more regularly has encouraged the kids to write more in school and at home (wrong spelling and all)—a good skill for the kids to hone for the future.

For more articles on reading, why not read our other posts, “Encourage Reading by Enjoying the Stories” or “Reading and ‘Mindreading’”?

"Ask yourself: out in public spaces, how many people do you see writing down anything with a notebook and pen?"