In case you haven’t heard of it already, I highly recommend Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. A social psychologist, Haidt presents the compelling evidence that social media companies have hijacked normal childhood with disastrous results. Parents and others are fighting back, including with effective social coordination tactics such as: No smartphones before high school and No social media before 16. (Here’s an excellent interview with Haidt by Bari Weiss.) And there's something you can do: send the youngsters in your life handwritten letters.
Our own sons, being millennials, were spared the brunt of the assault. It’s Gen Z children, born after 1997, who are the unwitting victims of what social media has wrought, measured by dramatic increases in anxiety, depression and self-harm, Hundreds of thousands of children in the US and around the world have been harmed. But while our own children may have been spared, our grandchildren have not. They and millions of other young children are growing up with the digital dragons still roaming free, and about to metamorphosize into even more fearsome beasts powered by AI.
Pondering the present and upcoming battles for, quite literally, the future of humanity, I recalled what my favorite sociology professor at Cornell, Rose K. Goldsen, used to say in her sign-off of her weekly radio broadcasts: “What our children see in the world depends on what we show them.” I then realized there was one thing I could show our oldest grandchild, Leon, and that was handwritten cards sent in the mail.
Letters to Leon
Leon has just turned five and I wanted to show him—from my hand to his—how humans have communicated for centuries before anyone heard of emojis. My son and daughter-in-law tell me Leon loves getting his very own letters and keeps them in a special box.
As we are conspiring to make Leon a sailor, I found this card that I hope takes him lands away.
By the way, Leon calls me GoGo. I slip in a bit of Spanish here and there.
You’ll see I take photos of the cards before I send them, which act as modern-day carbon paper. To me, it’s a magical mashup of analog and digital and part of a pleasing ritual.
I’ve already received a card back from Leon (with the assistance of his mother) that warmed my heart.
Leon’s favorite card so far was one I posted from England after Lori and I crossed the Atlantic on the Queen Mary 2. I enclosed a little paper airplane I made from ship stationery and a miniature diagram of the ship. He opened the card right before his father was scooping him up for school. Leon said, “Dad, please put this in my nightstand—somewhere where it’s very, very safe!”
I’m sending these cards not only for Leon’s benefit, but for my own. The ritual of it, including dipping my fountain pen in ink, and now composing a still-life photo of it, slows me down. It secures a place of calm in my otherwise busy day.
Since you are a Levenger customer, it’s likely you also remember when letters that came in real envelopes through the mail were some of the most important communications we had. You know how to address envelopes, where to buy stamps, how to place stamps on an envelope, and what a mailbox looks like. What to us is basic knowledge is a mystery to today’s children, who are growing up in a very different world. (For some evidence, check out this 3.5-minute video by Jimmy Kimmel Live, “Does Anyone Under 30 Know How to Mail a Letter?”)
It’s not just about less time spent on smart phones and social media. The return to healthy childhood includes giving children room to roam on their own outside the home and school. One champion of this movement against overprotective parenthood is Lenore Skenazy, aka “America’s Worst Mom,” and her movement, Free-Range Kids.
Applied to handwritten cards, free-range kids of appropriate age (and it’s younger than we probably think) figure out how to buy stamps out in the wild and how to mail their own letters, not only to loving grandparents, but (more impactfully) to their friends. Maybe kids will even find Levenger and buy a cool True Writer pen. (Though retired, I’m clearly still a shameless merchant.)
Even if you don’t have grandchildren, there are plenty of children out there who haven’t received a handwritten card lately, if ever. You can make their day. More than that, you can make them wonder….
“What our children see in the world depends on what we show them.”
–Rose K. Goldsen
Ever yours,
Steve Leveen
Cofounder