Walking up to my little mailbox, key in hand, my heart is beating fast with anticipation. As I turn the key in the lock, I wonder to myself, will I get a letter today?

Receiving a letter in the mail is something I look forward to; emails are not as personal and they don’t reflect the time and thought people put into a letter. A letter is something you can actually hold and see, whereas an email is intangible and transitory.

“I prefer letters because they have a warmth to them, while an email is colder,” said student Francia De Jesus, who told me firmly that she writes letters.

Receiving a letter from a friend always makes my day, since it shows that even though we may be thousands of miles away, we still care and think about each other. The words in a letter are permanent, and it takes time to think of the right words. A letter is something very personal; it’s a real extension of someone else’s thoughts directed towards you.

The internet is becoming more powerful and many things are being done on computers since it’s just easier to do. Why take the time to sit down to write a letter and wait for it to arrive when you could just type out an email and click send? Time is something people want but don’t always have, and in America people want to take the easiest and quickest route. Because of this, sending emails and text messages has become the most popular form of communication between people.

Look at the popularity of Facebook; people use Facebook as a way to communicate with others, which is convenient, but at the same time impersonal. According to Facebook’s website, more than 120 million people are active users. Those numbers are rather astounding and shows how popular and dependent people have become with using the internet to communicate. Facebook is convenient and easy, but perhaps what is said on it is not as meaningful as what may be conveyed in a letter. Think about all the times you text, send emails, chat online, or communicate with people on Facebook or some other social website. Most of us spend lots of time on the internet, and our lives would undoubtedly be very different without it.

Yet, there is a certain old-fashioned romantic appeal about keeping old letters-they are keepsakes, fragments of memories.

“Snail mail is more intimate, especially when the person to whom you are writing to is far from you. That person could be someone you don’t see often; it could be a friend, a parent, anybody. I believe text messages should be more for quick things, not for expressing your feelings,” said Jennifer Sese, who had recently written a letter to a friend who lives far away.

Comments (1)

	1. 11:22PM 12-03-2008
	I'm glad someone brought up this issue! I love snail mail and think it's really tacky for people to send christmas cards or birthday cards over email , which is occurring more and more often these days. Guest

heather

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