When was the last time you hand-scribed a letter? It turns out most people in the US haven’t sent a personal letter in half a decade, according to a new survey.
Less than a third of Americans have written to someone in the past 12 months, the CBS survey of 1,717 people, conducted byYouGov, found. And 37 per cent of people in the poll said they hadn’t sent a letter in more than five years, while 15 per cent of adults said they have never sent a letter in their lives.
Similar findings were made for people receiving letters, with 50 per cent of people saying they hadn’t got a personal letter in the mail in the past five years.
Age doesn’t seem to make a huge difference when it comes to letter writing either, with those aged 65 and older polling with the same results as younger adults.
The main difference comes when looking at the whole of people’s lives; nearly all of people aged 65 and older declared that they had written a personal letter before, while only one in five adults aged 45 and under had written a personal letter in their lifetimes.
Gender makes a difference too, the survey found that women are more likely to hand-write to their correspondences than men, with 35 per cent of women writing a letter in the past year, compared with 28 per cent of men. Twenty per cent of women had written a letter in the last one to five years, while only 13 per cent of men had done the same.
The Internet and e-mail has, of course, revolutionised how quickly we receive mail around the world. In addition, the US Postal Service has been criticised for recently implementing standards that will create slower deliveries, as part of changes brought in by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to save the agency money.
Some, including Virginia Democratic Representative Gerry Connolly, fear it will mean fewer people will use the service. “Louis DeJoy has been on a mission to send the USPS into a death spiral,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly before the changes were implemented.
