Is Handwriting Disappearing?

After this research, I changed my line of enquiry to “Is Handwriting Disappearing?” because I realised how little we seem to handwrite things nowadays as technology seems to be taking over everything.

It was whilst I was talking to my brother about how little we handwrite, that he brought up the fact that no one seems to write birthday cards anymore these days because it is much easier to facebook message someone. 

He said to me that last year when his birthday was coming up, he took his birthday date off facebook to see how many people actually knew it was his birthday, and wrote a genuine message on his profile because they had remembered the date. Out of 500 + so called “friends” on his facebook, only 5 people wrote ‘Happy Birthday.’ He said that he wasn’t upset; it just made him laugh how impersonal facebook was.

One of my tutors was talking about examples of work that his previous pupils from last year did. They were told to interact with the public and record this through photographs and videos. And there was one group that simply cut out a giant hand shape onto a large piece of paper, simply wrote ‘High 5’ next to it, and hung it up by the exit of a busy tube station so that the public would have to walk under it to get out. This simple design caused the public to walk past and HIGH FIVE the poster.

I wanted to find out more stories like my brother’s, so I decided to use the public, to see what answers I could get. Using the public will get you genuine answers because you’re not explaining what you’re doing, or saying anything to influence their answer.

I pinned up a poster at a bus stop with the question ‘When was the last time you ACTUALLY handwrote something’ and two pens attached. I wanted this question to make the public think about the last time they handwrote, and realise how long ago it was, because technology is taking over. Unfortunately, this poster went missing, so I will never know what people might have written.

My second attempt was more successful, but I realised that I worded the question wrong. A lot of people said things like ‘now’ or ‘in my diary 5 mins ago.’ Which isn’t the type of answer I was looking for. I wanted people to think about how they are neglecting to handwrite personal things like letters, cards ..etc

However there was one answer that came out of this poster which was the perfect response. It might have only been one answer, but at least my poster reached out to one person.

I tried again with the same idea, but re-worded the questions to “When was the last time you messaged someone without technology” and “When was the last time you handwrote a message to someone?”

I placed these posters in the lift in my Halls of Residence because I knew a lot of people would go up and down in these lifts, and you can’t ignore the poster if its right there in front of you whilst you’re waiting.

I thought re-wording the question would help, but it seems I was targeting people that really didn’t care…. Students.