So how do these friendships survive? And how has it led us to trade social media for snail mail?

Paper hobbies, traditional media and creativity are on the rise: you only have to look at the number of women journaling, the stationery obsession and the junk journals to see just how quickly these hobbies have been embraced and spread. And with this comes letter writing and love letters.

Pinterest predicts saw a 45% increase in letter writing, and snail mail clubs have blown up on social media. Influencers and content creators talk about the joy of love letters whilst stationery sales are up and the hashtag ‘junk journal’ has been used 1.1 million times. So, maybe our new forms of friendship have given rise to these new hobbies

As the most connected generation, it makes sense we would find an ease to bonds that span the globe, that our friendships are not dominated by the need for proximity. And with more and more young people moving, travelling and finding alternative means of employment, long distance friendships are becoming the norm for so many. In turn, the way effort is poured into these friendships looks different, the ways to keep in contact change. A friend that lives down the road from you will operate on the basis of lots of shared time together, possibly the long-feared-dead ‘casual hangout’. Effort is performed through proximity, being in each other's space, doing the mundane together. For a friendship that crosses oceans, the effort must come in the form of making the distance work, hence long phone calls, handwritten letters or even fun forms of memory making such as a shared journal sent between your two locations for filling out.

The letter and its long form counterparts have reinvigorated and made way for other such paper based hobbies: The junk journal grew popular in 2024 and continues today, whilst scrapbooks, collage, vision boards and zine making are all similarly popular hobbies. There is comfort and permanence in these creative outlets, as well as break from the screens that dominate our lives. For a generation that grew up documenting everything, these archives and physical forms of media are a perfect step on from the curated Instagram posts and Facebook albums. “At the end of it, I have this beautiful documentation of my life and my most treasured memories I can flip through forever,” says Juliana Romeo, a US air force officer who shares her own junk journals to over 40,000 followers on TikTok. "It’s less about the finished product and more about the mindset that comes with it. Junk journaling has taught me to find beauty in the little things, and given me tangible proof of just how much goodness there is in my life.”

The romanticism of these tangible products and the effort of the handwritten letter is worshipped, gaining traction as Gen Z finds more and more of their friendships becoming cross continental as well as an emphasis on community and the ‘village’ we all want to be ‘villagers’ of.

These creative outlets, at their core, are also stress relievers, especially when so many ‘creative girlies’ find themselves constrained day-to-day to the slog of the corporate world. In a money conscious society and a cost of living crisis, the handwritten letter, pen pal or junk journal is a cheap, screen reducing pastime to document our lives and strengthen cross-continental bonds. “Part of its appeal is that it’s such an accessible hobby to try,” Juliana, who goes by @JulianaJournals on social media, points out. “The upfront cost can be virtually nothing. All you need to start… is your own trash.”

These hobbies aren’t new, but they’ve certainly exploded in popularity in the past few years, and as we move across the globe and redesign friendships, it doesn’t seem like they’re going anywhere.