The New York Times email newsletter for October 3, 2026 included an essay about the advantages and resurgence of using slower forms of communication like postcards. I’ve reprinted it below:
Slow motion
By Melissa Kirsch
I received a postcard this week from my friend Sarah, who recently moved from Brooklyn to Queens, where, she reported, there’s less traffic and more raccoons. We’ve been sending each other cheeky updates on the weather or the price of milk in our respective necks of the woods since she moved. We’re only eight miles apart, but somehow also in different worlds.
Postal correspondence has a trapped-in-amber quality that an electronic exchange never can. A postcard from Sarah is a snapshot, a moment in time captured and suspended until I receive it in my mailbox. I will respond with a postcard of my own, in a kind of parallel conversation to our daily tide of text messages, one that accumulates only as much momentum as the rate of the U.S. postal system allows.
There’s a story in The Times today about a pen-pal resurgence among young adults. I read with interest of the renewed fascination with charming stationery and ornate envelopes, as well as the “collective craving for personal connections that build gradually over time.”
As an adolescent, I built a gradual friendship with a girl in Singapore I was matched with via Stickers magazine, the official publication for “kids stuck on stickers.” We probably exchanged a total of five or six letters over a couple of years, but the distance and time gave our bond a sort of gravitas. In the eternity between letters, I’d daydream about what her room looked like, who her friends were, adding another dimension to the written intimacy.
Technology offers the illusion of intimacy. The volume, the pace, the constant flow of updates — they mimic the closeness created by an actual conversation, but sometimes those very things can make a torrent of texts feel hollow. We don’t have that time between communiqués to wonder what the other person is up to, to fill in the blanks with our imaginations.
An essay in The Atlantic this week suggested that one of the problems with dating apps is that the dates they facilitate are hardly conducive to real connection. Far more effective are group activities or hangouts where people get to know one another gradually. Romance, like friendship, blooms with attention that’s slow and undemanding.
A rapport forged by mail is imbued with automatic breathing room. “It’s about moving away from a format of communication that is mediated by platforms and digital systems that optimize speed, convenience and infinite access,” a trend forecaster told The Times. Always-on communication can be too intense, the smartphone too blunt an instrument for the delicate choreography required to really grow close to someone.
I love the idea of making new friends via pen pal matchmakers, but I think there’s infinite possibility in setting up sustained letter writing with someone you already know. Write a letter to your college roommate, send a card to your old next-door neighbor. If it’s been a long time since you’ve been in touch but the flame still burns, then you know the relationship can withstand the rhythms of the post. And when you’re accustomed to no contact at all, even the occasional note is a bonus. If you want to ensure a warm response, I don’t know anyone who can resist a few stickers slipped in the envelope.
A journal of post-ku on post-cards
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