Writing
Writing
Writing for fun was a less common activity than reading for fun among both high school and college students, with a majority of students in both groups reporting that they never wrote for pleasure. Several participants echoed the experience of a high school student who shared that they used to write for fun a lot in elementary school and middle school but stopped doing so as they got older, despite the fact that they “actually love to write.”10 For college students, a lack of time was the main driving factor in no longer writing for fun. One college student acknowledged that reading and writing for fun were activities that they should probably do more often. When asked to elaborate, they spoke of how reading or writing “just keeps your mind working . . . it’s like a muscle you need to exercise . . . just important to do.”11
Journaling was the most common form of writing outside work or school for both high school and college students. They described it as a way to process feelings, to record what was happening in their lives, or to write about something that had caught their attention. (“Like when I’m mad, does that count? Because I love to journal.”12) Most students, both high school and college, preferred typing over handwriting, although some high school students noted as a benefit that handwriting took them away from their phones for a period. One high school student said that, while in general they liked typing more than handwriting, when writing poetry they usually used a notebook, because “it feels like it comes to my head easier that way.”13