Our culture is dominated by technology. It is used in every aspect of our lives, every day. It’s supposed to enhance our quality of life. In the midst of the technological innovation of the past few decades, we as a society have stopped spending our time on other important things that don’t involve technology, such as writing. Writing has always been an essential means of expressing culture, but with computers and laptops, it’s being done easier and faster.

When I told my friend I write an opinion column, he asked me why I would do something so time-consuming and pointless. As a culture, we need to stop focusing on time. There are more important things in life than getting something done as quickly as possible, and there are benefits to writing that are being overlooked because of how intently we focus on the time it takes to do it.

Before taking out a laptop in class to type notes, realize that taking them by hand can help you learn better. Taking notes by hand builds motor memory, increases temporal activity and activates the reticular activating system (RAS) in the brain. The temporal lobe is associated with language, and so higher stimulation of this area can aid the learning process, and motor memory and the RAS are more strongly activated when one writes than when one types, so more detail is retained. A study showed that when faced with the task of learning an unknown alphabet of about 20 letters, those who learned through writing were better able to recall the letters than those who learned through typing. This makes writing an extremely useful tool for school because students can remember what they have learned. But writing can help students in other ways, too. Daily writing can be used as practice for school assignments, such as long essays or speeches, because it can lead to a bigger vocabulary and a stronger ability for people to express themselves effectively.

Writing has also been shown to act as a stress reliever. By “venting” about stressors in a journal, the intensity of the stress and anxiety surrounding those things can be lessened. This is similar to the way people talk to their friends to alleviate frustration, but can be more useful in case the stressors are personal and private. By relieving the intensity of negative feelings through writing, one can become more relaxed overall, which can help one sleep better. In a 2011 study, people who wrote down a list of things they were grateful for before going to sleep reported longer, better sleep. Moreover, writing daily has been shown to improve physical health problems. Various studies have shown that asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, cancer and HIV/AIDS patients who wrote about stress got better. HIV/AIDS patients’ immune systems started producing more lymphocytes as a result, indicating improved immune functioning. Taking the time to write in a journal every night is definitely something people should be doing to improve their psychological and physical health – especially students who are constantly plagued with stress and lack of sleep.

Before dismissing writing in favor of technology, think of the advantages that writing can provide. Writing daily can truly make a difference in the lives of those who choose to give it a chance, and there’s really no reason not to do so. It might take up a half-hour, but the benefits will last a lot longer than that.

Katy Vines is a Weinberg freshman. She can be reached at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this column, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected].