Odds are, with Thanksgiving dinner approaching, some older relative will recount a story you’ve heard time and time again. It’ll consist of the same punchlines paired with the classic points of laughter and repeated closing lines. In my case, my Papa likes to replay the time he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro when he was younger.
“Show us a picture, Papa,” my cousins and I inquired aloud once when the story arose. Instead of picking up his phone, Papa pushed back his chair and beckoned for us to follow him to the barn. Here, he passed around the now-rusted mountain climbing equipment and demonstrated how everything worked. I later learned he had framed pictures of the trip in his office, but his first instinct was to show us the real souvenirs he had kept from all those years ago.
As digital technology continues to evolve, the reliance on small pictures on even smaller screens has deeply rooted itself in our culture. Whether it be on a phone or digital camera, nowadays, most memories are preserved in a handheld rectangle. This is not revolutionary, of course, but it does spark a bigger conversation about the decline and near extinction of memories preserved with physical copies.
When was the last time you kept a ticket stub? Do you have one, or did they just scan your phone? What about the homemade card your friend made out of uneven notebook paper? Did it sit on your desk for a while, or did it not even make it past the classroom’s recycling bin? Do you look for postcards on vacation, or does an Instagram story with the location tagged do the trick?
Holding onto real versions of memories is like a tangible version of love. It is time, something so fickle, finally captured for a moment. I don’t believe in keeping excessive clutter from mundane circumstances (the wilted coffee receipt from last week can go), but I do latch onto examples of instances in my life I want to remember.
The extended conversation regarding physical copies of memories is one that can become as tangled as knitting yarn. Our attention spans grow shorter as digital media consumption increases and the clips of content decrease in length. This leads to an overload of information and something called “brain fog”: a phenomenon that derives from the haze caused by too much screen time. As we devote more of our time to digital media, less of it is dedicated to hobbies and real-world experiences that provide a sense of emotional purpose.
Along with this comes a cycle nicknamed “doomscrolling”; a ‘binge’ of digital content and the inability to disconnect from social media. The monotonous swiping can warp our sense of time and reality as we fall deeper down the rabbit holes of bad news, with useless videos and background noise keeping us from the real world. According to Jefferson Health, doomscrolling can contribute to anxiety, isolation, lack of sleep and even depression. Concepts such as brain fog and doomscrolling can be effects of digital prioritization over genuine connection. Time with loved ones or time dedicated to hobbies keeps us pushing towards goals and creating memories in our minds, not a shared folder.
Pulling back from the endless swiping to pick up a pastime or way of capturing your journey through life can seem like a daunting task. Not everyone has all of their half-started friendship bracelet supplies from 2020 lockdowns, or access to buy brand new scrapbook paper and stickers to start documenting milestones from scratch.
The beautiful thing about memories is that they continue. There’s no better time to start than now, and it doesn’t have to be complicated. Maybe this month you trade your “Amazon hot girl must haves” shopping for a small journal to write in. Maybe your Christmas list features a disposable camera so you can hold onto your printed semester after the grand reveal and wait to get the images developed. Maybe you finally write to your friend at another college–on notebook paper, not a Google Doc–and keep the version with messy handwriting they send back.
Physical mementos can provide an emotional connection that digital copies cannot. It allows for a sense of ownership and touch that brings you back to the context of the keepsake. It might even allow for a greater sense of permanence compared to the out-of-sight, out-of-mind online files that run the risk of being deleted.
Sometimes it’s the small things outside of the curated social media bubble that bring us back to reality and into our sentimental side. Choosing to lean into the aspects that make us human, like folded notes passed in class or indulging our grandparents’ stories, can clear the fog in our brains and demonstrate value in what is more long lasting than our phones. Today, I encourage you to write a letter, maybe to a friend or even your future self, and reflect. Feel free to use colored pens, leftover stickers and vulnerability. There is art within physical copies of memories and it doesn’t need to go extinct.