Decline In Letter Writting

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In modern times, there has been a decline of letter writing. Several causes attributing to this movement are a lack of free time, a change in culture patterns, advances in technology such as electronic mail (E-mail) and the Internet, and most importantly, the invention of the telephone. Some common complaints voiced concerning this trend are that our society is shifting towards more impersonal means of communication and away from the practice of letter writing. The single most influential cause of the decline can be linked to the invention of the telephone. To put it plainly, the telephone was invented because people believed a better way to communicate existed. There are many reasons the telephone was so influential. Why would I write a letter, which is a one-way conversation, when I can just pick up the phone, push some buttons (or, back in the time when telephones were introduced, turn a crank), and instantly be conversing interactively, as if in my party's presence? Unless the participants have some sort of handicap, verbal conversation is the natural and preferred way to interact. Phone conversation participants can communicate over 20 times faster verbally than one can write or type. Also, if the conversation involves multiple females all talking and listening at once, the communication bandwidth exponentially increases. I have no clinical research to back that up, but such is the benefits of a cause and effect paper. Could anything close to a conference call, which involves multiple parties conversing together over the phone, be attained through traditional letters? These are but a few of the many benefits of using a telephone over formal letter writing. Another main cause to this trend is the amount of free time needed to correspond through letters. Free time is a very coveted commodity. Many causes can affect our amount of free time. Letter writing can be
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