Don’t shoot the messenger. But in America, one third of children have never handwritten a letter.

And it’s not just kids. Nearly 40 percent of adult Americans haven’t written a letter in the last five years, while 43 percent of Millennials have never sent a letter in their lifetime. But even if they had sent a letter, recent studies show that Gen Z can’t read cursive and has no idea what the heck Grandma’s handwriting means.

The New York Times says that “The age of proper correspondence writing has ended…”

“Letter writing is an endangered art,” The Atlantic said.

“The death knell of written correspondence has been sounding for years,” said the Chicago Tribune.

This is not new information, of course, unless you’ve been living underneath a slab of granite. Letters have been replaced by emails and texts.

But texts and emails are not letters. An email has no charm. A text message does not impart tenderness, and intimacy. You cannot smell the paper. You cannot feel the weight of stationary in your hands. An email is temporary. An email will only last as long as your device is charged.

Plus, did you know that email is a leading cause of anxiety in this country?

Fact: Around 92 percent of working Americans feel anxiety when they think about their email inbox.

But a letter. A letter is real. A letter exists in physical space. A letter lasts. You cannot “delete” a letter unless you burn it. There are letters that still exist from 500 BC. Letters from early Romans. Letters from kings and queens, from soldiers of the American Revolution.

A letter is artwork. It is culture. It is tangible language. A letter represents years of handwriting practice in Mrs. Burns penmanship class, as she peered over her cat eye glasses at you, swatting a ruler in her open palm, bearing the same facial expression as a prison guard.

A letter is a moment of time, captured on paper. A letter is rewrites, spelling corrections, merciless editing, and the act of keeping one’s lines straight.

You can tack a letter to your refrigerator. You can place a letter into a shoebox and keep it for years to come. You can hold a letter against your heart.

Letters are personal. They are tactile. You can feel a letter’s personality within its imperfectly penned words. Someone wrote this letter with their own hands. Someone folded this letter with their own hands. The postage stamp has been licked with someone’s own personal sputum.

So how have we lost them?

Each minute, 208,000 pictures are posted to Facebook and 65,000 images are posted on Instagram. Other social media giants see an influx of 34 million uploaded videos each day.

Each day 18.7 billion texts are sent in the world. An average American will send 40 to 90 texts per day before today has ended. Most will receive two text messages every minute. I have received several texts since I sat down to write this.

I bring all this up because although letter writing is not efficient; although it is time consuming; although I can think of more important things I ought to be doing, I still remember the impact handwritten letters have had on my life.

The birthday letters my aunt would send. The love letters my wife wrote when we first started dating. The letter my father mailed only days before he died. I still have the special ones. I still read them. I still love them.

Which is why I still write letters. And I hope I always will.