Teen Times: It's hard to believe, but once upon a time letter writing was the most popular form of communication. It hasn't been for a very long time and I think it is a shame.

We are now more concerned with irrelevant issues in our lives such as learning short text languages for text messages that go against all the basics of good grammar and punctuation.

Have we forgotten the traditions our ancestors used during their lifetime? Are we so engaged in new ideas of communicating that we hesitate to put pen to paper, to make our words shine?

I feel strongly about the disappointing decrease in letter writing around the globe. Our younger generation may never experience the pleasure of sending and receiving letters through the post. In wartime soldiers most commonly had only one means of communication and that was letter writing. The bridging of two extremely different worlds was done through letters.

It is a reflection on our present lifestyles that we lack the time to write. Flash back to the days of letter and diary writing in history. You might be familiar with Anne Frank, a young girl who wrote a charming and historic diary of the second World War. Her tender youth was conveyed through her feelings of discomfort about her awful predicament and about some of her fellow tenants in the Secret Annex. Based on her account, historians were able to glean significant facts.

I'll put you under the spotlight. Do you write most of your personal messages through letters in the post? No, you've discovered the wonderful world of mobile phones and computers. The numerous possibilities of communicating by phone have dazzled target audiences, and now texting and talking on mobiles is the most efficient way of sending a message.

Text messages are deleted by owners and so can never again be recorded. And you could never fit a diary entry into a text and expect complete privacy as well as security, even if you wanted to.

All modern technology has complications and it can often be unreliable in the way that pen and ink are not. I know I am probably in the minority in my age group but I find it very difficult to visualise an e-mail ever replacing the classic letter.

And if it ever did, we have only ourselves to blame. It might take thought and time to write a letter, but the events that you record with such care can be kept for future generations to appreciate. The downside of letter writing is the slow - by our impatient standards - process of having your message sent through the post.

However, this is of minimal inconvenience when you consider the benefits of proper writing. Imagine if 21st-century means of communication existed during the time of Anne Frank. Had she recorded her diary entries on the computer, they might have been easily deleted. This historic evidence would have been lost forever.

Letter writing, the simple connection of pen with paper, can make history. Diaries recorded now could make world history in our next generation. Why drop the tradition? What is so inconsequential in global news that we feel we can drop the pens, spill the ink and rip the paper? Writing in the old-fashioned way is increasingly less popular than other means of communication, but I think it is important we maintain variety in the ways we send messages. Now is the time to really write history.

Let us not waste that chance.

* Clodagh Quain (16) is from Glounthaune in Co Cork, and a student at St Aloysius school in Carraigtwohill.