Do children in 2016 still send postcards when they go on holiday? Who is most likely to do so and what, if any, are the relationships between writing postcards and writing in general? These are the questions this short report aims to address, using data from 39,145 8-to-18-year-olds who answered a question on postcard writing in our seventh Annual Literacy Survey, which we conducted in November and December 2016.
Key findings:
- Over half of children and young people (52.1%) never write a postcard on holiday these days. Just over 1 in 10 children and young people (10.9%) always write postcards when they go on holiday, while the remaining 37.0% do so sometimes.
- While there is no difference in the percentage of boys and girls who always write a postcard when they are on holiday, more boys than girls say that they never write a postcard (54.8% vs. 49.5%).
- 2.5 times as many children aged 8 to 11 as those aged 14 to 16 say that they always write a postcard when on holiday (16.4% vs. 6.3%). 2 in 3 young people aged 14 to 16 say that they never write a holiday postcard.
- Children and young people from white ethnic backgrounds are most likely to write postcards every time they are on holiday (12.5%), while their peers from Asian ethnic backgrounds are least likely to do so (4.7%).