One obvious reason people don’t use email much anymore is that there’s no like button. A like button is the lowest possible form of response. It’s acknowledgment without language. No words required. Just a click. With email, you have to use actual words. I like words. (Lexicophile.)
Texting, of course, is quicker. The UI makes it feel immediate. Messages appear right away. You’re not opening an inbox full of unrelated stuff. There’s no subject line. No formatting. No sense that you’re composing anything.
But speed isn’t really what interests me here. What I care about is the form. Email and texting don’t just differ in delivery speed. They differ in what they quietly expect from you.
Look at the composition box
A text message gives you a small box. It doesn’t ask much of you. A sentence fragment is fine. An emoji is fine. “lol” is fine. There’s very little pressure to develop a thought.
An email gives you a large, open rectangle. And that can be intimidating.
Years ago I wrote, “A tiny box yields tiny thoughts,” originally in reference to Twitter. But I think the idea applies just as much—maybe more—to texting versus email. The size of the space you’re given shapes what you think is appropriate to put there.
A tiny box doesn’t just limit length. It lowers expectations. A larger box raises them.
Email feels like a blank sheet of paper. There’s room. And with room comes the quiet sense that you should fill it. That you should explain yourself. That you should be thoughtful. That you should make sense.
I think that’s why a lot of people are more comfortable texting. Not because they don’t have anything to say—but because texting gives them permission not to say very much.
Email doesn’t offer that same permission. That’s not a bug. That’s the feature.
There’s also something else going on here, and I’ve felt it very personally. This past Christmas, my family sent out a fair number of cards. Over the years, we’ve been shortening our physical mailing list and moving people onto our email list instead. I love our email list—it lets me reach everyone with our Christmas card, just in digital form.
This year, I received about ten email responses. I loved that people took the time to write back. Truly.
And then… I stalled. So far, I’ve replied to two of those ten people. That leaves eight sitting there.
One thoughtful email? No problem. I’ll happily sit down and write back. But a stack of people waiting for responses? That’s when the intimidation kicks in. Suddenly, I feel the weight of the composition box. Even though I know I could reply briefly. Even though no one is demanding an essay from me.
Email carries an unspoken expectation of care. And care takes time.
That’s where this stops being purely aesthetic and starts brushing up against something moral—not in a heavy-handed way, but in a quiet one. Email asks for both better thinking and better care. It asks you to slow down just enough to treat the other person as more than a notification.
I don’t think people avoid email because they’re lazy. I think they avoid it because email feels like work. Emotional work. Cognitive work. Relational work.
And I want to understand that.
I’m someone who writes a lot. My writing voice and my speaking voice are basically the same. I meander. I ponder. I wander into rabbit holes and eventually find my way back. This happens in essays, conversations, and yes—even in texts. I don’t really experience texting as a “small box,” especially since I do most of it on a laptop with a full keyboard.
But I know that’s not how most people experience it. Most people don’t want a large box staring back at them, waiting to be filled. They want something that says, “This is enough.”
That’s why I hesitate to be prescriptive about all this. I don’t want to say, We should email more. People can communicate however they want. That’s not the point.
What I really want is to understand people better.
If I understand why someone clicks a like button instead of replying…
If I understand why someone texts instead of emails…
If I understand why an email can feel intimidating rather than inviting…
Then I can hold more reasonable expectations.
Maybe email feels old-fashioned not because it’s slow—but because it still assumes we have something to say, and that it’s worth taking the time to say it.
That’s probably why I keep returning to it. Not because I always have the time. Not because I always do it well. But because I like what it invites me to be: a little more present, a little more deliberate, a little more human.
So I’ll keep opening that big box—and typing into it when I can.