If you picture a lecture hall, you’d probably expect to see bleary-eyed students noting down the lecturer’s every word on a laptop. In a library, you wouldn’t be surprised to see students on ChatGPT in a last-minute scramble to produce something resembling an essay. For the majority of students, digital tools are just a fact of life: a recent survey by the Higher Education Policy Institute found that 88 per cent of students use generative AI to help with their work, while a separate study by the University of Edinburgh found around 86 per cent of students would prefer to type rather than handwrite their assessments. And who can blame them? With tools to organise notes, correct spelling, and even plan essays, university is far easier with things like Google Drive and ChatGPT. But some students feel differently and have started to push back against the digital advance, going, as one calls it, “full analogue”.

Nick, a philosophy student at the University of Cambridge, stopped using his laptop for university work in the last year of his undergraduate degree. He still types his essays, but lecture notes, revision, and essay planning are all done by hand. As “someone who gets distracted very easily,” he made the change to reclaim his attention span. Ditching his laptop gave him an environment where “YouTube isn’t around the corner” and he can focus on his reading. Shifting to paper has also had some unexpected benefits. “There’s something that feels more freeing and fun doing my work on paper,” he says. “My thoughts don’t feel as constrained”.

It’s not just him either. Felix, a recent English graduate, stopped using his laptop for all work towards the end of his second year, trying to separate work from the overstimulation that comes with using a laptop. Instead of typing, he goes to the library with nothing but his “pen and paper,” and stays there until his essay is done. “Then I’m free to doomscroll Instagram on my phone without any guilt,” he says. Since reverting to handwriting, he’s noticed a change in his essays; he plans ahead and thinks things through, “properly committing” to everything he writes because he “can’t just change it around with copy and paste.” Felix feels more connected with his work too: “I’m using more of my brain when I write my essays.” 

It might sound like another hopeless attempt to revive “cooked” student attention spans, but there’s actual science behind doing an academic digital detox. A recent study by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology found that handwriting generates far more brain stimulation than typing, especially in the creative centres of the brain. The research monitored electrical activity in students’ brains when playing Pictionary, first describing images by typing, and then handwriting, with the findings showing “higher cognitive thought processes” from those using their hands. 

Audrey van der Meer, the paper’s co-author, claims the brain’s learning and memory centres are “much more involved” when handwriting. “When you’re typing, it’s very easy to type everything the lecturer says,” she says. “That information goes into our ears and out through our fingertips without being processed.” Her research shows students are forced to actually reason with what they handwrite – often through creative techniques like diagrams, which generate long-term memory patterns. This also translates to students enjoying their learning more. Van der Meer explains how, having not handwritten for years, many of the study’s participants wanted to explore their artistic side afterwards, claiming they “really treasured” the ability to create something by hand. 

We’ve used pens to express ourselves for millennia. If that skill fades, or if we hand it over to a robot, then we’ve really lost our way

Van De Meer’s research only covers note-taking, and she admits that using a laptop for essays is “much more practical”. But other students, like Felix, are using pen and paper even for long-form writing. Martha, a classics student at the University of Edinburgh, doesn’t own a laptop. She handwrites all of her notes and uses a typewriter she bought in a charity shop for her essays. “I guess I’m the closest thing there is to a modern-day luddite,” she says. Like others, she made the switch to escape the distractions of digital devices, even getting a burner phone for her university emails. Embracing analogue methods of learning has improved the quality of work: she claims her tutors have noticed an improvement in her work since changing, though she does get funny looks when handing in essays. “My friends think I’m insane for doing it, but when I typewrite my essays, I really need to think ahead,” she says. “I was far lazier when I used a laptop because it’s so non-committal.”

This isn’t to say going all luddite is easy. Nick admits it’s frustrating not having all his notes in one place, where “you could just control F the document to find a word.” The same tradeoffs exist by forgoing AI: ChatGPT’s ability to collate reading lists and summarise articles is indispensable for most students. But Felix sees these as lost skills, and claims he’s “far more organised” now that he has hard copies of all his notes. He’s also more sceptical of AI than other tools. While he experimented with it for tasks like reading lists, he found “it just falls flat when you need to do any critical thinking”. Martha agrees, she thinks using AI “totally misses the point” of doing a degree. “I want to be able to do something creative, not just have a robot give me the same lines as everyone else,” she says. 

The idea of reclaiming creativity is the biggest takeaway for those who’ve gone analogue. Nick now feels “more authentic with my thoughts,” and has a deeper appreciation for his subject. “Particularly for philosophy, there’s something quite nice thinking about all the philosophers that were there before you, writing the same way,” he says. Martha echoes this, describing how handwritten diaries and letters have created “richness of emotion” that can’t be typed. “We’ve used pens to express ourselves for millennia. If that skill fades, or if we hand it over to a robot, then we’ve really lost our way”.