With kids and adults having broad access to mobile devices including smartphones and tablets, the modern world has turned digital. This has dramatically impacted how people use cameras and document their lives. Whether it’s a mom snapping pics of her growing kids or a teen striving for the perfect shot to post on social media, many people take digital photography daily.
This begs the question: With today’s trend toward digital, does creating and purchasing a yearbook still matter? The answer is yes, and there are many reasons why.
Good storytelling is timeless
A yearbook is a collection of stories about the people who are connected through their unique experiences at a particular school. Using a journalistic approach, yearbook staff report on the stories that matter. A simple digital photograph stored on a digital device only scratches the surface. Yearbook stories add context to the shared experiences that make a school special.
Yearbooks create connection
A yearbook celebrates a school’s community through photos, feature stories, sidebars, interviews and so much more. It promotes belonging while highlighting personal and common experiences. In a digital age when it’s easier than ever to find solitude in technology, yearbooks bring people together and honor the culture a school has created.
Yearbooks document history
A yearbook is a comprehensive book that documents the entire student body and what’s most relevant to the school at that time. The features might address things like school events, popular culture or important news. This is a record not only of what’s important to the school community, but also what’s happening in the city, state and world. It serves as a time capsule of sorts that can sit conveniently on a bookshelf.
Memories are celebrated
A yearbook is a collection of memories that can be cherished forever. When every student is featured in the yearbook, it is a true representation of the school. When you receive this comprehensive book before summer break, it’s fun to remember everything that made the year so special. Years and decades from now it’s fun to reminisce by flipping through the rich pages. Honestly, how likely are you to open your cell phone files and flip through your digital photos 10, 20, 30 or more years from now?
Yearbooks are tangible
We’re all guilty of this: You take digital images and they sit on your phone’s memory card or are haphazardly uploaded to the cloud never to be accessed again. A digital image is easy to come by, but also easy to forget. It typically doesn’t have the deep, comprehensive meaning a yearbook provides. Thanks to the hard work of a dedicated crew, a yearbook is something meaningful you can touch, page through and recollect. Today students may do this with their parents. Many decades from now they may be doing the same thing with their grandkids, and that’s something truly special that digital pictures just can’t accomplish.
Learn more about what makes yearbooks special on our yearbooks page.