Activation energy of a letter vs. an email. If you have to handwrite it and it takes ~days to arrive, you write fewer communiques and put more into the ones you do, but a lot goes unsaid.

You see it start to change with the telegraph on down to where we are today.

Survivorship bias. You don't often read the notes where Thomas Jefferson jotted "hey martha riding to ftore be back later love you - Tommy".

I call bullshit on you comparing what was obviously a 2000s+ phenomenon with that of closer to the 1800s.