New Recruits / The Future of Scrapbooking

karlimarie

karlimarie

Sweet Shoppe SugarBabe
I've been thinking a lot about how most young people are documenting their memories so differently than we did/do and what that means for the future of scrapbooking.

I think there will always be some younger people who find the hobby fulfilling, but with the learning curve of getting started, and the ongoing costs of graphics programs and resources, and how a single page can take hours to complete - is this a viable hobby for young people today?

There are so many apps now where you can just toss in some photos, add some simple embellishments, and voila - memory recorded. And honestly, I think that's a great way to be a memory keeper! I think if that's what works for you - awesome. But like many of you, I still prefer "old school" digital scrapbooking.

So many of us started scrapping 10/15/20 years ago when we were in our 20s... but it seems like as we get older we haven't been able to recruit as many young people to the hobby - so what happens to scrapbooking in 20 more years? For those of you with children in their teens and 20s - what do they think about scrapbooking as a hobby?

I know soft goods hobbies have seen massive resurgences, like knitting and quilting... do you think that the kids coming up today will push back against the fast pace of technology in favor of a slower hobby like scrapbooking, digital or otherwise? Or do you think the shorter attention spans and everything moving toward mobile will hold them back from trying a hobby like ours?

I would call this my Monday musing, but it turns out it's Tuesday. Anyhow - curious what you all think... do we need to work on getting more young people interested in the art of scrapbooking, or will the hobby die out with us? What does the future of scrapbooking look like?
 
It's so interesting, because as my weekend was consumed by NSD, my hubby said "I know it's not the point, but you could probably just put your photo in an AI, describe what you want it to look like, and it would just get done almost instantly". But the point is the doing so much more so than the end result...
Not sure what the future holds, but a lot of young people seem to value art made by humans, so I think there's hope!
 
Very interesting question. I think there will always be some that enjoy having a hobby, some want to utilize a quick easy way to memory keep, will create photo books, and then there will be some that enjoy the more lengthy creative process of creating a LO. I have never scrapped on an ipad but I know many do and I think that will continue as its so portable. I love scrapping and hope it always is around in some form or another.
 
I sometimes think that digital scrapbooking is going to disapear... I totally understand your point of view and I wonder the same. My daughter is really interested in our hobby and hate AI. She eventually want to work in arts, maybe as an illustrator, but she can't stand the AI generator and always told me, it's AI and it's ugly or it all look the same... lol.
This is true more and more people use AI instead of true designers for advertising, illustration and all. So I'm a little scare of it.
Let's hope some young people will follow us and do the same.:unsure:
 
My Pinterest feed shows me a lot of new recruits turning to junk journaling as their way of memory keeping. They're spending hours on spreads and saving EVERYTHING for their journals and I wish I had that willpower. I think the return to analog is a push-back against the always online, everything perfectly polished mentality and I am here for it.
 
My bullets of thought on this:
  • I just asked my daughter (going on 22): she is a photographer and uses Lightroom for editing, not so much for memory keeping. She has made a kind of paper scrapbook with the photos she took at concerts. I think her edited photos are her way of memory keeping and she has a special Insta account to post her memories.
  • Not sure where she will be in 10 or 20 years. Maybe she has converted to digital scrapbooking or another form of meory keeping. She's not into Canva nor Photoshop. Or maybe she's back to paper scrapping. Or... maybe there's another way of memory keeping we don't know about yet...
  • I recently read an article about the memory keeping habits of the youth at the moment. Apparently they like to take 'old school' pics with 1 pixel cameras... like even worse than polaroid quality... a camera you can use as a keychain and bring everywhere you go. It's more about the feeling and the memory of the moment than about the quality of the photo. I asked my daughter about that and although she recently bought an Instax/polaroid camera, she prefers her Canon and Sony if it comes to quality photos!
  • When you look at the history or arts, you'll notice that everything comes in waves. There is something new (a new approach, new techniques, a new way of life) through the eras, than this new thing rises to a climax and it falls apart, followed by a renaissance with a twist. This new way rises and falls again and so it continues. So I'm pretty sure that with all the new photography techniques, our hobby might change and a new generation brings a new way of memory keeping. But I'm pretty sure there will always be some sort memory keeping going on, some sort of art.
  • So yes, maybe 'our' way of memory keeping will die/fade out, so will the current designers and artists. I am sure though that the new generation will come up with new designers and artists. We are all human after all and memory keeping and art will always be part of our nature.
 
Romajo said:
My bullets of thought on this:
  • I just asked my daughter (going on 22): she is a photographer and uses Lightroom for editing, not so much for memory keeping. She has made a kind of paper scrapbook with the photos she took at concerts. I think her edited photos are her way of memory keeping and she has a special Insta account to post her memories.
  • Not sure where she will be in 10 or 20 years. Maybe she has converted to digital scrapbooking or another form of meory keeping. She's not into Canva nor Photoshop. Or maybe she's back to paper scrapping. Or... maybe there's another way of memory keeping we don't know about yet...
  • I recently read an article about the memory keeping habits of the youth at the moment. Apparently they like to take 'old school' pics with 1 pixel cameras... like even worse than polaroid quality... a camera you can use as a keychain and bring everywhere you go. It's more about the feeling and the memory of the moment than about the quality of the photo. I asked my daughter about that and although she recently bought an Instax/polaroid camera, she prefers her Canon and Sony if it comes to quality photos!
  • When you look at the history or arts, you'll notice that everything comes in waves. There is something new (a new approach, new techniques, a new way of life) through the eras, than this new thing rises to a climax and it falls apart, followed by a renaissance with a twist. This new way rises and falls again and so it continues. So I'm pretty sure that with all the new photography techniques, our hobby might change and a new generation brings a new way of memory keeping. But I'm pretty sure there will always be some sort memory keeping going on, some sort of art.
  • So yes, maybe 'our' way of memory keeping will die/fade out, so will the current designers and artists. I am sure though that the new generation will come up with new designers and artists. We are all human after all and memory keeping and art will always be part of our nature.
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My daughter is 22. I can definitely vouch for the "nostaglia" vibe they have going on.
She wanted a "new" camera for xmas. that takes horrible quality pixel photos, for nostaglia sake. roflllll

But the "memory" keeping portion is all done online. Whether with things like Canva, or thru AI, or just using Instafeeds.....this is where they share their stories and moments. And they follow trends soooo much I can't stand it. As soon as these cameras are "out" they won't use them anymore and they'll move onto the next "thing"
 
For those of you with children in their teens and 20s - what do they think about scrapbooking as a hobby?

When my daughter was young, she wanted to learn. Now at 22 she has no interest at all. Both of my children (22 & 21) no longer even look at the books I've printed. I think if I had a regular photo album, they would like that better than the actual pretty scrapbooks, because the trend now is to go "analog" but as soon as it's not, I'm not sure where they will land.

For now my books are put up since no one looks at them any more.
 
I don't see scrapbooking going away. It is a form of storytelling to document our families and our lives. As long as there have been people, there have been people documenting their lives and passing down stories from generations to generations. That's what scrapbooking is. I think that everyone may not realize the value of preserving memories at the same point in their lives as another person might but it doesn't mean it's not going to happen. Sometimes it takes a person becoming a parent to realize, hey, I want to preserve these memories. Time goes by so fast and children change so quickly. I think as long as we have people we will have memory keeping and scrapbooking.
 
My daughter will be 21 next month, she has no interest, and really she's not all that interested in pictures in general and I think it's probably because I took so many.

I don't see scrapbooking ever going away, but I do think when you're young, the way you think about documenting your memories is so different. When you're young, or at least when I was, it was all about your friends.

I always been a scrapbooker, I think I have photos scrapped from 6th grade, but when I have realized as I've gotten older (taking my kids out of the equation) I wish I would have documented more of the things I saw, places I visited, rather than the people that I did it with.

And I don't mean that to sound bad, it's just I enlisted in the Air Force right out of high school, I have so many pictures of friends from Basic Training, Tech School and various duty stations that I can't remember, but so few of the bases I was at or the places I got to go. I spent 3 years in Japan, I have so few photos from the country, but 75% of them are of the people I was with. Now I wish I had documented the malls, the food we ate, the country, etc.

I have very few photos of my hometown, my family doesn't live there anymore and it was ravaged by hurricanes Irma & Helena, a few years ago, so the places I have memories of are all pretty much gone. It's stuff like that I wish I would have documented more of.

I think a lot of that just comes with age. Now I am super grateful I have all these photos and pages, even if I don't remember these people's names. LOL!

I also think since so many of us remember film cameras, and when digital became a thing, it was a novelty to us, and maybe we over used it.

It is interesting to see how things are evolving, but I don't think it will ever go anywhere, I just hope people keep sharing & documenting their memories.
 
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I think this is a good one for Olivia @Studio Liv to chime in on. This is what I'm remembering . . .

She paper scrapped with me and her paternal aunt. She started digi scrapping at the age of 12. I don't know now, :unsure: I think it might have been age 11 or age 13. She scrapped in our office with me until she graduated high school and moved to a university dorm. She didn't scrap during those university years, but once she graduated and started moving along her career path, she began not only digi scrapbooking again, but started designing scrapbook products. She can confirm and/or deny this. :ROFLMAO: And she can certainly speak to her contemporaries and how they document their memories.

My own entrance into the world of scrapbooking came when my Mama bought me an 8.5x11 scrapbook kit (album with papers and some stickers) when I was pregnant with Olivia. Prior to that, I kept a scrapbook with kraft paper for my dating and engagement years. I had to redo that album after a hurricane, so now it's on white paper and better preserved. I paper scrapped in 8.5x11 at first, but quickly moved to 12x12 that offered more room for photos and for all the fun embellishments. Having my SIL to scrap with made it so much fun. And Olivia did join in with us paper scrapping when she was quite young.

My Mama was my greatest influence. She was a verbal storyteller and she made her own scrapbooks. She invested time in genealogy. She loved that I was recording memories. She loved that I took photographs and that I was creative. It was just part of her everyday being, and it became a part of my everyday being as well.

What I see happening with the younger generation is what has already been said. They are using mobile devices and social media to document their lives. And honestly, I memory keep that way as well. There are several times I've used a screen shot of a Facebook post on a 12x12 layout. So it serves as a way of communication with family and friends when I post on social media, and then I make it pretty for my own scrapbooks.


Scrapbooking has been around in one way, shape or form since before printing presses. Mark Twain actually sold a premade scrapbook with adhesive on the pages that you wet and stuck down your photos or ephemera, and he did quite well in sales. I don't know if there is a way to draw younger scrappers in, other than being creative and sharing that passion with others.
 
My girls are almost all in their 20's (youngest is 19). Half of them actually enjoy paper scrapbooking, although they don't have a ton of time for that. They still enjoy my digital pages and will help when I ask for it (which paper do you like better etc. This has a better response from them when it is a page about them though.)

I have tried to teach them digi scrapping, half of them have skills in Photoshop. But they aren't as interested in it. Maybe because we share all photos of trips, so they know I will just scrap the photos for them.

They have requested that I print past layouts (I am really bad at this). They all said they want a chronological album printed, even if they aren't complete. So that may be this years Christmas gift. Especially since 2 are living on their own now in 2 different states, 1 is at home working, and 1 is away at college. A nice reminder of past memories!

As far as the future of digiscrapping, who knows! I wonder about all those Youtubers who do that for a living. They are all mid aged. You don't see a ton of 70 year olds out there doing YouTube. There will come a day where it's not as popular or important anymore. What will those people who do that for a living, do when it is no longer viable for them? Many have given up other life skills and solely rely on YouTube. As much as I hate Change, things change each year. Only time will tell!
 
Cheryl Ashcraft said:
I think this is a good one for Olivia @Studio Liv to chime in on. This is what I'm remembering . . .

She paper scrapped with me and her paternal aunt. She started digi scrapping at the age of 12. I don't know now, :unsure: I think it might have been age 11 or age 13. She scrapped in our office with me until she graduated high school and moved to a university dorm. She didn't scrap during those university years, but once she graduated and started moving along her career path, she began not only digi scrapbooking again, but started designing scrapbook products. She can confirm and/or deny this. :ROFLMAO: And she can certainly speak to her contemporaries and how they document their memories.

My own entrance into the world of scrapbooking came when my Mama bought me an 8.5x11 scrapbook kit (album with papers and some stickers) when I was pregnant with Olivia. Prior to that, I kept a scrapbook with kraft paper for my dating and engagement years. I had to redo that album after a hurricane, so now it's on white paper and better preserved. I paper scrapped in 8.5x11 at first, but quickly moved to 12x12 that offered more room for photos and for all the fun embellishments. Having my SIL to scrap with made it so much fun. And Olivia did join in with us paper scrapping when she was quite young.

My Mama was my greatest influence. She was a verbal storyteller and she made her own scrapbooks. She invested time in genealogy. She loved that I was recording memories. She loved that I took photographs and that I was creative. It was just part of her everyday being, and it became a part of my everyday being as well.

What I see happening with the younger generation is what has already been said. They are using mobile devices and social media to document their lives. And honestly, I memory keep that way as well. There are several times I've used a screen shot of a Facebook post on a 12x12 layout. So it serves as a way of communication with family and friends when I post on social media, and then I make it pretty for my own scrapbooks.


Scrapbooking has been around in one way, shape or form since before printing presses. Mark Twain actually sold a premade scrapbook with adhesive on the pages that you wet and stuck down your photos or ephemera, and he did quite well in sales. I don't know if there is a way to draw younger scrappers in, other than being creative and sharing that passion with others.
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i love how you've incorporated your posts and screenshots into your pages.
 
I think it's important to teach the next generations and it's really the only way things keep going. I realized recently I have been digital scrapping since 2007, so nearly 20 years now and it's blowing my mind. I am also a photographer, and I edit and use photoshop and lightroom often. However I am an AI hater. I think it can be sorta fun but it's rarely good for anything. So many uses are bad, I've seen some scams, lots of fake photos that are hard to tell aren't real leading to confusion and chaos IMO. I don't think our form of scrapbooking has enough umph to keep going though, not really long term. Some form of it will go on but I think it will adapt and change a lot in the next 10-15 years. Kids these days are just so different. Heck even my younger sisters. One is 7 years younger and one is 9 years younger and they use their phones for everything where as I am over here dedicated to my laptop and big monitor. I do have that project scrapbooking app and I used to load photos into it and pull it into photoshop to finish up. Even that is a bit too much trouble for me. With all that said, I hope things go on for a while longer.
 
It’s deeply ingrained in the human spirit to tell stories. I truly believe that is the aspect of scrapbooking that has given it such longevity. It’s only HOW we scrapbook that has changed over the years.

It’s also ingrained in many humans to rebel against the generation that came before us. Scrapbooking was super trendy in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, and many millennials became quickly burned out on our constant photo-taking and “oh, but it’s for my scrapbook…” Their swing away from any type of physical memory-keeping is at least in part tied up in their eye-rolling “it’s such a Karen thing to do” or, my favorite, when they forget and call us Boomers.

I believe it’s their children - our grandchildren - who will be the ones to find value in connecting with our stories. The littles in my life - my nieces when they were small and my grandkids now - absolutely love looking through the albums and, as they get older, reading the journaling. And their love of all things analog right now will make them more likely to eschew their parents’ form of online memory-keeping (which I argue isn’t memory-keeping at all, but giving those memories to companies who won’t safeguard it) and latch on to printed pages.

What those albums might look like? I’ve got no clue, but that’s the beauty of watching this hobby grow and evolve. They’ll put their own stamp on it.

For now, I’m going to keep slowly, quietly creating pages and filling our albums and sharing them with my littles when they ask. And as they get older, I’ll print them their own bound books of all the pages I’ve made for them. It’ll be like one long love-letter from me to them, filled with journaling about what I’ve seen and experienced with them over the years, how proud I am of them, and how cool it’s been to watch them grow into amazing human beings. And if anything is likely to reinforce the value of this hobby, I think that’ll do it.

But, that’s just my opinion. :)
 
angiekey said:
It’s deeply ingrained in the human spirit to tell stories. I truly believe that is the aspect of scrapbooking that has given it such longevity. It’s only HOW we scrapbook that has changed over the years.

It’s also ingrained in many humans to rebel against the generation that came before us. Scrapbooking was super trendy in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, and many millennials became quickly burned out on our constant photo-taking and “oh, but it’s for my scrapbook…” Their swing away from any type of physical memory-keeping is at least in part tied up in their eye-rolling “it’s such a Karen thing to do” or, my favorite, when they forget and call us Boomers.

I believe it’s their children - our grandchildren - who will be the ones to find value in connecting with our stories. The littles in my life - my nieces when they were small and my grandkids now - absolutely love looking through the albums and, as they get older, reading the journaling. And their love of all things analog right now will make them more likely to eschew their parents’ form of online memory-keeping (which I argue isn’t memory-keeping at all, but giving those memories to companies who won’t safeguard it) and latch on to printed pages.

What those albums might look like? I’ve got no clue, but that’s the beauty of watching this hobby grow and evolve. They’ll put their own stamp on it.

For now, I’m going to keep slowly, quietly creating pages and filling our albums and sharing them with my littles when they ask. And as they get older, I’ll print them their own bound books of all the pages I’ve made for them. It’ll be like one long love-letter from me to them, filled with journaling about what I’ve seen and experienced with them over the years, how proud I am of them, and how cool it’s been to watch them grow into amazing human beings. And if anything is likely to reinforce the value of this hobby, I think that’ll do it.

But, that’s just my opinion. :)
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Beautifully said!
 
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