The children (me, 25) yearn for penpals

I’ve heard of people saying that when they were in school they took part in an activity where they found a penpal and connected with some stranger in a different state or country. I’ve heard of that at least two times in my life. I surely cannot relate. Can you imagine any decent school in the early to mid 2010’s encouraging children to reach out to strangers?? To give them your information and possibly even your address??? I don’t know about other zoomers out there but my schools were dripping with anti-bullying and stranger danger PSAs. The idea of encouraging students to tap into their innate curiosity about their peers and other cultures was probably drowned out by the need to keep smartphones out of classrooms and to curb the mutual bullying between 1D and 5SOS fans. And that’s a bummer! I realize that hindsight is what it is and that back then nobody realized how inevitable the internet was going to become, but I would have benefited from intelligent adults teaching me about how…