Why Gen Z and millennials are making room for messy, unfiltered journalling

A Dua Lipa concert ticket. A folded box of matcha-flavoured Pocky candy. Tangled strands of confetti. A piece of holographic gift wrapping paper. Before your mind races, this is not a curious case of litter on the street but a glimpse of a page out of Bengaluru-based Shay Grover’s journal. “When I sit down to let my feelings flow, they don’t just come out as words but as things to collect,” the 21-year-old graphic designer explains. “A junk diary feels like a more authentic way to record the lore of my life.”

Grover is part of a larger movement where young millennials and Gen Z are not only journaling by putting pen to paper but also by building imperfect scrapbooks. Instagram is full of junk journal inspiration, Pinterest predicted the return to physical notebooks and collectables as a major trend for 2026 while indie brands like Sunshine Club offer stickers, stamps, craft supplies, and notebooks to help people kick-start this journey.

The practice of journaling, where you let your thoughts run on paper, is far from new. In the 2000s, Britney Spears wrote a song called ‘Dear Diary’ while in the book series (and film adaptations) of Bridget Jones’ Diary, the rom-com protagonist uses her notebook as a manifestation tool. Closer to home, Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani’s (2013) wanderlust consumed main character Bunny makes travel scrapbooks to script his future.

Yet, unlike picture-perfect diaries and photo books of the last few decades, new age junk journals are filled with receipts, crushed paper rolls, and other ‘junk’ that most people would discard without thought. Here the aspiration is not untouched dreams, it is lived-in experiences.

In fact, that is often the point. The more a journal is sprinkled with objects or cues that only make sense to the writer, the more personal and intimate it feels. Yet, even junk diaries are only one of many formats that young people today claim as theirs. California-based content creator and PhD student Maalvika Bhat, 26, finds a generic day-decode overwhelming. Instead of stream of consciousness writing, she verb journals. “Every season of my life, I pick a few verbs I want to live by. For a while, mine were: listen, learn, make, love, move,” she explains. “At the end of the day, I write one line for every verb. On busy days it only takes two minutes, but it helps me live more intentionally.”

Meanwhile, content creator Tarini Thakur has been journaling since she was a teen in high school. Traditionally, she kept the practice uncomplicated with an unruled piece of paper and a pen. But years on, the 26-year-old is finally open to experimenting. “I watched this Netflix movie called Voicemails for Isabelle (2026) where the characters use voicemails as a medium to reflect on their feelings,” she explains. “I found that refreshing, almost like a phone call with yourself and can’t wait to try that.”

Cope community 

In 2025, UNICEF revealed that 60 per cent of the global youth feel constantly overwhelmed. The present state of political and economic uncertainty, combined with AI slop online makes the quest for mindfulness par for the course. Now more than ever, young people want to turn down the volume of the noise outside and understand what happiness, success, even love and friendship means to them, away from the internet. In response, journals, irrespective of the format, become a way to be emotionally clued-in.

For Nagpur-based writer and creator Kriti Sachan, journaling helps her focus. “Sometimes when my mind is racing too fast, I write or doodle, and find that my hand knows how to slow down before my brain does,” the 25-year-old shares. Presently, she has a personal journal, a five-year journal for goals, a gratitude journal, and a pop culture one where she reviews films and books. For every form of expression, Sachan uses leather folios from Paper Republic with dotted notebooks from Moleskine or Papercoal.

Against what trends will have people believe, many Gen Z who journal reject colourful, floral diaries in favour of plain, unassuming books. Having grown up online, where narrow definitions of aesthetic control the photo dumps that people post—the lowercase captions that they type in and even the water bottles that they sip from—20-somethings are exhausted from the constant performance of the self. They see their personal journals as a space to reject this perfectionism.

Mumbai-based artist Simran Patankar says, “Decorative covers scare me because I feel the pressure to be perfect in them. That defeats the purpose because journaling is my no-judgement space.” Instead, the 29-year-old designs doodles and creates stickers for the books to make them hers. Similarly, student doctor Jagyaseni Dey uses sketchbooks from general store brands like Anupam and Brustro over “notebooks marketed as journals because they evoke the guilt of wasting good stationary.” The 23-year-old from Jalpaiguri in West Bengal prefers to name each journal and create a label for it as a way to lend personality and intimacy to the diary.

Basically, young journal-lovers are not inherently against the idea of aesthetic books. They just want the decor and scribbles to be customised to them, that trademark carries hints of safety and acceptance that run-of-the-mill mass prints no longer provide them. In large part, a sense of control and agency also informs the present-day journaling practice.

Many older Gen Z have overshared on Tumblr, written long-winded confessional poetry on Instagram and begun their writing journey on blog platforms that no longer exist. In recent years, they have learnt how big tech uses their data to sell back to them and see this as a breach of trust.

“I journal so hard because I have control of that physical copy,” Grover says. “Instagram can’t just delete me for not following arbitrary guidelines or prey on my insecurities to influence my political opinion. With a notebook, I document my own history and am in charge of what happens with it.”

Images: Adobe Stock

This article originally appeared in Cosmopolitan India's September-October 2026 print issue.

Also read: Everyone is building a 'journal ecosystem' in 2026—here's what you need

Also read: 6 Ways Journaling Can Help You Heal, Grow, and Thrive