Stamplo 2025 Year in Review

I launched Stamplo at the end of May. It wasn't meant to be a startup or a big platform. It was simply something I built for my own children, who meet friends wherever we go but can't stay in touch because we don't give them phones or social media. What follows is a look at what happened in 2025, what I learned about children and online communication, and what this means for families who want something calmer and safer for their children.

A Small Global Community

Even though Stamplo is still very small, families from 36 countriesjoined this year. When I first put the site live, I thought a handful of people might try it. Seeing families sign up from places I've never visited has been a quiet surprise.

I added up the distances between those countries and the letters they exchanged. It came to around 2.7 million kilometres. That's about 67 laps of the Earth. It's only a fun figure, but it shows how far this little community already reaches.

Children wrote across more than seventy cross border routes. The most common were United Kingdom to United States, France to Canada, and Sweden to Hungary. There were also quieter routes, such as Japan to United Kingdom or Australia to United Kingdom, where only a few letters travelled but the relationships behind them have become important to those families.

These are the kinds of friendships that would never have formed without a calm and parent supervised place to write. A child living in a small town can suddenly hear what life is like in a city on the other side of the world. A home educated child can hear what school is like in a different system. None of this is dramatic, but it is the sort of slow, steady learning that is very hard to get from short form content and fast feeds.

How Children Used Stamplo

Since launch, children have sent just over 600 letters. Spread across 6 months, that works out to roughly one hundred a month. It's not a huge number compared to big platforms, and that is the point. The rhythm is steady rather than frantic. Letters appear in small clusters.

Children who write regularly tend to send around nine or ten letters each. They do not write every day. They come back in their own time, usually when they have something to say. Parents often tell me their children treat it differently from messaging. They sit down, think for a moment, and write about whatever feels important to them that week.

The longest friendship reached 34 letters. That is 34 times two children sat down, thought about another child somewhere else in the world and replied. It has been interesting to see that once a pair of children find the right match, they don't need any encouragement from the platform. They simply carry on talking.

Most writing happens between 4pm and 7pm UK time, when families are settling in and children have room to think. A few parents told me they keep Stamplo as an after dinner ritual. Their child writes a letter once a week at the kitchen table while everyone else potters about. Some families also choose to allow drawings or photos to be included. These small additions help letters feel more personal, without changing the pace or tone of the exchange.

The Pace Is the Point

Every letter on Stamplo takes twenty four hours to arrive. This was not a technical decision. It was a parenting one. I wanted children to experience what it feels like to wait. We are used to messages arriving instantly. That speed is convenient for adults, but it comes with a cost. Children don't get time to cool down, to change their mind, or to talk through what they want to say with a parent.

When I look back over the year, children have collectively spent more than 600 days waiting for letters to arrive. That number comes from the built in delay alone. It sounds dramatic, but the reality is much quieter. Once a parent approves a letter, the child simply sees that mail is on the way, or the parent tells them. From there, waiting becomes part of the rhythm. It slows everything down in a way that feels calmer and more deliberate.

This slower pace helps children write calmly while giving parents time to guide them. If a letter feels unkind, rushed or too personal, a parent can sit with their child and edit it before sending. If something in an incoming letter does not feel right, a parent can simply decline it or flag it for review. The child never sees it unless both parents approve. The design of the platform supports this. There are no typing indicators. No pressure to answer straight away. No sense that a child is expected to always be available.

For families who already try to keep things slower offline, this can be a natural extension of what they do in person. The same instinct that limits screens in the living room can apply to messages. The goal is not to keep children away from the internet forever. It is to introduce them to it in a way that respects their pace and their stage of development.

Safety and the Change on 1 January

Stamplo only works because parents stay closely involved. Every letter is approved by a parent before sending, and a parent on the other side approves it before it is delivered. There are no feeds, no follower counts, no likes and no scrolling. There is no inbox full of strangers. Children can only write to pen pals that both parents have agreed to.

From 1 January 2026, all parents will need to complete photo ID verification. This is to make sure every adult supervising a child is who they say they are. It is a small administrative step for families, but an important one for the health of the whole network. It means that when you agree to a pen pal request, you know there is a real and verified adult on the other side.

I know that ID checks can feel uncomfortable. Many of us have grown used to handing over large amounts of personal data to internet companies without really thinking about it. Stamplo does not want any more data than is necessary and does not use it for advertising or tracking. The purpose of ID here is simple. It is to make sure that every child is genuinely being supervised by a parent or guardian, and that we can act quickly if something ever does go wrong.

What I've Learned

Looking back over 2025, a few themes stand out. These are not scientific conclusions, just observations from watching real families use Stamplo.

• Children don't need instant messaging. They are perfectly happy writing slower letters. In many cases they seem to enjoy the waiting as much as the writing.
• Parents want to be involved and many prefer approving letters to full independence. They are not trying to spy on their children. They simply want to be nearby while children take their first steps online.
• Small is fine. The most meaningful exchanges happen in quiet one to one conversations. There is no need for a large audience for a letter to matter.
• Global friendships enrich children more than I expected. Small details about different food, school routines or weather patterns often become the highlight of a letter.
• Simple design works. There are no feeds or likes on Stamplo, and yet children come back to write when they have something to say. That is encouraging for anyone who feels uneasy about attention driven platforms.

The other thing I've learned is that families are already doing a lot of this work themselves. Stamplo has not created a new kind of parent. It has simply given existing parents a tool that fits how they already think about childhood and technology. Many of them were already printing emails, sending postcards or using other slow methods. Stamplo sits alongside those habits rather than replacing them.

Looking Ahead to 2026

In 2026 I am focusing on helping children find good pen pal matches more quickly and safely. At the moment there are families who are keen to use Stamplo but are waiting for the right match. Improving that experience is my main priority. It means making the matching process clearer, helping parents understand how it works, and giving more control over who they are open to connecting with.

I will also continue to add gentle features such as seasonal stamps and optional writing prompts. These are not there to drive usage. They are there to give children small reasons to sit down and write when life gets busy. The heart of Stamplo will stay the same. Thoughtful letters. Parent involvement. A pace that respects childhood.

My hope is that Stamplo remains a small and trusted corner of the internet. Big numbers are not the goal. If this can simply be a place where a few more children grow up thinking of online connection as something calm and supervised rather than something frantic and overwhelming, it will have done its job.

How These Figures Were Measured

All figures here are anonymised, approximate and based on platform level data. No individual child is analysed or tracked. I don't build profiles of children or try to predict their behaviour. These numbers are simply a way of describing what this small community created together in 2025.