I’m sure everybody over 50 has noticed the trend of younger people—and by “younger”, I mean even up to age 40—avoiding making phone calls. Instead, people email or text, and the younger they are, the more they use text. I’m sure there are kids who never talk to anybody on the phone, except perhaps their parents when they have to.
I’ve long noticed this trend, but I can’t explain it. There are certain conveniences to emailing and texting, like getting your thoughts off into the ether immediately instead of waiting for someone to answer the phone. But texting or emailing doesn’t guarantee an immediate response, especially with emails, which at least require some thought on one’s part instead of a kneejerk response. The less thought you need in a medium, the more the younger people use it.
And that leads to one of my (probably incorrect) explanations for this trend. The reason I prefer the phone over text is that phones allow for continuous conversations, which are more unpredictable, which can be way more fun, and allow more social connection (and bonding) with others. Talking on the phone also conveys nuance through the tone of your voice—nuance that’s not only absent in written communication, but can be misinterpreted in texts and emails and cause trouble. (This is why the younger generation uses emoticons: to avoid miscommunication that wouldn’t occur in phone calls.)
But using the phone requires you to implement a number of social skills—those involved in direct interpersonal interaction—that you don’t need in short written communications. And that’s apparently too much trouble for a lot of people.
This is my theory, which is mine, but I’m sure it’s been suggested before, and I’m ignorant of the literature on exactly why younger people love to text and intermediate-age people to email. It’s clear, though, that teachers and others see a detrimental effect of incessant texting on social interaction among younger folks. That’s why Jon Haidt, supported by every teacher on the planet, wants to keep cellphones out of school. That way you can still talk to your classmates, but you can’t text anybody you want and avoid social interaction.
The title above is actually my question to readers: why, do you think, people of many ages are inexorably moving towards short electronic written communication and avoiding either vocal communication or face-to-face communication?
Here’s a short video of Sherry Turkle, whom I’ve met a few times, telling us why conversation is better than texting. She’s mainly talking about face-to-face conversation rather than phone conversations, but some of the advantages apply to telephone conversation vs. texting.
This is part of what Sherry works on as an academic at MIT, and so her views deserve a hearing.
I remember having a “conversation” through texting with a young woman about her cat that I was supposed to take care of (I cat sit and also go to people’s apartments to look after their cats).
After having a couple of back-and-forth text exchanges, I asked her to call me so that we could have a real conversation (though I didn’t say “real conversation”).
She never called.
My daughter never calls, she texts. At work people “call” on Microsoft Teams now. Ninety-nine percent of the time I talk to them on my computer, not my phone. It’s bad news for telemarketers, though, since the odds of an actual phone call being people we want to talk to are now very low.
“But texting or emailing doesn’t guarantee an immediate response”.
That is the beauty of it as that works both ways. I can reply when I want to and when it suits me. I’m not always in the mood for small talk, or even big talk. The only person I telephone is my big brother as he doesn’t have a smart phone.
That doesn’t mean I don’t do face-to-face. I meet a group of friends at least weekly for lunch and it’s so much easier to organise that in a WhatsApp group and then catch up with the chat in person. It’s far more efficient too, as a friend can tell us all about their holiday in one go, instead of multiple repetitive phone calls.
A specific benefit for me is that I’m often nocturnal, and I can send a text and schedule it to go while I’m sleeping and when the recipient is awake.
I agree that smartphones should be discouraged at school. Children should be allowed to have normal social interactions. I’m sure limiting them to texting must have a negative impact on brain development, but for adults like me who are well over your “even up to age 40” limit, it is quite a relief not to have to be at the beck and call of a telephone.
Yes, but the advantage of a cellphone, which I didn’t mention but should have, is THAT YOU DON’T HAVE TO ANSWER IT, AS YOU CAN SEE WHO IS CALLING.
If you want to, here you can see who is calling on a landline, too. I got rid of my landline recently after several years of not using it. I just checked my mobile records, and I haven’t got outgoing or incoming phone calls on it in the last couple of months apart from my brother, business calls and spam.
Someone phoning you is still disturbing you whether or not you answer the call. I leave my mobile on at night, in case of emergencies, but I get annoyed when people phone me at an uncivilised hour of the morning. Fortunately, all except one of my friends and family prefer messaging.
Ooo yeah, 🎯
It’s a mix though – sometimes messages with photos work better.
Also, have to set aside time for conversation.
So perhaps conversation is simply more valuable than anything else.
Also depends on what you’re doing…
Huge topic!
Sherry goes beyond just conversation, invoking the visual cues of person to person facing one another in the same place and time. I agree and if you are not in the same place, I would opt for facetime or zoom or the like as a 95-98% option if you already know each other and each other’s body language. But even if you want something quicker and more spontaneous, particularly if you see the other person frequently, I go with simple audio phone call.
I do not like to text because: 1. I am a very slow typist/textist; 2. I hate the dead air time waiting for a response; 3. It is low bandwidth vis a vis talking. I recognize the advantage of texting being asynchronous and the person you are calling may be busy at the moment, but i can always leave a phone voicemail which makes a phonecall equally asynchronus to texting and like with texting, I can leave additional info on voicemail to leave the person to be able to fully prepare for the return call and conversation.
In its favor texting does leave a written trail for later reference.
So the answer to your question is: I really do not know. May be just what each generation grew up with.
“I am a very slow typist/textist”
Both Apple and Android now have an included option to dictate what you want to type, click the microphone that should appear on your keyboard and just start talking.
I highly recommend that option as it is so much faster. I don’t know much about the Apple one, but the Android one is bad at capitalisation and, as a pedant, I sometimes have to tweak what it types, but it’s still a lot faster.
I’ve just dictated this comment, and I had to add a couple of full stops, capitals and tweak American spelling.
Thanks but my experience with my friends using dictation is that our phones do not understand “Southern”…ya’ll.
😂 The dictation on smartphones has certainly not come up to the standards of PC dictation software yet, like Dragon Simply Speaking. That software trains itself to your accent very quickly when you read a couple of set paragraphs to it and it improves as time goes on and you correct the odd word here and there. It is also great at capitalization and punctuation.
Ok. You convinced me to give it a try. Probably can be no worse than ai “corrections” to my typing.
I’m elderly and talk on the phone every 10 days or so with my elderly sister — but we do a lot of emailing, including sending bird photos to identify. We also discuss politics by email. I have yearly birthday telephone calls with some old friends, some overseas.
Zoom is important for me. I do regular Zoom calls with some friends in their 60s. Zoom is very good for conversations with one or two other people.
I’m in touch with lots of friends by e-mail. These are mostly people between 40 and 70. Conversations are often related to our scholarly work.
I use text for birthday greetings for my youngest relatives.
We still do when fine details need to be clarified
My personal setting is
phone call = I need you now,
short message = reply within a day or two,
email = reply within a week.
If other people see it similarly, maybe they don’t want to impose on others because there is rarely something so urgent it needs to be discussed immediately, so it’s a combination of politeness/consideration and shyness.
Also modern phones make it easy to deliver a text, even a long one straight to someone’s pocket, so maybe phone calls were just a phase while this option was not available.
I’d hate to think that phone calls are “just a phase.” I’ve had a bunch of good discussions, with lots of brain food AND fun in just the last week. Yes, if I have to send article or links or photos, I use email (messages are unwieldy to extract things from.)
So would I. I like phone calls both for the instant problem solving ability as well as for longer discussions. And I am a fairly young person, a millennial.
Texting is blessedly ruled out for old codgers like me whose typing skills even on a full-sized keyboard have degenerated.
As for the rising generation and whippersnappers under 70, I suggest that the prevalence of texting is due to technology alone. Any new gadgetry seems to sweep consumers into using it, regardless of its virtues or defects. If this view is correct, then soon everyone will be relying on AI to flush their toilets.
Your comment about flush toilets reminded me of a Bizarro cartoon that had a similar idea. It was originally published December 14 2024 and can now be found in Wayno’s blog which features his cartoons one week at a time.
The week in question can be found at https://waynocartoons.blogspot.com/2024/12/i-yam-what-i-yam.html
The more you text and the less you call to talk, the more anxiety there is in calling to talk.
Texting seems to satisfy the need to have trivial interactions, since the effort and stakes are low. And now absolute trivia becomes shared far and wide. Kids can text their friends about eating French fries, or on a whim they can send a picture of this bug they found on their doorstep. The interactions are less personal, but admittedly there are often far more interactions since they are always in touch.
I get emails from students, and one thing that irritates me is when a student writes in the pidgin language of texting. So I get “cuz”, and “lol”, and all manner of truncated sentences. I am their professor, not their bestie! Get off my lawn!
Several years ago I read of a student emailing (no doubt just as if not more true of texting) a professor at 3 a.m. and expecting a reply by 8 a.m. I trust that that has not been your pedagogical fate. (To paraphrase The Bard, “To take arms against a sea of texts and, by opposing, end them.”)
I have a flip phone and it’s perfect for me. I don’t carry it around with me to (have to) answer at every whip-stitch ring-a-ding. Someone calling shouldn’t assume that I’m sitting around with nothing to do, or that I should drop whatever I’m doing to answer the phone at the caller’s convenience, not mine. (To paraphrase The Good Book regarding the sabbath, “The phone was made for man, not man for the phone.”) This is obviously not true for someone who has a separate phone crucial for business.
If I know a relative or friend is sick I will carry it around to be able to respond quickly. I had a relative once leave a voicemail saying she knew I didn’t like to answer my phone. Whatever one thinks must be the truth, eh? (This relative – apparently having so little to keep herself occupied – is in her phone’s hip pocket 24/7 and chomps at the bit to chew out anyone soliciting business.) I did not reply to that accusation in order to “Keep The Peace.” I get no joy out of answering the phone nor do I dread it. The truth is, if she calls and I have my phone on me, of course I answer, whether or not I’m in the mood to talk to her. (More precisely, whether or not I’m in the mood to be a sounding board for her logorrheic petty grievances.)
I don’t answer a number I don’t know. It’s perfectly reasonable for a sincere caller (with no hidden agenda) to leave a voice mail and I will call back ASAP on my dime.
<pedantry> Not my field, but
can reasonably be interpreted that the hypothetical subjunctive “whether ’tis nobler in the mind to … or to…” indicates he is already leaning strongly towards not to be, and doesn’t give a toss what’s nobler or not, rejecting both those choices in favour of “to die” (in the following line).
So, the quote doesn’t necessarily support the idea of fighting the problem, vs. giving up.
🙂
Yes Mark – the anxiety factor is big.
I’m 54 and find nearly all of my communication is via email, or DMs for those into that.
There’s a lot of “get off my lawn” stuff here and I’m the first to yell it, but privately I’ll admit (I’m amongst friend here)…. the new system is better.
If I knew his number I’d like to call the Boss here. But when? It is rude to intrude, surely.
Actually I email him occasionally, and he usually replies, but I get the impression from the world that one never calls people on the phone one isn’t intimate with. So I’ve never considered actually CALLING him or many other people, some of whom I know quite well.
I wonder if people 100 years ago thought the same about “This new fangled damn telephone” …. like we are today? Bet they did….
D.A.
NYC
One further advantage of Zoom over phone and face-to-face, for elderly folks, who may struggle with hearing outdoor conversations and phone conversations, is that Zoom with a good headset is much clearer audio than face-to-face or phone.
Well, I’ve seen plenty of ads for phones that let you crank the voulume WAY UP HIGH. But Zoom is, I’ll maintain, better than texting, though it’s more cumbersome than a phone call.
Some video chat apps have a subtitle option, which is very helpful for people with hearing impairments, but who still want to have a type of interaction. I use Google Meet in that way.
For me, my issues are twofold:
I am on the spectrum and phone conversations are sometimes awkward if not painful for me.
My ADHD makes it difficult for me to remember things only spoken to me. Having them written down, especially doctors appointments and things, is incredibly useful and it means things don’t fall through the cracks.
Many such cases Ashleigh. I know a few people like that.
And isn’t it great we have these options? In the 70s or 80s we had…. the PHONE.
End of story.
As always.. better now.
cheers Ashleigh,
D.A.
NYC
TY David. And yeah. Way better now. I’m an 80s baby, and the coolest gadget I remember coming out was that landline phone that was kinda see through and lit up when it rang. We even had a rule that we couldn’t call our friends’ houses before 9am.
HAHHA A win for us Gen Xers!
And only maniacs and death calls come before 9am.
D.A.
NYC
Or after 9pm.
I think there are multiple reasons for why people text so much more than call, listed in what I feel is the most important to least important reasoning (based on conversations with several people I know, including my wife & daughter):
Social Anxiety – The idea of talking to someone on the phone induces more anxiety than texting, emailing, or even in person conversations. I’m not sure exactly why – maybe the cognitive workload of trying to understand them without seeing their lips and body language combined with less than optimal audio quality. Probably related to why a lot of folks I know are less anxious about going inside to order fast food vs. the drive thru (though the drive thru usually wins out for convenience).
Being Less Imposing / More Considerate of Their Time – If I call somebody, they have to pick up now. If I text them, they can respond whenever it’s convenient for them. Actually, this one has gotten to the point where even for phone calls in a professional setting, most folks I know text before a call to see if it’s a convenient time.
Less Than Urgent Information – If you don’t need to know right now, a text is fine.
Group Coordination – I’m a member of a lot of group texts. Group phone calls are harder to organize.
Middle Ground of Formality Between a Phone Call and an Email – Probably self-explanatory
Multi-Tasking – You can carry on multiple text threads and do other activities while texting. A phone call demands all of your attention.
Avoid Getting Dragged Into Long Conversations – Pretty self-explanatory. But even for quick exchanges, texts can be a sentence each, whereas phone calls require all the obligatory social niceties people aren’t always even consciously aware of (e.g. leave taking before hanging up).
That said, I do have a personal cutoff of around three back-and-forths over text. Once I get to that point, I figure it’d probably be quicker to just talk on the phone. A common text between me and my wife is “call?” once it starts getting to that point.
Excellent list!
+1
The best summary of the dilemma I’ve read to date. Cheers Jeff.
100%
D.A.
NYC
I’m 63 now and only got my first cell phone in 2010 and upgraded to a smart phone circa 2015. Anyhow, I’ve had social anxiety for much of my life and for a while in my 40s, when either answering a phone, either at work or my cell phone, whatever, for a few moments (which seemed much longer) my voice wouldn’t function — I’d be trying to speak but nothing would come out, and this even happened when calling or taking a call from my mother. Eventually, the problem went away, but not exactly through conscious effort on my part. This was during a period when I was transferred from one job to another in my workplace at the Courthouse and I had to regularly take and make more calls than I’d ever done before and I got to really hate when the phone rang and I was focused on trying to complete some task and none of my co-workers were answering the phone (particularly irritating when one of them was engaged in what I could easily tell was a chatty social conversation that had nothing to do with work while on the clock and it wasn’t like they didn’t have any work to do!
On my smartphone, I’ve long since stopped answering calls which don’t show a name I know as I’ve gotten so many nuisance calls, either someone trying to sell me something or trying to pull some sort of con on me, etc. I figure if it actually is someone I know and it’s important, they’ll leave a voicemail and I can call them back — it’s very rare that the unknown caller leaves a voicemail.
I do prefer speaking with most people on the phone to texting or emailing, although at least one of my older friends (she just turned 77) has such a faint voice that I can barely understand what she’s saying — and that sometimes happens when she’s speaking to me in person face to face! Admittedly, she’s had some major health issues over the last year and had to get a pacemaker. Oddly, when visiting with her sometimes, she’ll take calls from just about anyone, including telemarketers or wrong numbers and engage in arguments with them for several minutes rather than just hanging up on them.
I just made another comment, but I had a separate point worth breaking out on its own.
My (adult) daughter was having a conversation with a volunteer at a youth program the other day, and it seems that the latest cohort of phone users who grew up during COVID-19 is actually making phone calls rather than texting. But the reason is distressing. In the words of that volunteer, it’s because those kids can’t read. In their formative years when they should have been learning to read in school, they were stuck at home with parents who for one reason or another didn’t give them the same instruction they would have gotten at school.
Hopefully this gets better as those kids return to their schools and start receiving proper instruction.
Actually Jeff… the “kids can’t read” is a bigger issue than this. I’m undecided… how much of “the kids can’t read” is age old “Kids are useless” trope since Sumeria, and how much of it is an actual disaster in how children are taught these days?
If what you say is true…. thaaaat’s pretty damn concerning.
D.A.
NYC
Well, to keep my anecdote in context, it was just one anecdote, and everyone knows the saying about anecdotes not being data, especially a single anecdote.
Also, the kids the volunteer was working with were underprivileged kids you’d sadly expect to underperform compared to their better off peers. So this may be just one more example of the types of obstacles that poor folks face.
I will say that the volunteer who told that story to my daughter was in her 20s, so less likely to be one of the “get off my lawn” types.
Whether making or receiving, a telephone call demands an immediate response, interrupting whatever the recipient is doing. It is like barging in without asking, which might well be considered rude in many contexts.
Also, as a pre-boomer, my hearing aid does not work particularly well with a telephone. I recall an attempted communication with a local government department that was so frustrating that I was forced to resort to email.
Since when does a telephone call demand an immediate response? If you do not want to answer, dont answer. Put it on vibrate, too. If a little vibration is considered demanding, well, I cannot help.
No, PCC(E)- I respectfully dissent.
A ringing or vibrating phone is indeed a DEMAND! to answer. As I see it.
D.A.
NYC
I have hearing aids as well, but mine run on Bluetooth. It streams the sound directly into my ears like I’m wearing Air pods and sound quality is INSANELY clear. I don’t know what kind of hearing aids you have, or how old they are, but the newer versions run through an app on your phone. Smart phone of course.
We’ve gone from the telegraph to the telephone – which surely our ancestors thought was a great invention – and back to the telegraph.
Telex or TTY; no Morse Code required.
I understand the convenience of texting, but I find it a somewhat self-absorbed form of communication. It allows me to “converse” largely on my terms: when I want, if I want, with whom I want, about what I want, as short as I want. Don’t like what was said? Find it uncomfortable to discuss? Simply refuse to respond or say a quick goodbye, letting the sender think you were drawn away by more important things. That is trickier to do in a conversation, especially if it is face-to-face. The form privileges personal comfort over human connection.
People often call to ask for favors or inveigle you into commitments you’d rather not make. Handling these matters over text provides time to formulate a diplomatic refusal or an excuse that holds up to scrutiny (especially necessary with commitment-seekers who refuse to take no for an answer).
As calls become less common, the increased likelihood that each one heralds a favor request, a telemarketing scam, or bad news compounds our collective telephobia.
“Telephobia” — very apt.
I choose emails since I don’t text. And phone conversations are annoying since there’s often bad connections, but mainly because you can’t tell when the other person is about to speak. So there’s the overlap.
The only time I ever talked on the phone regularly was as a teenager talking with girlfriends (one at a time!). Otherwise, only when traveling so that I could touch base (briefly) with my wife.
Why not talk on the phone? In my case, on the phone I can be caught off-guard. I’d rather communicate in writing, where I can converse more deliberatively. Calls from friends are most welcome, but they never happen. (Sad, I know.) I sometimes arrange in advance to have a phone conversation—my strong preference—and I make the arrangement using e-mail.
Why don’t people talk on the phone today? Two reasons. Texting—talking’s replacement—takes less time. People don’t seem to have the time to talk—at least that’s what they tell me. And second, regarding the yoots. They have been brought up with cell phones and texting, so never developed the habit.
I’ve always found it hilarious that cellular phones are almost never used as phones!
The yoots….got it!
This is sad. I try to have a conversation at least once a day with a friend, and I find it a LOT more bracing and bonding than any text message. It makes me sad that few people on this thread get that kind of pleasure from phone calls. As for business calls, I rarely get them since everything is handled by email (we dont do texts in my field).
I call one of my closest friends nearly every day, at least on those when we don’t meet in person. I just get a lot more pleasure talking with her over texts.
Perhaps another reason is that telephones have relatively recent usage and are still not ‘internalised’ in our behaviours. My family had no telephone (not uncommon) until after I went to university more than 50 years ago. Businesses rapidly adopted the phone (and faxes) but early computerisation meant that most communication (written, spoken) became screen driven. And when you can carry a small computer in a shirt pocket…
I don’t know about that AC. I’m 54 and have lived in the First World all my life – phones (home and later cell) have been ubiquitous for all my life and by the sound of it many people here.
D.A.
NYC
Fair point. But I’m 74 and live in the UK. Telephones were installed by a branch of the Civil Service (Post Office Telephones) and subject to various delays and restrictions. Post Office Telephones eventually became BT plc, a public company, and were eventually ‘privatised’ as BT when competition was enabled. That made a big difference.
I prefer texting or emailing because I don’t think on my feet. And I agree with Steve Mears — too often people are calling because they want something. I am consulting my high-school-aged granddaughter on her preferences, by text, of course.
It’s the sense of Demand, I think. A live phone call DEMANDS response NOW, whereas a text waits politely and quietly for a presumably well-reasoned response. By definition, a live voice call seems to require that the recipient drop what he’s doing RIGHT NOW and make time for whatever blatherous rambling I propose to inject into his captive cranium. It’s as if I were standing outside your residence and yelling at you to pay attention to me RIGHT NOW, JUST when you happen to be DIRECTLY in the middle of formulating a very important and particularly well-worded announcement about a duck. Seems to me sensible that, if I have access to tech that does not require of my interlocutor that he suddenly drop everything RIGHT NOW, I should employ such tech, even if only to request a voice call at some future time.
Umm. . . . if you are busy or do not want to talk to the person, do not pick up. Or pick up and arrange a time to talk later, or ask them what they want to talk about before you talk again.
Your use of caps disturbs me more than any phone call would!
I do not get where this idea that a phone call demands attention at the time it is made comes from.
Indeed. What’s wrong with automatically sending all incoming calls to voicemail? I did it for years with no problems.
At my courthouse job, where I’ve worked since June 2000, my current department (Probate & Guardianship) didn’t get voicemail set up until 2020 — when we were closed to the public due to the pandemic and most of the staff was working from home and I was the only one in the office, handling the mail and answering the phone, taking call after call from customers, mostly but not exclusively attorneys, asking why this or that hadn’t been done yet. During the first few days, I was literally spending several hours just answering phone calls and I finally started telling them that aside from the pandemic itself, a large part of the reason I wasn’t able to get this or that done was because I was having to answer so many bloody phone calls asking why we were so behind!!! Upper management got the voicemails set up and even arranged for one of the work-at-home clerks to answer the voicemails. These days, when my department is ridiculously shortstaffed, if I’m working with a customer at the counter, I won’t bother to answer the phone at all. Some of the other clerks, while working with a customer at the counter, will answer the phone and ask them to wait on hold. Thing is, we can’t ever be sure how quickly we can finish with one customer at the counter or that another may not come in, so the caller may wind up on hold for 10 or more minutes if they do stay on hold. I find it much better just to let the caller leave a voicemail and call them back when we can. A few customers do leave angry voicemails as if they expect we have nothing to do but take their phone calls, and some callers will go on and on about things we cannot assist them with at all or legal situations we are prohibited from advising them on (and they don’t want to go through the trouble and expense of consulting with or hiring an attorney who can advise them). Some of those people have also routinely called the Court Judicial Assistants and wonder why the J.A.’s never call them back. I have to bite my tongue because I know exactly why the J.A.s don’t call them back but the customers wouldn’t like the answer.
Phone calls are inherently a lot more invasive and demanding than other forms of communication. Entrusting someone with my cell phone number entails giving them the ability to get my attention any time, anywhere, by triggering a loud and annoying device I carry on my person.
In my experience, calling someone for something that isn’t an immediate “I need to talk to you NOW” scenario comes across as a breach of etiquette. Text messages (of any format, from texting to apps to email) can be sent and received silently and asynchronously, which are enormous advantages over live voice/video communication methods. There are plenty of places where taking a call would be inappropriate or ineffective, but a text message works just fine even if the sender is in a library and the recipient is at a loud concert. The asynchronous aspect means that those involved don’t need to be free simultaneously to communicate, either, which is particularly helpful with groups where scheduling can be impractical.
Speaking to someone live through a phone call or voice/video chat program definitely has its advantages, but it is a bit of a clumsy beast and I don’t think it is particularly surprising that text beats audio as the default mode of communication even when almost everyone carries a device that can do both.
Well, you dont have to answer a call if you do not want to. In fact, most of my calls now and at the end of my academic career were to my friends, not professional calls, as that stuff was handled by email. As for not taking phone calls during concerts, you simply turn off your phone and someone can leave a message.
I do not see phone calls as invasive and demanding, but of course I recognize that this is subjective and that we disagree. I just like the human aspect of speaking to another human.
Leave a message? I’m not trying to be snarky, but I don’t know much of anybody who leaves voicemail these days, not even my parents. If a person doesn’t pick up, you simply hang up and either call them later, or send a text if it was important or timely.
Voicemails are pretty much reserved for “official” channels, like when my daughter was recently going back and forth with the passport office.
YMMV, but my view is that if “they” can’t be bothered then I can’t either.
HAHAHHA!
I’m going to call the Boss tomorrow at high noon and see what happens!
You DARE me? Will he pick up?
(I don’t know his number but I can find it I guess…. he’s a public person and tracking people down is unsettlingly easy these days, even with the best of intentions).
Da da….. DAH!
D.A.
NYC
🙂
Thinking about it more, I’m reminded of a related issue I’ve been hearing about lately – voicemail features in texting apps. A lot of text-based platforms now have ways to send recorded audio messages, which is a feature that some people love and others hate. I feel like it lands in a bit of the worst of both worlds of texting and a phone call, as there’s no opportunity for the live back-and-forth that a phone call offers and it also lacks the practicality of a text message.
Yup. This is one of the big ones my daughter tells me. As I said up above in another comment, depending on the particular scenario, a lot of folks I know now will text or email to ask if now’s a good time for a chat before making a phone call. Cold calls have become just shy of rude (context depending, of course).
The only time I will cold call someone as you call it, no pun intended, is with my Mom or Dad.
Same. Well, and my wife. And very occasionally my daughter, but knowing how much she has to study for school, I reserve the cold calls to her for important things, or for times of the week when I can be reasonably sure it won’t be too disruptive.
I work with clients in a fairly technical field. Many times I have spent weeks with emails going back and forth trying to resolve a particular issue. Just a few days ago in frustration I asked a client if I could call him. A 10 minute phone conversation cleared up the issue and the weeks spent on emails regarding the problem was fixed with a simple phone call.
Yup.
Comparing notes with others of my (and Jerry’s) generation, it seems it was common for our Greatest Generation parents to drop in for unannounced visits to friends and relatives (and not just those across the street, either). Much as we Boomers have largely abandoned that practice because of its intrusiveness, younger generations have largely abandoned phone calls in favor of texting because of the phone’s intrusiveness. Having said that, I completely agree with Jerry and many of the commentators, who think they have thrown the baby out with the bathwater.
All of which inspires the stray thought that it’s odd (although historically understandable) that those all-important devices in everyone’s pockets are named after what is nearly their least important function.
I guess I am about the only person to appreciate the HUMAN side of phone calls and the pleasure of talking to–rather than texting with–friends. For example, yesterday I had a 15 minute phone call with an old friend about theodicy (he used to be religious but now is not), and how he experienced religious people trying to justify things like earthquakes or childhood cancers. A LOT got said and it was fun and educational for me. You just cannot do that over text or even email!
One theme might be that many men of your generation don’t have many (or any) friends to talk to by any medium. My wife and I do a lot of things together and she has many friends in her various pursuits who do talk frequently by phone — women have to plan for widowhood, you know — but she texts and Zooms extensively, too. Other than a couple of people coordinating participation in things I volunteer for, the only person I ever talk to on the phone is my son. We both find it helpful to talk in real time, with the pauses and voice inflections that transmit meta-meaning, about mid-career issues that I went through before him and my father did before me, all around the age my son is now. These conversations would never occur by text, and they provide the same benefits to me, and I hope to him, that my phone conversations with my father did thirty years ago.
One thing I sense is that his friends from high school whom he lived with all through university are starting to fall away as their families grow. Fathers don’t go out bowling with the boys anymore. They’re home reading bedtime stories. But his wife maintains her childhood camp friendships and goes out of town a couple of times a year to get together. He’s a provider, she’s a future widow. I’m not criticizing her at all. She’s wonderful. I’m just developing the theme that friendships are more important to women as they enter midlife than they are for men.
So I hear where you are coming from. You are blessed by Ceiling Cat that you have phone-worthy friends. The novelty of it struck me as happily unusual. I’ll bet that a lot of men who say they don’t like talking on the phone don’t have enough close friends to incentivize it.
“ne — women have to plan for widowhood, you know —”
-Grim, Leslie, very dark indeed. True, of course…
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head that the bigger issue is …loneliness.
D.A.
NYC
You are not alone. I too enjoy conversations, hearing a familiar but often long-missing voice. I call you for example and just last week called a fellow grad student from the 70’s, whom I had not spoken with since helping him move to MIT for a post doc in 1973ish. Happened across his name and phone number on the web. Great catching up like it had been a few weeks instead of 50 years. We were both alive! An email or text would have been sterile. A handwritten letter has value to me..a personal aspect in the handwriting that a typed letter does not.
Totally. I miss that also. I actually feel its loss. I used to have conversations like you describe but it has been decades now.
Your point is that tech has damaged our human relations and you are correct in that.
D.A.
NYC
I think you might be taking what other people have said a bit too far. For example, I left a decently long comment up above about all the reasons why people text more than they talk, but not that it had replaced it completely. My last paragraph was even about where I personally switch over to voice calls when texting starts to get cumbersome.
As another example, with my daughter, we do an awful lot of texting between us. Lots of little comments or quick questions throughout the week, especially as I don’t want to interrupt her studying while she’s in med school, and she doesn’t necessarily want to interrupt me during the workday. But we still usually have at least one or two good, long phone calls each week, as well. (I could also throw in my parents and brothers as similar examples.)
As others have commented, there is more urgency in a phone call and more obligation. When working, I change from mail to phone in order to escalate urgency. Yes, someone can choose not to answer the phone – then I’ll be calling again in 30 minutes. The more important part is that once someone answers the phone, it is much harder to dodge / avoid questions gracefully or to shut down the conversation without a social faux-pas.
If someone avoids me on the phone, I will occasionally walk across campus to their office and talk to them in person since in the professional context, the pressure to comply is increased even further.
I can imagine, that it is just easier for people to have non-committal texts (and multiple conversations in parallel) rather than conversations that you might not be able to extricate yourself easily, should an uncomfortable topic come up.
The granddsughter, a high school junior in Texas, reports she and her friends use Facetime.
I do all three, and many of my friends do all three with each other.
I enjoy a good conversation, and a good phone conversation is fine by me. But I’m 75, so there’s that…
I have a few friends who are good for 1 to 2 hours on the phone, and when things flow — that’s really fine, but we understand it doesn’t always happen. There are a couple of people where it’s understood the every week or maybe a couple of time a month, we talk. I’m also fortunate to have a dear spouse who is chatty.
The other modes of communication all have their place, and they can be switched around and integrated. It seems a common protocol to text to set up a phone call — or FaceTime, which I haven’t used a lot but FT is a pleasant surprise.
Texting is very good for sending photos.
This thread really got people going, and there were a lot of good comments. Maybe the key is to try to communicate clearly, no matter what mode. And David, above, #30, kudos for being succinct.
No, PCC(E)- I respectfully dissent.
A ringing or vibrating phone is indeed a DEMAND! to answer. As I see it.
D.A.
NYC
I respectfully request that you try not to post too often on threads (10% is a good maximum). Thank you.
Another good reason to have in-person conversations in real time. From Medscape Science & Technology:
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/phone-throne-hemorrhoid-risk-2025a1000n6k?ecd=wnl_sci_tech_250909_MSCPEDIT_etid7704246&uac=293413FV&impID=7704246
Then there’s people like me — fully enjoy live conversation, but for remote communication prefer email to phones. It’s like a neurosis. Those social skills you talk about — I got’m in live conversation, but once thrown into that jittery electronic universe of the telephone, those skills freeze up and a kind of mild dread takes over. The lack of immediacy in email removes the dread. I can’t explain it. As I said, it’s probably a form of neurosis, but I wonder how common it is.
Once upon a time there were only landlines lashed to answering machines. The window of opportunity for a phone call was small – and that was a good thing. Now phones are in our pockets and THANK HEAVENS we can text because micro-communications are mostly far more efficient and far less invasive.
Just because a phone is at arm’s length doesn’t make phone calls a necessity. These are smartphones that offer different comms channels and if phone calls offered advantages over the others, more people would make more calls.
Feel like a good natter? By all means hop on a video call. Looking someone in the eye while talking is also far better than waffling on a phone call. Too lazy to type or have something to say that can better be expressed vocally? Send an audio message.
As a teenager calling a mate on a landline to figure out what Saturday night’s plans were involved too much waffling. But we’d need to have a bunch of details more or less nailed down so these could be passed on to other mates who’d be joining the fun. Now we can communicate on the fly (texting, NOT calling) so plans don’t need to be so broadly defined before we left the house and our landlines.
-> Plans tonight?
— 8pm Bob’s.
-> Frank’s is better for me.
— OK, 8pm Frank’s.
This is the way!
Sorry, but that is not the way for me.
I’m almost 59 and I prefer email/text to calling.
For professional/practical stuff, it avoids miscommunication – the last time I booked a rental car via telephone call, the agent misheard the dates and I showed up to find no car.
People have different schedules so I/they can’t expect that they/I will be available to talk at the same time. People call when I’m driving, when I’m on the toilet, when I’m rushing to get a train, etc.
Also, I find talking on an iPhone very uncomfortable for my ear and I need time to locate and plug in my headphones if I’m going to be talking for an extended period.
If I need to have a phone or Zoom conversation with someone, we arrange a time that’s mutually convenient.
Okay, I give up. Nobody should ever call anybody else EXCEPT when it is your mother. You are ALWAYS disturbing them!
But if any readers ever want to communicate with me, you had better not email or text. Only phone calls accepted!
I grew up as a boarding-school boy in an enthustiacally letter-writing family, and I still love handwriting letters to those who respond in kind, with small inclusions like sketches, feathers, pressed plant specimens, etc. On the other hand, for some reason I dislike talking to machines; I even cringe at speech-to-text messaging and “conversing” with AIs and the like.
Consequently, when I want to converse in realtime at length with friends, I arrange to meet for a meal or a weekend, and I arrange such meetings via text. Similarly with my Gen X daughters, who always prefer text to phonejabber. This works well for all of us.
I find the argument that phoning is intrusive somewhat amusing, even though I understand why it became the norm. Imagine life in 1970s Warsaw. Many people did NOT have a phone at home. Some could be called at work, others could not. As a result, it was quite OK to visit a friend at their home unannounced. Intrusive? Could be. But we did not do it at dinner time (usually) and the place could be somewhat messy, but tea and conversation could usually be had. A phone call — if practical — was always welcome, if not for any other reason than to feel someone cared about the other person enough to actually pick up and dial the number. These days my friends rarely call me. I am the one to initiate a phone call, which leaves a nagging sense that they matter more to me than I to them.
I don’t know what it was like in the states but in the uk phone providers offered call plans with free texting or lots of free texts before having to pay. This meant that the poorer young people would learn to text before calling. Indoctrination.
Obviously today’s young generation is very different from what mine was. As a teenager I would often spend hours on the phone chatting with friends. And friends would often show up at my place uninvited, which did not bother me at all – a good excuse to break out the beers (and bong)! But that was a long, long time ago and things have changed.
Unfortunately, I missed this discussion the other day. I’m really surprised to learn that so many people simply don’t talk on the phone anymore. I’m with you, Jerry. I don’t understand the thing about the phone being invasive, intrusive or demanding. I feel none of that. I just don’t answer it if I’m busy or not in the mood to talk. It’s easier than ever with cellphones since you can just turn it to vibrate or silent. When I’m busy, I don’t pay any attention to the thing. I just stick it in my purse or a pocket and forget about it. My phone tells me when a call is a spam risk, I never answer names or numbers I’m not familiar with and business I let go to voicemail and finish up through text or email. I don’t feel the least bit obligated to answer unless a friend of mine has been sick or having some sort of problem. In those cases, if I’m tied up, I send them a quick text telling them so and we connect later. As far as which I prefer, there’s no substitute for having a great conversation with friends. I don’t derive much pleasure from texting but conversing is how I socialize. If I go too long without actually talking to someone, I start to feel pretty weird and cut off. Of course, I do live alone. Those of you with a spouse or significant other still around, well, you socialize at home with him or her. Also, I’m no longer working. If I were I might feel very differently about this. And a shout-out to Doug’s comment about texts tending to be a self-absorbed manner of communication.