Technology

I don't think anyone answers the phone now, unless they recognize the number.

Most of the calls I get are

• spam
• spam
• someone sent me a time sensitive message, so they ring me once to respond faster
• spam

I am Gen X (1970 give or take a couple of years) and I don't answer shit. I look up numbers and rarely listen to Voicemails. If you know me and I want to talk to you, you will know how to reach me. Everyone else can get fucked.

I think it's less generational and more fuck all this spam and scams.

A recent survey found a quarter of people aged 18 to 34 never answer the phone - respondents say they ignore the ringing, respond via text or search the number online if they don't recognise it.

As they should.

"A voice note is just like talking on the phone but better," says Susie Jones, a 19-year-old student. "You get the benefits of hearing your friend's voice but comes with no pressures so it's a more polite way of communicating".

Gross, voice notes are the worst of both worlds.

Text for things that are information critical, phone calls for things that are time critical.

Email for business (and keep the original chain going instead of starting a new one every time you think of something else to add!), text messages for associates, chat apps for friends and family.

Anyone who disagrees is wrong.

Both phone calls and emails are so full of ad-ridden garbage that they are useless for communication.

Texts are better signal-to-noise ratio, for me it is more like only 1% con artist identity thieves compared to the 99% coming via phone call.

Spam has destroyed the phonecall. I screen everything and people know to text me first.

Besides its rude to think you can just interrupt someone in the middle of what they are doing without asking via text first anyway.

I can't speak for others but as an older millennial, I grew up liking spending time on the phone with friends and loved ones. However in my adult life, I spent being anxious waiting for phone calls regarding job interviews and outcomes of them, and even being interviewed on some of them, including those without much notice. I also had to make calls to follow up things urgently or if I'm in trouble. As a result, I started to equate phone calls as mostly negative experiences.

If you call me and don't leave a voice mail message or text... Your effectively spam.

It's pretty obvious why lol.

90% of the calls I receive are spam.

Calling demands that I pick up the phone RIGHT THE FUCK NOW. Bitch, if it ain't a life threatening emergency I'm not dropping everything I'm working on for you.

Texting allows me to respond when it's convenient for me.

Text generally takes 3 seconds to get the point across instead of having a whole conversation about it

99% of phone calls is typically a capitalistic company forcing employees to sell us something.

So yes... I'm not gonna pick up. Leave a voicemail 👍

Everyone I need to talk to is in my contacts. If you're not in my contacts, my phone doesn't even ring. You go straight to voicemail.

I was fine with phone calls when I was younger. Now it's mostly spam robocalls or scammers or both. Nobody seems interested in solving those problems.

honestly i think this is due to unplanned voice calls essentially being broken technology now.

imagine we had 2020s email spammers while mail servers had 1990s spam filters, that's basically where we're at now with unplanned voice.

Meanwhile, boomers will spend hours talking to a ChatGPT script that has convinced them its the real Oprah Winfrey.

Texting is also damn convenient, I can deal with several conversations at once without having to pause the movie I'm watching.

Speaking on the phone doesn't just tie your line, it ties your whole life too.

I'm an older millennial. I enjoyed talking on the phone until I was something like 12. Texting wasn't a big thing yet then, but messengers on the internet were. So I realized there were better ways of communicating.

When I was in college, I was hit by a car. I was poor and had no health insurance. That led to endless calls from debt collectors. That led to anxiety related to the sound of a phone ringing. I have not answered the phone to unknown numbers since then. My life is better for it.

I only occasionally listen to voicemail, and most of the time, it's a doctor's appointment automated reminder. The rest of the time, it's usually spam. No point listening.

Anyone who knows me and needs or wants to get in touch with me knows how to do so and knows not to do so by phone call. Anyone else is unimportant.

There is a setting in iphone that i enabled to silence unknown caller. Havent turn it off since i enable it. I usually ignore anyone who isnt in my contacts.

Eh. Gen-x here. I still have an hour long phonecall over signal with my best friend over signal two times a week or so.

In my teens I wasn't too happy about making phonecalls either, but working on a helpdesk for a while sure cured that.

On the other hand, I live in a country with consumer protection, so robocalls are not a thing. And I'd strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger (and GDPR) those companies who attempt to poison and destroy my personal attention.

I always answer the phone.

Because if you're not in my contacts my phone doesn't even ring.

I can't trust phone calls these days. Even if it's a number that I recognize, there's still a chance it could be a scammer spoofing the number. That happened to me once where someone spoofed my credit union's number to try give them my money to protect my account.

People answer phones?

It's a meme among people that know me that you pretty much have to leave a message if a text won't do. I genuinely can't remember the last phone call I answered. Thinking back, it was when my dad was having surgery, and they give calls with updates. That was maybe three years ago?

But I've been doing that since I got my first answering machine back in the nineties. I fucking hate talking on the phone. Even as a teenager, if it wasn't someone I was having sex with, it wasn't going to be a long call. The only exceptions were my two best friends, and my grandmother. One grandmother just didn't call to chat. The other only called rarely, and you don't fucking ignore your grandmother. Neither grandfather was going to call either. My mom's dad would drive over if he wanted to talk about something with one of us. The other was dead.

There are two people I would answer a call from, my wife and my best friend. But they'd never call outside of an emergency because they know I hate phones for talking. I probably would for my dad, but he hates phones almost as much as I do.

If: you're a starred contact and call twice within 10 minutes and I happen to have the phone at hand and I'm pretty sure you have something important to say I'll probably pick it up.

That happens about once or twice a year. We invented voicemail so we can speak when it works well for both parties.

I literally don't set up my voicemail, and I typically don't listen to recorded audio that gets messaged to me. Texting is functional and doesn't leave me some anxiety-provoking message that I have to sit through and digest without saying anything. If a conversation needs to happen in voice, text to say that and see if it's a good time.

Wild that people just ring a personal phone number unprompted in 2024 without that being an established routine.

That said, I also remember when it wasn't at all weird to show up to someone's house and knock on their door. Things have really changed.

"It's the anxiety associated with real-time conversations, potential awkwardness, not having the answers and the pressure to respond immediately" - this hits the nail on the head for me about not wanting to be on the phone/teams call in the work place. Being pulled into a call with no context is my biggest nightmare.