News that King Charles and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been in comms over the California-based couple’s attendance at the forthcoming Coronation — already a ceaseless question of ‘will they/won’t they?’ — via email should come as a surprise to no one.
After all, who talks on the phone anymore? Very few of us, including warring royals.
Once the best and easiest way to gossip, flirt and secure new business, the telephone call is becoming increasingly obsolete as we hunch over our smartphones, raw finger tips firing off emoji-laden texts.
Despite literally sleeping with their phones, millennials and Gen Z are bound together under one name: Generation Mute, thanks to their dislike of calls. There’s even a name for it — telephonophobia. “When people ring me, I freeze,” admits Kay*, 29. “Like, who died?”
Research by BankMyCell found that 75 percent of millennials dislike phone calls because they’re time-consuming, while 81 percent suffer from anxiety before they manage to make a phone call. It’s something Emma*, a radio producer in her late thirties, has noticed in the young recruits she supervises.
“I asked a new colleague — a junior in their first role — to call a potential contributor to a show,” she says. “After a while I noticed that they weren’t making the call so I asked if everything was ok. Turns out they were struggling to know what to say, how to introduce themselves and explain the situation. And it hit me that a whole generation is unused to verbal dialogue.”
This aligns with research by audience insights platform GWI who found that the UK is the country least likely to communicate with phone calls at work: Only 63 percent of workers communicate with other employees via phone.
This chimes with Hilda Burke, psychotherapist, couples counsellor and author of The Phone Addiction Workbook, believes phone call anxiety does exist, particularly among Gen Z or younger millennials who are unused to using the phone in their personal lives and therefore find it intimidating in a professional setting. Burke points towards communication research by behavioural psychologist Dr. Albert Mehrabian which found that only seven percent of meaning is communicated through text, 38 percent is through tone of voice and 55 percent is body language.
“We lose meaning [when we only text] — black and white text is really limited in what it can convey,” says Burke. “We have a tendency through text to lose the art of conversation: losing the skill of listening, reflection and empathy even if it’s just my side always. In a live conversation it’s raw and more spontaneous and can be more honest for that reason... rather than perfecting our phrases and being strategic about it. The art of conversation — listening, responding and taking our time — are under threat if we become overly dependent on text.”
Burke believes text is tempting for anyone in the midst of conflict or confrontation. “If it’s a tricky situation people can prefer text communication because they can — to borrow a phrase from Prince Harry ‘own the narrative’,” she says. “[They can] stay on their threads and make their point and not be interrupted.”
Eloise Skinner, an existential therapist, agrees, adding that “avoiding phone calls could be related to the loss of control that comes with direct communication with someone else... Messaging can feel a little more secure, predictable or controllable”.
Dating and romance is also hugely affected by the dominance of text. Apps are text and image based which means you are only getting part of the story when you make a match. There is not much room for chemistry, nuance or tone which might go some way to explain the ‘conveyor belt’ nature of some dating apps. It is also why a handful of app users try to communicate via voicenote once they’ve made a match. It’s not quite a phone call, but it’s on the way: it humanises someone and adds a sense of depth.
Despite all of this, recent research by Sky Mobile found nearly half of Britons wished they had more time for quality calls with loved ones — biased research, perhaps, but maybe there is a sliver of hope for ear-to-ear contact (and the chance to give our poor fingers a rest).
