Why Gen Z & Millennials are hung up on answering the phone

Hi, you’ve reached the voicemail of Yasmin Rufo. Please don't leave a message as I won’t listen to it or call you back.

Unfortunately that isn't my answerphone message but do I, along with most Gen Z and millennials, wish it was? Absolutely.

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.

The Uswitch survey of 2,000 people also found that nearly 70% of 18-34s prefer a text to a phone call.

For older generations, talking on the phone is normal - my parents spent their teenage years fighting with their siblings over the landline in the corridor only to then have their entire family listen in to their conversations.

In contrast, my teenage years were spent texting.

From the moment I received my pink flip Nokia on my 13th birthday, I was obsessed with texting.

I would spend every evening after school formulating 160-character texts to my friends, removing every unnecessary space and vowel until the message resembled jumbled up consonants even GCHQ would struggle to decipher.

After all, when it costs 10p a text there was no way I was going to spill over to 161 characters.

In 2009, phone calls on my mobile would have cost a fortune.

“We didn’t give you this phone so you could gossip with your friends all evening,” my parents would remind me as they looked through my monthly phone bill.

And so a generation of texters were born: mobile phone calls were for emergencies and the landline was used infrequently to speak to your grandparents.

Dr Elena Touroni, a consultant psychologist, explains that because young people didn't develop the habit of speaking on the phone, "it now feels weird as it's not the norm".

This can make young people fear the worst when their phone starts ringing (or silently lighting up because no-one under the age of 35 has a loud ringtone).

More than half of the young people who responded in the Uswitch survey admitted that they thought an unexpected call means bad news.

But to what extent does phone call phobia in your personal life start affecting your work life?

Henry Nelson-Case is a 31-year-old lawyer and content creator whose series of "overwhelmed millennial" videos are painfully relatable - sketches include the angst of sending a company-wide email, politely refusing to work overtime and of course, one about an employee doing anything to avoid a phone call.

He says "it's the anxiety associated with real-time conversations, potential awkwardness, not having the answers and the pressure to respond immediately," that makes him hate talking on the phone.

"Phone calls are more exposing and require a higher level of intimacy whereas messaging is detached and allows you to connect without feeling vulnerable or exposed," explains Dr Touroni.

Dunja Relic, a 27-year-old lawyer, says she steers clear of workplace calls because "they can be time consuming and set you back on your tasks".

Skinner describes this as the 'this could have been an email' sentiment.

"There's a growing sense of protection over our time and calling someone requires the recipient to pause their day and dedicate attention to the conversation - a difficult thing for multitaskers to do."

James Holton, a 64-year-old business owner, says his younger employees rarely respond to phone calls and "either have a default message that says they’re busy or they put my number on diverted calls, so the call never goes through".

"They always have an excuse up their sleeves, with the most common being that my phone is silent, so I never saw it and forgot to call you later."

He says he has definitely had to adapt after he noticed "a visible communication gap" and "if employees are more comfortable with texts, then it's my responsibility to respect that choice".

While some people may say this new communication trend is further proof of us being "generation snowflake", it's actually far from that.

Instead, it's about adapting. No doubt 25 years ago people were resistant from switching from fax to email, but the change has made communication far more efficient.

Perhaps now it's time to recognise the power of text and just as we ditched the fax machine in the 1990s, we can leave the dreaded phone calls behind in 2024.