When was the last time you made a phone call? Who was it to? What was it for?
Is dialing a number so rare for you that doing so brings on nerves and anxiety? Or do you make phone calls all the time, so it’s no big deal?
For many, phone calls have fallen out of fashion. Two articles, one from a teenager and one from a New York Times writer, explore why we’ve stopped picking up the phone — and why we should start again.
In “Teens and Phone Phobia,” a runner-up in our Student Editorial Contest, Madeleine Krieger writes about teenagers’ fear of the phone:
Some people fear sharks. Or snakes. Or heights. My peers and I fear … phone calls.
Talking to an actual human being can be terrifying. Parents make our important calls: to doctors and dentists. Our terror of the telephone makes us just fine with that arrangement. One mom writing in Your Teen magazine shares, “My 18-year-old will do anything to avoid talking on the phone. When she had to return a phone call recently, she freaked out so badly she hung up.”
Most teens believe that phone calls are passé. After all, “the average American spends 26 minutes a day texting, and only 6 talking on the phone” (Fast Company). We don’t call; we text. In past generations, teens would tie up the family landline for hours talking to their friends. Now, a Snapchat or a quick text does the job. There can even be a feeling of annoyance when we are with friends, and someone interrupts with a call that could have very well been a text.
In “Love Letters,” a recent edition of The Morning Newsletter, Melissa Kirsch writes about what we’ve lost by abandoning phone calls and other “slow” communication like letters and emails:
A few weeks ago, I placed a phone call to a friend without warning, someone I’d never spoken on the phone with before. It felt a little reckless, a little rude, which made me want to do it even more, because it seems ridiculous that calling someone should be in any way controversial. It should feel wonderful that someone wants to hear your voice, that they were thinking of you and wanted to connect.
While I have a few people that I speak to on the phone regularly, most people I consulted view an unbidden phone call as hostile. They assume there’s an emergency if they get a call from someone with whom they don’t have a regular phone relationship.
My recent surprise phone call was awkward, as I suspected it might be. People used to have the bandwidth to receive phone calls from anyone at any time, even without caller ID. That skill set has vanished, replaced perhaps by the ability to process multiple group texts blowing up at once. Now, even if it’s someone you are happy to hear from, a surprise call feels a little like someone popping by unannounced in the middle of the night.
There are lots of ideas for how to break phone addiction, but not as many for how to regain the romance of what I’m coming to think of as the slow-comms era, the second half of the 20th century when the phone and the mail were our main means of long-distance communication. The ache at the sight of an empty mailbox was, in my memory, more than balanced out by the ecstasy at the letter that finally arrived.
It isn’t just the sane cadence of correspondence that we’re missing now, though; it’s the care and attention we gave to it. We sat down and wrote letters and emails. We may have been cooking dinner or folding laundry while we talked on the phone, but we were literally on the hook for the length of the call. Our communication required presence and continued focus on the other person.
Students, read both articles and then tell us:
Do you experience the kind of “phone phobia” Madeleine describes in her essay? Do you get anxious about making calls? Are you surprised when your phone rings out of the blue?
What is your preferred mode of communication? Texts, Snapchats, voice notes, phone calls or something else? Why?
What do you think about Ms. Kirsch’s longing for a return to phone calls, emails and letters? Do you wish those “old-fashioned” modes of communication would make a comeback? Are you inspired to make more phone calls or write letters yourself?
Do you experience an unexpected phone call as rude? What “rules” for communication do you and your friends follow? Do you ever find them exhausting to keep track of?
Ms. Kirsch says we’ve lost phone skills like “phone-call readiness and entertaining voice mail delivery.” Madeleine argues that teens need to learn them so they “can be prepared for careers in the real world.” How important do you think phone skills are today? How sharp are yours? How might you start to improve them if you wanted to?
Ms. Kirsch writes that we have to be more present when talking on the phone. And when Madeleine experimented with a phone call to a friend, she discovered that “Hearing each other’s voices and laughing rather than sending an ‘LOL’ or emoji gave us a greater connection than texting ever could.” What lessons do you think phone calls can offer us about how to be better communicators? How might you apply those lessons in your own life?
Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public and may appear in print.
Find more Student Opinion questions here. Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate these prompts into your classroom.
