Everybody has a mobile phone. Or at least more than five billion of us do. And yet nobody makes phone calls any more. In fact, the under-30s have been called Generation Mute, for their habit of refusing to accept incoming calls. A recent UK survey found that just 15% of 16- to 24-year-olds would choose phone calls as their favoured method of communication. I once read an article with the headline: “If I get a phone call, I assume someone has died.”
I used to feel similarly, but recently my opinion has shifted, and I have come to appreciate phone calls the way I did during my school days: when I’d almost pull the landline phone out of its socket in a desperate attempt at privacy, wrapping the cord around my fingers and spending a solid two hours talking to friends I’d just spent the majority of the day with; staying on the line for so long that the screeching dial-up sounds of my sister attempting to get on the internet would repeatedly interrupt, while dinners cooled and congealed on the dining room table.
Of course, in the days of bog-standard landline phones without displays, the phone ringing was a game of risk. Pick up and it could be a cold-call pitching you new windows; or a dull peripheral family member; or a loquacious acquaintance. This trepidation remains somewhat, in that I won’t answer a call from a number I don’t recognise, and there are still calls that, quite frankly, should be a text or an email.
But I have slowly broken away from the grip of the fired-off emoji, or at least lessened its dominance, and started to appreciate an old-fashioned natter. There is a special pleasure to the volley of text banter, of course; but talking to friends or lovers while I am lounging on the sofa, or, more often, walking somewhere, has opened up subjects that we’ve often stopped allocating enough time to (family issues, health concerns, career woes), because they don’t fit easily into the communication mediums we have come to rely upon. Meeting up face-to-face isn’t always possible, given our increasingly frenetic lifestyles.
It is hard to gauge a proper response from someone after asking them, truly, how they are, if you can’t hear the extra intel present in their voice. Typing “hahaha”, will never feel as good as hearing a friend bark with laughter down your ear. A question mark can’t fully replace a vocal inflection, can it? I always feel better after speaking on the phone to a pal, like a shot in the arm during a tiring day. Or sleepily exchanging goodnights, before my head hits the pillow, or just as a pick-me-up when feeling a tad low. What I’m saying is, make like Debbie Harry, and call me.
