https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crgklk3p70yo
A recent survey found a quarter of people aged 18 to 34 never answer the phone.
I don't think anyone answers the phone now, unless they recognize the number.
Most of the calls I get are
Yeah, I'm early gen-x and I only answer the phone if its a member of my immediate family and even then it's 50/50. Capitalism ruins everything. Need to talk to me? Leave a message and I'll decide if and when to call you back.
Everyone I want to talk to knows not to call me; I feel exactly the same. Phones used to be useful, but the sheer volume of telemarketers and scams have reduced it to uselessness. If it wasn't for 2FA occasionally requiring a phone number, I wouldn't even have one at this point.
You don’t always have a choice as it is dictated by the service provider, but whenever possible, disable SMS based MFA and enable TOTP or something else. SMS based MFA is susceptible to SS7 MitM attack.
American? I'm from The Netherlands and I get maybe 1 spam call every other month or so. And I've been using the same number for almost 25 years.
Settings>Do not disturb>exceptions>Caller in contacts
alt: Set default ringtone to silent, no vibration, Set people in contacts to custom ringtones.
This is part of the problem for me. I can't dismiss the popup unless I hang up, and I don't want to do that in case my number gets marked as "active".
So I sit there and wait till I can use it again.
Also I appreciate the detailed alt text :)
Yet Another Call Blocker solves that problem.
I send all calls other than contacts directly to voice mail, and my phone never even rings.
Let it ring. Robocall centers only work when they maximize volume, the more time they spend not getting an answer the more money they're not making. If you wanna get real saucy, wait as long as you can, accept the call, say nothing or mute your mic. They wont spend more than 5-10 seconds before they hang up on you though because they know it too.
Letting it ring has no impact. They have autodiallers that call, and when someone picks up, only then is that call assigned to someone in the call centre.
You can often tell this because there is a marked delay in the response to your initial "Hello?". Long enough that you can reliably just hang up if you don't hear a response in two seconds.
If it's a real person who actually wants to call you and they you call again straight away, you can just shrug off your hang-up as a network issue.
That's why I just block all calls and send them to voicemail.
If we need a phone call, we'll schedule it, and we'll be using an app.
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.
I'm the same generation. My flowchart is: known contact, answer. Unknown contact, voicemail. Automatic VM transcriptions are great.
Gen X'er. Same here. I don't even leave the ringer turned on on my phone. Fuck that shit. If you know me too know how to find me.
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.
Yeah, voice notes are the “your solution to your problem is somewhere in the middle of this 20 minute long YouTube video that could have been a short forum post with some screenshots instead” of the communication world.
Jesus, it's not just me! It seems like every answer I need is only found in a video format without labeled bookmarks/sections. I hate it so much. Give me a how-to with concise instructions and gifs, or give me death.
Can't get ad revenue on a short, concise, and helpful page.
Even a basic cookie recipe requires someone's whole life story to fill in the blank space between 10 ads
I've actively told any friend that send me a voice note that if you want me to respond to you don't send it as a voice note, I won't listen to it. It requires me to put headphones in or play it on speaker, and neither of those are happening unless it's important.
hard agree, voice messages are the worst of both worlds, you can't look at it and get the gist of what's said, and you have to deal with listening to it, while requiring more bandwidth to use.
I've told my friends instead of pressing the voice button, just press the speech to text button, I'm more likely to read a wall of text than listen to a voice message.
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.
I don't know if phone call spam is only an American thing or something. In my country (and most of Europe) that stuff is effectively banned and doesn't really happen.
Still hate getting calls though.
having proper bans in place do help, cutting number spoofing and rooting out local spam sources + barring voips that facilitate them means spam callers would have to connect internationally and cost more.
FCC is working on getting STIR/SHAKEN in place but it’s slow.
It’s basically the security you see with certs and domain names on the web but with phone numbers. If you try to place a call and can’t provide the ‘proof’ you own the number then the phone carrier just kills the call. Also helps with traceability because now they know exactly who owns what numbers so complaints of spam are much easier to go after.
You can already see this in inbound calls in your phone app. Should have a little check mark for validated callers.
Edit: freaking autocorrect
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.
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
God, or worse, a conversation around the conversation you're actually speaking in order to have
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 👍
99% of phone calls is typically a capitalistic company
forcing employeesusing chatbots to sell us something.
employees are so 2010, FIFY
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.
I am interested in solving them. Here's how: if you get any phone call that makes you even the slightest bit irritated, you hit a button and receive a quarter paid by the caller. This is traced through carriers. If the trace cannot continue for any reason or exits US jurisdiction, the most recent carrier foots the bill. I guarantee that spam calls will suddenly cease to exist overnight.
I like the way you think.
This kind of approach solves so many problems, as the vendors have a vested interest
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.
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.
Its a great feature but I'll do you one better (or orthogonal):
There are apps that let you set block ranges so when you get a million calls from variations of something like 1-876-543-2109, you can block all of them with basically whatever granularity you need 1+ digits) It should be built in but you have to buy it for like $3-4, but absolutely worth it
I have kids and sometimes it's important thing from a doctor/school/whatever that I want to get.
However, I'm lucky that my cell phone area code is nowhere near where I live, so if I see an area code near my phones area code, I know it's almost certainly spam. If I get a call from near where I live, its almost certainly legitimate.
I'm a millennial myself, quite frankly after so many years of receiving robo-marketing calls, attempted warranty scams, collections agencies (not for me, for other people who had my number previously, I assume), etc.. etc.. in the last 15-ish years I don't answer a call if I don't recognize the number.
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.
Another advantage of text, for me at least, is that I can read much faster than I can listen. This is why I prefer text articles to news videos, even though video can often offer extra visual information over what photographs can offer.
That said, I do somewhat agree with the article's concern that live conversation is an independent skill and potentially has its own unique side-benefits that might be becoming rarer.
Meanwhile, boomers will spend hours talking to a ChatGPT script that has convinced them its the real Oprah Winfrey.
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.
The US has a do not call list. The vast majority of robocalls are illegal scams which originate from outside of the country.
Even worse, many of those scammy companies use the Do Not Call list as a list of known active numbers. Since the DNC is an opt-in thing, the call centers know that people have proactively added their numbers to the list.
Like I said, they're mostly scams. Warranty scams. Posing as "your bank" (which they, of course, don't name). Etc. Legitimate companies follow the do not call list, since there are heavy penalties if they don't.
Who knows?
We know the call center is not US-based, as those can be fined.
I'd venture most are scams too.
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.
I always answer the phone.
Because if you're not in my contacts my phone doesn't even ring.
This. I just set my phone to Do not disturb and only the calls from my contacts list are exempted.
