If the thought of calling someone on the phone fills you with dread, you’re not alone. Here’s how to make those scary calls feel less threatening.
Rather not talk on the phone? You’re not the only one.
Fess up. You’ve done it. You’ve avoided making a phone call and sent a text or email instead.
It’s about being considerate, right?
A live phone call raises risks a text doesn’t. What if you’re calling at a bad time? What if you say something awkward or dumb in a medium that doesn’t have a delete button? Text and the other person can answer on their own time.
But honestly, you just didn’t want to talk to them.
An estimated 5.4 billion people worldwide — or over three-fourths of everyone on the planet — will have mobile phones by 2020, according to a 2016 Cisco study. The more these devices take over our lives, the easier it is to type a few letters and emoji than talk in real time to a person who might awkwardly interrupt you or not laugh at your jokes. More than 560 billion text messages are sent worldwide monthly, according to the most recent data from Statistic Brain.
«Calling doesn’t make sense anymore,» said Paige Pammer, a 20-year-old sophomore at Temple University in Philadelphia. «With texting, you can communicate with way more people than you would feel comfortable talking on the phone with. I feel comfortable calling my mom, but my lab partner? No way. »
I’m with Pammer, and I’ve been out of college longer than she’s been alive. I used to love making calls — those prank calls I dialed with my cousin as a tween were particularly fun. But now they’re a chore. And I’m not alone among my peers. In a casual survey of friends mostly born in the ’60s and ’70s, I found many others happy to ditch live phoning for what they see as an easier, more efficient option.
When I started working on this story, I didn’t dial up Keri K. Stephens, a communications studies professor at the University of Texas who teaches a sales communications class to college students who’ve never lived without cell phones. I emailed her — first to ask if she’d do the interview, then to give her an idea what we’d be talking about.
Interview time arrived, I called her and we chatted for 45 minutes. Yet somewhat embarrassingly, as with many phone calls these days, I got nervous as the call approached. WTH? We’re both professionals, she was expecting my call and it wasn’t an adversarial situation. I wasn’t shaky and my palms didn’t sweat, but I felt that unspoken, low-key dread that never hits when I’m punching out a text. It’s a mix of not knowing what attitude I’ll get from the other person and a general nervousness about whether I know enough about the topic we’ll tackle.
Bottom line: I’m out of practice.
Stephens sees this sort of apprehension in her students all the time.
