I recently read an article in Forbes that explains why most young people don’t like to talk on the telephone. I started to notice this trend about five years ago. I would leave voice mails for much younger business folks and the responses would come back to me in the form of an email.

I would consider myself lucky to get any kind of response. The new “not interested” to my calls are usually “no answer” at all. When you are in the PR business, you are happy if you get a response in the form of a “smoke signal.”

I also started to notice a few years ago that younger business people do not answer their phone. You can call all day long and they won’t answer. At first, I thought that they just didn’t want to talk to me. I later learned that many other business people were experiencing the same thing. No one wanted to talk on the phone anymore.

You have to know what I am talking about. Most adult children, and their kids, will only communicate through emails or texts as well. Most folks my age are offended by this new development. We like the “give and take” of another voice when communicating.

After reading the Forbes article it all makes sense. People who grew up communicating online just feel telephone calls are too invasive. They don’t like being forced to provide an immediate response. They are much more comfortable being in control with a text. They have more time to think about the subject and the reaction.

Forbes claims that the younger generation also feels phone calls take up too much time. Two lines of copy are much more efficient than most “small talk” phone calls. They are just not productive.

All is not lost. If you read the Forbes article, you will learn when 20 and 30 year olds feel phone calls are valid.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/briannawiest/2019/11/04/millennials-hate-phone-calls-they-have-a-point/