
Talk to People on the Telephone - zwieback
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/09/ring-ring-ring/598129/
======
jasode
Personal anecdote... after a 77-year old lady who was a family friend lost her
husband of 45 years, I called once a year on her birthday to check up on her.
At first she seemed to really appreciate it. But in the 3rd year, it took 20+
rings which concerned me. When she finally answered, she said, _" Oh it's you!
Oh how are you!!! You know, you can just text me!"_

I took the hint. Think about that... a 77-year old was _lecturing me_ to use
the newer fangled texting technology.

In addition to the convenience of multitasking, the issue is that _robocalls_
have made everyone wary of answering their phones.

ETA: forgot to add some color context. My personal rule is to never call
anybody and only text. I only made an exception for the 77-year friend because
I thought she was "old school" and would prefer a real phone call. _I was
proven wrong._ I still chuckle about not seeing how pervasive the norms can
change.

~~~
jdofaz
Was it a land line? I've noticed people who still have them tend to ignore
them because they get so many spam calls.

~~~
cafard
Indeed. The do-not-call rules improved matters for a while, but the rate is
back up, now commonly with spoofed numbers.

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gregmac
I think this is being framed incorrectly. It's not about voice vs text, it's
about sync vs async.

By default, phone calls (and face-to-face conversations) are synchronous. You
call someone, they have to stop what they're doing and have a conversation in
real-time. They also can't judge the importance until they're already
interrupted and have started the conversation anyway.

Text messages, email, chat and even voicemail are asynchronous. You send a
message, the person can respond when able, and likewise. They can also see the
initial query, and this can help them decide whether to respond immediately or
later.

Async communication has the benefit of being able to work synchronously, if
you want, but it doesn't have to. You might annoy people by not responding
fast enough, but not in the same way that you would if you were to just put
down the phone and walk away for a few minutes/hours.

I think the real problem is misuse of async vs synchronous styles of
communication, and knowing when to switch between them.

I personally prefer async communication by default, but if we're going to do
near-real-time async anyway, I'd rather have a 5 minute phone call than spend
half an hour texting back and forth. I hate unexpected phone calls (and in
fact, pretty much don't answer my phone), but I have absolutely no issue with
a scheduled call -- that that is usually arranged asynchronously.

~~~
greggman2
My life was better IMO when it was common to call people. We had conventions
like voice mail if you were on another call, or saying "now is not a good
time" but I talked to way more people.

I mean I fully agree with your assessment of async vs sync but conversely I'm
less connected to people than I was before. I used to call and chat with
friends several times a day. Now almost never.

Another way to look at it, maybe at some point some new tech will come out so
thet we don't even talk to people in the same house/building/office. I mean
why talk to my sister/mom/dad/wife/son/daughter, they might be in the middle
of a thought. I should choose some async method and just never talk to another
human directly.

Of course that's ridiculous but if you had told me in 1995 that I'd talk less
than a few hours a year on a phone because everyone just messages each other
I'd have thought you were describing a dystpoia. Who's to say some new tech
won't take it even further.

------
hanklazard
I've taken to calling my friends on the phone over the past few months, after
years of texting. I've let them know I'm going to try to do more of this and
everyone I've mentioned it to has responded positively. We've decided that
even if we just have a moment and want to share something funny or
interesting, we're going to try to have a quick phone conversation.

This has helped me feel more connected to the people who I don't see in person
frequently in a way that feels more "real" than texts or emails.

~~~
randycupertino
Also have done this with my friend circle as I extracted myself from social
media (instagram and facebook). I have a lot better relationship with my
family and friends now that we catch up on the phone other than just clicking
"like" on the scroll of everyone's photos.

You basically just have to make time for it. I call people when I'm walking
the dog and when I'm commuting.

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c0nsilienc3
This really depends on a lot of things, like the person I'm talking to, when
we're talking, time of day, etc. I have one or maybe two friends now that I
call, and even then it's sporadic. We spend most of our time texting.

There are other situations when I'm frustrated with texting and would prefer a
phone call. One example is when my girlfriend is out and she'll text me
something like, "Hey, I decided to stop for coffee on the way home. Do you
want something?" This can go a number of ways. First, I won't see the text at
all, and she'll come home and say, "Well, I tried to text you!" Then I'll look
at my phone and it'll say something like, "Anything? I'm the next one in line.
Let me know ASAP." The second way this can go is a back and forth. They don't
have that option. Anything else you want? Yeah, they're all out of that.

Any situation where you need to know something right away, like the right
kinds of nuts and bolts to grab from a hardware store or if your friends are
making a food run, etc. don't text.

JUST. CALL. ME.

------
Aloha
I prefer a phone call at some point - there becomes a point in any
conversation that the bandwidth offered by text is insufficient for the task
at hand, whenever that happens I move it to the telephone

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Reedx
I get how text replaced voice, but something I don't quite understand is this:

Remember when friends and family visited each other unannounced? Why did that
used to be welcomed[1], but today it's not?

1\. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Swzvm-
gXHg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Swzvm-gXHg)

~~~
mikestew
_Remember when friends and family visited each other unannounced?_

I remember when it was considered rude, yes. I don't know where that guy grew
up, but Mom's in the middle of making supper, Dad's in the garage, I'm working
on homework, and we're just supposed to drop everything because you can't pick
up a phone first? No, unlike the video, when I'm in my underwear with unkempt
hair, covered in Cheetos dust from a CoD marathon, I am _not_ jumping for joy
if the doorbell rings.

Before mobile phones, exceptions were made. "Hey, I live two towns over, but
was in the neighborhood unexpectedly...I hope now is not a bad time." But one
made note of the fact that it is an unannounced visit.

------
fossuser
This seems like the worst of both worlds option.

I think there is value in a higher level interaction sometimes instead of
texting, but videochat seems to be the far superior option?

"I abruptly asked one morning to stop messaging me about story ideas on our
office’s chat platform, Slack. Instead, I said, let’s talk the ideas out over
the phone."

Maybe people remember things a lot better than I do, but text based logs are
super helpful. I also think writing often is a better medium to go over
thoughts in a coherent way (I find people that disagree with this usually have
trouble typing which makes it a lot harder).

~~~
bllguo
for anything involving concrete deliverables and obligations, I really like
having a written log. Like you say, it also forces communication to be more
explicit. It's easy to handwave details away in voice.

OTOH something like story ideas sounds like the kind of thing that would
benefit from voice. Situations where things aren't already spelled out nicely,
where rapid feedback and iteration are valuable.

------
romwell
Don't talk to people on the telephone.

Skype/Facetime/videocall them.

* insert a long article about the importance of face-to-face communication *

Seriously, though, every technology has a time and a place.

It's a sliding scale that goes like this: video calls, voice calls, IM/texts,
group/forum posts, emails.

One one end you get synchronous communication which has the full attention of
both parties. On the other - go at your own pace asynchronous information
transfer.

I love calling my grandparents on Skype. But I need to be alone in a room for
that to work. (Screens and speakers still suck outdoor).

I rarely call my parents on Skype, because my mom doesn't like looking bad on
camera, and she just wants to chill after work sans make up and what not. So I
call her on the phone. But I know her schedule, and I know that I won't be
taking here away from something - and that she'll be happy to give me full
attention.

IM and texts are great when you need to get some information across, but you
don't want to take the other party away from whatever setting they are in.

While IM/texts work great to talk to many people at once, there is still a
sense of immediacy to the conversation. If you want to organize an event, the
relevant information will get lost in flurry of messages after a day or two.
FB groups / events, and similar, work better for that: communicating in
groups, with a latency that spans days.

Finally, emails work best when you want to take time to compose a message or a
response (sometimes, days), and be able to go back to it a long time
afterwards. I have long email threads with some of my friends, months passing
between responses sometimes.

And obviously, some methods work better than others depending on whether the
other party is next door or 7000 miles away, whether they speak your language
fluently, etc.

~~~
homonculus1
I hate video calls. I'd rather just talk on the phone than say "What?" over
each other and look at their facial reactions 2 seconds delayed. Low latency
video destroys all the benefits of face-to-face interaction and then some.

------
cantrevealname
> _Chatting on the phone provides the bliss of unreviewable, unforwardable,
> unsearchable speech. There’s no record of it._

A benefit that many people don't seem to recognize as if total continuous
surveillance and a permanent record is always preferable.

ADDED (from the same article):

> " _There’s no record of it (unless your conversation partner is secretly
> recording it, in which case you have deeper problems)._ "

~~~
abstrct
No record of it? That’s a bit presumptuous

------
bovermyer
I have always hated phone calls, even before texting was a thing.

------
Animats
It's harder to talk on the phone now. Voice quality is terrible with VoIP.
Noise rejection is poor with flat phone microphones. One person I talk to
regularly is too much into hands-free, and calls are mostly background noise.
Something the compression algorithms handle badly.

Most inbound phone calls are telemarketing now, anyway. When I answer my
phone, and it's an unknown number, I say nothing and wait. If it's a human,
they'll eventually say something. Autodial systems will time out after 5
seconds without something that sounds vaguely like "Hello".

~~~
JohnFen
The voice quality issue is real. Before cell phones, audio quality was fine.
However, cell phones brought a serious reduction in audio quality, and it has
never improved.

------
GhettoMaestro
In a similar note, a group of friends of mine (10+ years) all use TeamSpeak to
communicate regularly, namely when we are playing video games.

We have Slack, etc - but hearing a regular voice attached to someone really
does program the brain different, at least it feels that way to me.

~~~
lapnitnelav
Same here, whether we are actually playing any game or just hanging out and
chatting about whatever.

Text doesn't convey as much information and the synchronous aspect makes it
much more interesting.

We're a Mumble crew though but that's down to personal preference more than
anything else.

------
reubenswartz
Yup. Digital communication is fine to set up real communication, but it's like
fast food-- cheap, fast, convenient, but not very nourishing. Even us
introverts need real conversations. Was talking to a bunch of people a year or
two ago, and we were all complaining about this problem, so much that I
started The Reconnection Challenge.

It's been great just talking to people. At first it seems slower, but there's
actually so much more information transfer by voice (or in person). Who knew?
;)

([https://www.mimiran.com/the-reconnection-
challenge](https://www.mimiran.com/the-reconnection-challenge))

~~~
t34543
As a fellow introvert I must disagree: I dread speaking to people. I have a
strong preference for text communication. When I am forced into a video
meeting I minimize the video, prefer to just listen.

~~~
reubenswartz
YMMV, of course, but I thought I was the same way. Then I realized that I like
having some conversations but not others. But I would get put into the
conversations I didn't like, which made me retreat to recharge and not get as
many of the conversations I do like. So I decided to be more proactive about
having conversations with people I want to talk to, about stuff I want to talk
about, and find I enjoy those conversations a lot.

------
amelius
One problem with phone calls: you have no digital record.

Perhaps someone could start a business by archiving phone calls in text form
and making them searchable.

~~~
wildrhythms
Maybe a dumb question, but is this legal?

~~~
otterley
Depends on the locale. California requires two-party consent to record a
telephone call; other jurisdictions do not.

------
spjt
At least in my line of work, the utility of the telephone is one-sided and the
utility is not on my side. It allows any random jackass to force me to drop
whatever I was doing and remotely stand over my shoulder breathing into my ear
while they wait for me to look into their problem.

------
aantix
I wish there was a chat similar to slack but instead of text you just posted
video snippets back and forth (translation provided for search ability).

That would keep things async but would allow me to read people’s expressions
and their tone of voice.

~~~
12elephant
Is this sarcasm? That sounds a lot like snapchat.

Or just sending videos via SMS instead of text.

------
nitwit005
They won't pick up because of all the spam calls people get.

Some people don't even check their voicemail these days because their phone
has a scary number next to the icon, and they don't want to listen to all of
it.

------
djsumdog
I think one of the oddest things is getting text about people who have passed
away. In the past this seemed to be something so sacred you did it in
personal, or at the worst, with a phone call. In the past few years I've
gotten text about old roommates and liver failure or suicides and I'm guilty
of forwarding on the information in the same medium.

I just kinda accept it, but maybe I shouldn't ...

------
acd
Got a simpler phone to force me to call others more often. Plus the phone does
not have enticing apps so I waste less time.

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inetknght
Phone calls are awful. I can't understand your speech. Don't make me risk
answering a phishing call just so that I have to ask you four times to repeat
what you're saying because you're foreign, you have a shitty microphone, or
somewhere some telecom decided to downsample the audio quality.

------
camgunz
I find it hard to have meaningful text conversations, but I also think phone
calls are super intrusive. So I'll schedule calls or video. It sounds like a
lot of ceremony, but I like specifically dedicating time to build
relationships with people, so I think it's perfect.

------
Zigurd
Make appointments if you need to interact for reasons other than to stay in
touch with family and close friends. Technology makes this easy. Otherwise,
phone calls should be a backup if scheduled interactions fail.

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Porthos9K
If I want to talk with somebody, I'll do it face to face. Most people aren't
worth that kind of effort, and text/email is all they deserve.

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JohnFen
No thank you.

I have always (well, post-teenage years) hated talking on the phone. Before
cellphones, though, there was no other option. When the ability to communicate
with people while escaping the tyranny of phone calls came around, it was a
serious and dramatic improvement.

> Smartphones feel terrible to hold to your ear for more than a few minutes,
> but they make up for poor ergonomic design with one key feature:
> speakerphone.

 _Especially_ not this. When I'm talking to someone on the phone, if they're
using a speakerphone the whole experience is an order of magnitude worse.

------
njn
Wow, she sounds annoying.

------
peterwwillis
> “You can’t just say, ‘Oh, that generation sucks’ and then just throw out a
> generation.”

We did it with boomers, so why not millennials?

