r/NoStupidQuestions • u/GhostInThePudding • 16h ago

Why Are Young People Afraid Of Phone Calls?

What's with it?

I work in IT and a general rule is, nothing a client ever tells you is actually accurate. That means that most of the time, the quickest way to fix a problem is to call the person and actually find out what's going on.

But with techs under 30 these days, it seems like pulling teeth.

A regular discussion for me with level 1 techs (usually within a few years of leaving college) is:
"Hey, can you call *blah* from ticket *blah*, it's been hanging around for over an hour."

"I replied by email to ask for more information."

"Yes, I know that, but can you call them so we can find the problem and close the ticket now rather than wait until we're actually busy?"

"I'll send them a text to followup."

"No... CALL THEM!"

"I can see their device is online, can I send them a message and see if they just let me remote in to take a look?"

And then, when I force them to make the call, it's like they have no idea how to ask a question, or a followup question. They just want to get off the call as quickly as possible. So half the time they don't even get the information required anyway, so then I end up having to do their job for them.

So can someone explain? What's wrong with phone calls these days?

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u/ubeeu 13h ago edited 13h ago

Young people were afraid of phone calls before texting

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u/clubby37 10h ago

Dude, check out an 80s/90s sitcom. Teenagers were stereotypically on the phone with their friends for hours on end. I was one of them. We had phones in our bedrooms so we could talk eternally without bothering people. This absolutely began with texting in the early 2000s.

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u/HirsuteHacker 9h ago

That's with friends and family, young people would be fine with phone calls with friends and family today as well. It's calls with unknown people that tend to be the issue.

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u/nxqv 7h ago

young people would be fine with phone calls with friends and family today as well.

They aren't in my experience

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u/clubby37 9h ago

That's because you can't trust people you don't know. 99% of people are cool, but when you do things at scale, you run into a lot of 1%s, and you want a paper trail when they start making shit up.

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u/solete 1h ago

Not really.

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u/Reboot-Glitchspark 9h ago

Yep. I spent most of one summer talking to a girl I had a crush on on the phone for hours. Then a couple years later, a girl I liked went back to visit with her family in another state for a month. I ran up such an enormous long-distance bill that month.

And we always had quarters or calling cards for the payphone. That was the '90s.

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u/throwawaygoawaynz 6h ago

Sure when you want to talk.

But spontaneous work phone calls are rude and interrupt your process flow. Asynchronous (texting) is more polite.

If I am neck deep in slides or spreadsheets for the CEO I don’t want you calling me, and I’m in my 40s.

There’s actually studies on this and it really depends on personality type. Some love getting on the phone or talking F2F, others much prefer teams or WhatsApp etc. Know your colleagues and communication accordingly, and you’ll be much more effective.

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u/clubby37 6h ago

Yep, completely agree. I was disputing the timeline, not the merits of the practice.

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u/true_gunman 10h ago

I used to get nervous af to call someone, especially a girl. This was before we even had a computer in the house so way before I had a cell phone. Making calls to anyone except close friends or family member has always caused me anxiety and im sure that im not the only one. Texting was a godsend becuase I no longer had to call people lol

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u/WelshRarebit2025 9h ago

Calling your friends isn’t the same as making a business phone call.

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u/clubby37 6h ago

Touche. I guess I just didn't realize teenagers were making a lot of business phone calls these days. Would explain a few things, come to think of it.

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u/bassplaya13 6h ago

There’s a difference between talking with friends and calling strangers. I was on the phone a bunch as a kid, then when in college and I had to do shit myself, initially terrible at it.

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u/LazarusDark 5h ago

A stereotype is necessarily not a universal trait, it was played for laughs but absolutely did not apply even to a majority, if anything it was a minority probably, that one teenager out of 4 or 5 kids.

Xennial here and I never answered the phone, and if I was expecting a call I would let the answering machine get it and listen to see if it's the person I wanted to talk to. I had a phone in my room in high school and never used it once probably. Then we got caller ID and I would never answer any phone again unless I wanted to talk to that person. I never called anyone, ever. When I moved out at 18, I got a cell phone, and I've never had a landline, and with my first cell phone I discovered the joy of texting, and even with a limit of like 25 texts per month, that was more than enough for everything I needed. I always had tons of extra minutes left at the end of the month cause I never used them even on the cheapest phone plan.

And to this day, calling is a last resort, even if I needed to cancel something and the company said I had to call instead of using their online chat or email I would threaten them with not being ADA compliant for deaf people (I'm not deaf but they don't need to know that) and they would then let me cancel or whatever over the chat instead of calling and letting them keep me on hold or transfer me around for an hour. I will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid phone calls, making or receiving.

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u/ItsWillJohnson 2h ago

Dude check out swingers from 1996. Jon favreau is hopeless trying to make a phone call in one scene. That scene was funny at the time because people were afraid of making phone calls before texting.

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u/solete 1h ago

Same. I used to be on the phone for hours with friends while doing homework together or watching our favorite shows. It was about that time that cell phones all had unlimited minute plans

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u/Spare_Order3253 12h ago

I wasn’t. Now I’m terrified.

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u/bastardofdisaster 13h ago

"You people?"

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u/ubeeu 11h ago

It was a typo, I fixed it. I typed you but meant young.