Hello, you have landed on Yasmin Rufo’s voicemail. Please do not leave a message as I will neither listen to it nor call you back.

Unfortunately, that’s not my answering machine message, but like most Gen Z and Millennials, do I wish it were? Absolutely.

A recent survey found that a quarter of 18- to 34-year-olds never answer the phone – Respondents say they ignore the ringing, reply by text message, or look up the number online if they don’t recognize it.

The Uswitch survey of 2,000 people also found that almost 70% of 18-34 year olds prefer a text message to a phone call.

For the older generations, making phone calls is normal – when I was a teenager, my parents would argue with their siblings in the hallway about the landline phone, only to end up having their conversations overheard by the whole family.

In contrast, I spent my teenage years texting.

From the moment I got my pink Nokia flip phone on my 13th birthday, I was obsessed with texting.

Every night after school, I would compose 60-character text messages to my friends, removing every unnecessary space and vowel until the message was a jumble of consonants that even GCHQ would have struggled to decipher.

If a text message costs 10 pence, there’s no way I would write more than 61 characters.

In 2009, phone calls on my cell phone would have cost a fortune.

“We didn’t give you this phone so you could spend the whole night gossiping with your friends,” my parents would remind me when they looked through my monthly phone bill.

And so a generation of texters was born: mobile phone calls were only for emergencies and landlines were rarely used to talk to grandparents.

Psychologist Dr. Elena Touroni explains that young people are not used to talking on the phone and that is why “it feels strange today because it is not the norm.”

This can lead to fears among young people that the worst will happen when their phone starts ringing (or lights up silently, because no one under 35 has a loud ringtone).

More than half of young people who took part in the Uswitch survey admitted that they considered an unexpected phone call to be a bad news symbol.

Psychotherapist Eloise Skinner explains that fear of phone calls comes from “an association with something bad – a feeling of foreboding or dread.”

“As our lives become more hectic and our work schedules more unpredictable, we have less and less time to call a friend just to catch up. Phone calls are then reserved only for the important news in our lives, which can often be complicated and difficult.”

“That’s exactly it,” says 26-year-old Jack Longley, adding that he never responds to unknown numbers because “they’re either scammers or cold calls.”

“It’s easier to just ignore the calls than to sort through them and find out which ones are legitimate.”

However, just because young people don’t use their phones doesn’t mean they’re out of touch with their friends. In our group chats, they chirp all day long with a mixture of banal messages, memes, gossip and, more recently, voice messages.

Many of these conversations now take place on social media, especially Instagram and Snapchat, where it’s easier to send images and memes in addition to text.

While we all agree that phone calls are absolutely taboo, the use of voice messages has divided younger generations.

In the Uswitch survey, 37% of 18-34 year olds said they preferred to communicate via voice message. In comparison, only 1% of 35-54 year olds preferred voice messages over a phone call.

“A voice message is like a phone call, only better,” says Susie Jones, a 19-year-old student. “You have the benefit of hearing your friend’s voice, but you’re not under any pressure, so it’s a more polite way of communicating.”

For me, however, it is painful to listen to a five-minute voice message from a friend giving me the latest news from his life – he gets lost in his topic, every other word is “like” or “um” and the whole story could have been told in a few text messages.

Both text and voice messages allow teens to participate in conversations at their own pace and provide more thoughtful and considered responses.

But to what extent does telephone phobia in your personal life affect your professional life?

Henry Nelson-Case is a 31-year-old lawyer and content creator whose series of videos on the topic of “overwhelmed millennials” are painfully relatable—the skits include the anxiety of sending a company-wide email, politely declining to work overtime, and, of course, a skit about an employee who will do anything to avoid a phone call.

He says that “it’s the anxiety that comes with real-time conversations, the potential embarrassment of not having answers, and the pressure to respond immediately” that makes him hate phone conversations.

“Phone conversations are more revealing and require a higher level of intimacy, whereas messaging is more distant and allows you to connect without feeling vulnerable or exposed,” explains Dr. Touroni.

Dunja Relic, a 27-year-old lawyer, says she avoids calls at work because “they can be time-consuming and distract you from your tasks.”

Skinner describes this as the feeling “that could have been an email.”

“We have a growing sense of security and when we call someone, the recipient has to interrupt their day and concentrate on the conversation – which is difficult for multitaskers.”

Business owner James Holton, 64, says his younger employees rarely respond to calls and “either they have a standard message saying they’re busy or they put my number on call forwarding so the call never goes through.”

“You always have an excuse. The most common is that my phone is on silent, so I never saw it and forgot to call you later.”

He says he definitely had to adapt after noticing “a visible communication gap” and “if employees prefer to handle text messages, then it’s my responsibility to respect that decision.”

But are we losing the ability to have unplanned and informal conversations due to our preference for non-verbal communication and our tendency to work from home?

Skinner says if current trends continue, “we may lose the feeling of closeness or connection.”

“When we communicate verbally, we feel more connected emotionally, professionally or personally,” she continues. “This connection can lead to a greater sense of fulfillment, especially in the workplace.”

Ciara Brodie, a 25-year-old supermarket area manager, bucks the trend, saying she “loves and appreciates it when my bosses call me at work.”

“It’s more thoughtful than a text because it requires some effort, so you really know that your manager values ​​your input.”

She especially enjoys making phone calls on days when she works from home because “you can be very lonely and so it’s nice to stay connected.”

Some people may think that this new communication trend is further proof that we belong to the “snowflake generation,” but there is no sign of this.

It’s more about adapting. 25 years ago, people might have been reluctant to switch from fax to email, but the change has made communication much more efficient.

Maybe now is the time to recognize the power of text and, just as we abolished the fax machine in the 1990s, in 2024 we can also leave the dreaded phone calls behind us.