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Why No One Answers Their Phone Anymore (theatlantic.com)
An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a report via The Atlantic, written by Alexis C. Madrigal: No one picks up the phone anymore. Even many businesses do everything they can to avoid picking up the phone. Of the 50 or so calls I received in the last month, I might have picked up four or five times. The reflex of answering -- built so deeply into people who grew up in 20th-century telephonic culture -- is gone. There are many reasons for the slow erosion of this commons. The most important aspect is structural: There are simply more communication options. Text messaging and its associated multimedia variations are rich and wonderful: words mixed with emoji, Bitmoji, reaction gifs, regular old photos, video, links. Texting is fun, lightly asynchronous, and possible to do with many people simultaneously. It's almost as immediate as a phone call, but not quite. You've got your Twitter, your Facebook, your work Slack, your email, FaceTimes incoming from family members. So many little dings have begun to make the rings obsolete.
But in the last couple years, there is a more specific reason for eyeing my phone's ring warily. Perhaps 80 or even 90 percent of the calls coming into my phone are spam of one kind or another. [...] There are unsolicited telemarketing calls. There are straight-up robocalls that merely deliver recorded messages. There are the cyborg telemarketers, who sit in call centers playing prerecorded bits of audio to simulate a conversation. There are the spam phone calls, whose sole purpose seems to be verifying that your phone number is real and working.
But in the last couple years, there is a more specific reason for eyeing my phone's ring warily. Perhaps 80 or even 90 percent of the calls coming into my phone are spam of one kind or another. [...] There are unsolicited telemarketing calls. There are straight-up robocalls that merely deliver recorded messages. There are the cyborg telemarketers, who sit in call centers playing prerecorded bits of audio to simulate a conversation. There are the spam phone calls, whose sole purpose seems to be verifying that your phone number is real and working.
I just don't understand how you can have spam calls like that and be ok with it. Is it an american thing?
Do people think that proper laws to outlaw that behaviour is some sort of free speech issue?
Can also be because gen-x and millenial generations are becoming dominant in the workplace.
My anecdote is my mother who worked as a receptionist and secretary for decades. It's ingrained in her culture not to hang up and to always answer the phone, even though she retired 20 years ago. This includes the obvious scammers from out of country that ask questions about her computer. "My computer is running fine, no I don't think I need to give you that, no thank you, no thank you, no thank you".
Anymore, 85% ((FTA) of calls are garbage, and with caller ID spoofing running rampant, you really don't know whom to answer that's outside your whitelist / phone book.
I never answer calls anymore. 95% of the calls I get are scammers and spammers. And the caller ID is always spoofed to something that looks similar to my own number.
I've even had people call me claiming my number is spamming them!
The phone companies should be held liable for not fixing caller ID spoofing. There are numerous ways to do this. Caller ID spoofing is needed for corporate main numbers and the like. Those could be registered just like SSL certs. There is no reason a random device should be allowed to spoof.
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
I'm 51 and definitely from the generation that always answered the phone.
I notice as my fellow employees get younger there is much less use of voice calls, with instant messaging and emails being preferred instead. The problem is that these communication methods often seem really inefficient and are as easy to ignore or under-respond to as a phone with a ringer on silent.
We've had problems crop up with clients and you'd never know what the nature and magnitude of them is when you get short texts like "Do you know about the issue at MZR?"
Does either response provide any value? I can answer "Yes" without actually knowing because the dumb text made it seem like there was one. I can answer no and what value does that add to the person asking?
Had they just fucking called we both would have been able to quickly sort out who knew what and who was going to do anything about it.
For me it is more like 95% that is spam. In the rare event I take the call, the caller either just close the connection (probably expecting me to call again at to number that costs money?) or is the Indian "Microsoft Technical Support" (I must have a lot of virus). It can also be a legitimate insurance companies, or callers from red cross etc.
If I take my phone, I generally just answer with the following line. "No! I am not interested. You may not call this number. Take me off you list". And then I close the line. I do feel it actually started to lower the amount of spam calls after I started saying that.
But mostly I do NOT answer my phone if I don't know the number, or expects a call. I check my email once a day. At most. Same with SMS. I generally leave my phone at my desk when walking around the office. Same at home.
It is fascinating to realize that I am more difficult than ever to get a hold on.
My solution?
If you're not in my contact list, I'm not answering.
If it's important, leave a message.
If you call me more than twice and don't leave a message, your number is blocked...
I'm older (43) and still tend to answer the phone. But, one thing I do see is that people who don't like talking to people feel they don't have to anymore. There's other non-voice options.
This is especially true in workplaces, where the younger crowd is finally starting to reach the supervisory levels. In tech shops it's all Slack, Teams, IM of one form or another, texting, etc. I actually find myself preferring this, even though I know it's not normal.
I'm not an antisocial nerd, but I'm also not a type-A salesy extrovert either. Talking to people on the phone means uncomfortable small talk, having to manage the conversation, etc. Sending a to-the-point message is much more useful to me. I know extroverts probably love the small talk aspect, but it's something I can live without if I can get my information without it.
SIP is the reason why phones are now completely stuffed. By dropping the price of international calls to literally $0.00 (simply an international SIP trunk.) It meant that all spammers have to do is control a computer in the country they wish to dial into and all calls are free or as near to free as needed to justify the expense of making the calls. This could be fixed with carrier/vendor cooperation. But it won't happen.
Texting is fun, lightly asynchronous, and possible to do with many people simultaneously.
I find texting to be a distracting pain in the ass, and if a text thread goes beyond a few messaged in the space of an hour, I'm either placing a call or dropping the thread. Texting is a thoroughly inefficient way of communicating when compared with two-way speech, even if you don't consider that it's WAY harder to text and do something else than it is to talk and do something else.
... words mixed with emoji, Bitmoji, reaction gifs ...
I hate those damned things - they're un-subtle, annoying, tacky, and cheesy. Fortunately, I only get stuck with Emoji - I had to look up the other two for this comment. And if THEY start showing up, I'm going back to a flip phone.
Texting definitely has its uses, and I appreciate what it brought to the party; but it is in NO WAY a substitute for talking, and any graphic elements beyond specific and personal pictures and videos are the ugly garden trolls and velvet paintings of the smartphone world. Now get off of my lawn, dammit!
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Our DO Not Call law inserted two exceptions beyond emergency calls
1. Politicians and polling people can call you unsolicited
2. Anyone you had a previous bussiness relationship or contact with can call.
The last one is really abused. Say you start to buy an electric fur lined shaving mug on etsy but then change your mind at the "confirm this purchase" step. You just had a bussiness relationship where you provided contact info.
Next they sell your info to some broker who sells it to 1000 other people who are now considered "affiliates" of the original transaction. SO they have standing to call on the do-not-call list.
The final problem is that phone companies all want to monetize their role in preventing you from dreading the phone ringing. Just as Ring tones were not free but were costless to provide, they want to charge you for allowing you to benefit from their curated blacklists. And they want to sell free passes one the blacklists (whitelisting) to people who pay them. They could do this for free as it's nearly costless.
SO basically the phone companies are working hard to make you hate your phone.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I rarely see a spammer reuse a number so I don't see blocking to be effective. If someone calls me twice in a row, I'll probably pickup.
In Europe caller pays, always. Also, in Europe we (usually, but depends on the country) have a no-spam-call list service, and whoever calls a number on that list gets fiercely fined.
I’m guessing the caller pays is a bigger deterent as it woukd be tough to find, let alone fine, some non-EU soammer in a third world call center. OTOH, getting billed for thousands of calls would greatly impact or wipe out any profit; or EU telcos simply do not connect calls because they can’t get needed payment data. Alternatively, I’d imagine language to be another barrier as there is no assurance the person called speaks the caller’s language, whereas in the US you are pretty certain of getting an English speaker most of the time.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Answer your phone with a muted microphone.
Human callers will issue their confused "Hello?" calls into the void, identifying themselves as authentic.
Software could easily note speech on the other end, note an unexpected mid-call termination (you hung up) marking your number as a legitimate (and more importantly, active) data point. This is valuable information internally, maybe even enough to sell.
Even a voice synth "Hello." isn't that hard to identify. Answer muted, put the phone away, let the robot rant until it hangs up.
I'm 46 and so also from the generation that was conditioned to pick up a ringing phone. But the reason I still do it today is because of what "swb" says here. There are too many situations where a real time voice conversation gets something resolved efficiently, where the other methods just don't.
With IM and texting, the parties aren't a "captive audience". They can carry on the conversation at their leisure, while doing and thinking about other things. I can't get a quick resolution if it's not a simple yes or no type question.
Just last week, I needed to get some changes made to my Sirius/XM subscription. Tried the online chat but it was too slow and frustrating. It was resolved quickly by calling and and just explaining what I wanted to do. Same with updating my car insurance. The original quote I requested prompted me to ask about several other things on the policy, and everything was sorted out in a single phone call. I tried to text message my agent initially, but he only paid attention to the first item I asked about and didn't answer my other questions.
I hear younger people constantly saying they just don't talk on the phone anymore, and would often get rid of the phone number and voice portion of their cellphone if they could do it and save money on the bill. That saddens me, because they don't realize what they're giving up. The telephone was a great invention because it allowed vocal communication between distant parties. Everything else you can do on a cellphone today is just "pocket computer" stuff. And throughout the history of the computer, a telephone has still been a useful device to have along-side of one. Videoconferencing tools like Skype and Zoom do blur the lines. But still, a telephone call is a more simple, direct way to establish the communications link.