I don’t think anyone answers the phone now, unless they recognize the number.
Most of the calls I get are
- spam
- spam
- someone sent me a time sensitive message, so they ring me once to respond faster
- spam
Yeah, I’m early gen-x and I only answer the phone if its a member of my immediate family and even then it’s 50/50. Capitalism ruins everything. Need to talk to me? Leave a message and I’ll decide if and when to call you back.
Everyone I want to talk to knows not to call me; I feel exactly the same. Phones used to be useful, but the sheer volume of telemarketers and scams have reduced it to uselessness. If it wasn’t for 2FA occasionally requiring a phone number, I wouldn’t even have one at this point.
You don’t always have a choice as it is dictated by the service provider, but whenever possible, disable SMS based MFA and enable TOTP or something else. SMS based MFA is susceptible to SS7 MitM attack.
Same. In the last few years (2-3 probably, I don’t count) I don’t think I have given it out anywhere. I just pretend to not have a phone number, and if people think that’s weird I don’t care, deal with it. Nowadays if a service requires my phone number, I don’t need that service. Or in rare cases I’ll try to find a free online number for receiving a code, but that’s the only alternative I take.
2FA
Use an authenticator or Yubi key. SMS authentication is the worst possible method.
American? I’m from The Netherlands and I get maybe 1 spam call every other month or so. And I’ve been using the same number for almost 25 years.
Must be nice to a functional telecommunications agency that has the tools to punish soammers.
Oh we do too. Verizon and att make money off of selling the scammers our phone numbers and they wont spend the money to stop it
Canada, we face the same issues as the US for telecom stuff
Settings>Do not disturb>exceptions>Caller in contacts
alt: Set default ringtone to silent, no vibration, Set people in contacts to custom ringtones.
in ios there is a phone app setting to silence unknown callers.
Also on iOS: Settings > Phone > Silence Unknown Callers
Lucky me I rarely get spam calls
This is part of the problem for me. I can’t dismiss the popup unless I hang up, and I don’t want to do that in case my number gets marked as “active”.
So I sit there and wait till I can use it again.
Also I appreciate the detailed alt text :)
at least on iphone you can swipe away the notification without hanging up.
Press the volume down button. This will immediately silence the call without hanging up.
Yet Another Call Blocker solves that problem.
I send all calls other than contacts directly to voice mail, and my phone never even rings.
This is soo me! Declining the call would pull more attention. I play dead.
Let it ring. Robocall centers only work when they maximize volume, the more time they spend not getting an answer the more money they’re not making. If you wanna get real saucy, wait as long as you can, accept the call, say nothing or mute your mic. They wont spend more than 5-10 seconds before they hang up on you though because they know it too.
Letting it ring has no impact. They have autodiallers that call, and when someone picks up, only then is that call assigned to someone in the call centre.
You can often tell this because there is a marked delay in the response to your initial “Hello?”. Long enough that you can reliably just hang up if you don’t hear a response in two seconds.
If it’s a real person who actually wants to call you and they you call again straight away, you can just shrug off your hang-up as a network issue.
Press the volume down button. This will immediately silence the call without hanging up.
That’s why I just block all calls and send them to voicemail.
If we need a phone call, we’ll schedule it, and we’ll be using an app.
I am Gen X (1970 give or take a couple of years) and I don’t answer shit. I look up numbers and rarely listen to Voicemails. If you know me and I want to talk to you, you will know how to reach me. Everyone else can get fucked.
I think it’s less generational and more fuck all this spam and scams.
I’m the same generation. My flowchart is: known contact, answer. Unknown contact, voicemail. Automatic VM transcriptions are great.
Gen X’er. Same here. I don’t even leave the ringer turned on on my phone. Fuck that shit. If you know me too know how to find me.
in my voicemail greeting i tell people to text or email me.
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A recent survey found a quarter of people aged 18 to 34 never answer the phone - respondents say they ignore the ringing, respond via text or search the number online if they don’t recognise it.
As they should.
“A voice note is just like talking on the phone but better,” says Susie Jones, a 19-year-old student. “You get the benefits of hearing your friend’s voice but comes with no pressures so it’s a more polite way of communicating”.
Gross, voice notes are the worst of both worlds.
Text for things that are information critical, phone calls for things that are time critical.
Email for business (and keep the original chain going instead of starting a new one every time you think of something else to add!), text messages for associates, chat apps for friends and family.
Anyone who disagrees is wrong.
Yeah, voice notes are the “your solution to your problem is somewhere in the middle of this 20 minute long YouTube video that could have been a short forum post with some screenshots instead” of the communication world.
Jesus, it’s not just me! It seems like every answer I need is only found in a video format without labeled bookmarks/sections. I hate it so much. Give me a how-to with concise instructions and gifs, or give me death.
Can’t get ad revenue on a short, concise, and helpful page.
Even a basic cookie recipe requires someone’s whole life story to fill in the blank space between 10 ads
I’ve actively told any friend that send me a voice note that if you want me to respond to you don’t send it as a voice note, I won’t listen to it. It requires me to put headphones in or play it on speaker, and neither of those are happening unless it’s important.
hard agree, voice messages are the worst of both worlds, you can’t look at it and get the gist of what’s said, and you have to deal with listening to it, while requiring more bandwidth to use.
I’ve told my friends instead of pressing the voice button, just press the speech to text button, I’m more likely to read a wall of text than listen to a voice message.
Voice notes are pretty great when you’re driving.
I mostly agree, but I think voice notes for close friends/family probably have a point.
At this point, I would also argue that texts/emails are also for time critical things since voice calls are essentially dead at this point.
99.99999% of the phone calls I get are spam. I haven’t gotten a new voice mail in like 6 months.
They are the worst unless you want to hear that person’s voice.
Both phone calls and emails are so full of ad-ridden garbage that they are useless for communication.
Texts are better signal-to-noise ratio, for me it is more like only 1% con artist identity thieves compared to the 99% coming via phone call.
I don’t know if phone call spam is only an American thing or something. In my country (and most of Europe) that stuff is effectively banned and doesn’t really happen.
Still hate getting calls though.
having proper bans in place do help, cutting number spoofing and rooting out local spam sources + barring voips that facilitate them means spam callers would have to connect internationally and cost more.
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Spam has destroyed the phonecall. I screen everything and people know to text me first.
Besides its rude to think you can just interrupt someone in the middle of what they are doing without asking via text first anyway.
I view phoning someone like popping over to their house and knocking on the door to chat with no prior warning. No one likes that.
I’ve been nervous of phoning people since long before cellphones were invented, precisely because it always seemed rude to make someone’s phone ring and demand a conversation when they’re in the middle of whatever they’re doing. It’s interesting to see more people coming to see it like this.
I would flat out ignore the pony express rider when he came galloping up with all that noise and dust. Who does he think he is?
Is that not what the post office is for? Were pony express riders stopping at every individual farm and cabin?
If you call me and don’t leave a voice mail message or text… Your effectively spam.
You’re* effectively spam
I can’t speak for others but as an older millennial, I grew up liking spending time on the phone with friends and loved ones. However in my adult life, I spent being anxious waiting for phone calls regarding job interviews and outcomes of them, and even being interviewed on some of them, including those without much notice. I also had to make calls to follow up things urgently or if I’m in trouble. As a result, I started to equate phone calls as mostly negative experiences.
It’s pretty obvious why lol.
90% of the calls I receive are spam.
Calling demands that I pick up the phone RIGHT THE FUCK NOW. Bitch, if it ain’t a life threatening emergency I’m not dropping everything I’m working on for you.
Texting allows me to respond when it’s convenient for me.
Text generally takes 3 seconds to get the point across instead of having a whole conversation about it
God, or worse, a conversation around the conversation you’re actually speaking in order to have
99% of phone calls is typically a capitalistic company forcing employees to sell us something.
So yes… I’m not gonna pick up. Leave a voicemail 👍
99% of phone calls is typically a capitalistic company
forcing employeesusing chatbots to sell us something.employees are so 2010, FIFY
Everyone I need to talk to is in my contacts. If you’re not in my contacts, my phone doesn’t even ring. You go straight to voicemail.
I was fine with phone calls when I was younger. Now it’s mostly spam robocalls or scammers or both. Nobody seems interested in solving those problems.
I am interested in solving them. Here’s how: if you get any phone call that makes you even the slightest bit irritated, you hit a button and receive a quarter paid by the caller. This is traced through carriers. If the trace cannot continue for any reason or exits US jurisdiction, the most recent carrier foots the bill. I guarantee that spam calls will suddenly cease to exist overnight.
I like the way you think.
This kind of approach solves so many problems, as the vendors have a vested interest
honestly i think this is due to unplanned voice calls essentially being broken technology now.
imagine we had 2020s email spammers while mail servers had 1990s spam filters, that’s basically where we’re at now with unplanned voice.
Meanwhile, boomers will spend hours talking to a ChatGPT script that has convinced them its the real Oprah Winfrey.
hahahahaha im dying idk why youre getting downvoted
Well obvs the bots got offended
Texting is also damn convenient, I can deal with several conversations at once without having to pause the movie I’m watching.
Speaking on the phone doesn’t just tie your line, it ties your whole life too.
Another advantage of text, for me at least, is that I can read much faster than I can listen. This is why I prefer text articles to news videos, even though video can often offer extra visual information over what photographs can offer.
That said, I do somewhat agree with the article’s concern that live conversation is an independent skill and potentially has its own unique side-benefits that might be becoming rarer.
Sure works wonders if you’re busy with a chore. Laundry? Dishwashing (for the unfortunate souls without easy access to a dishwasher)? That’s the best time to call any yakker you know!
