Why Everyone Is Suddenly Talking On the Phone Again

Under threat, the personal connectivity of a phone call is surpassing in importance the efficiency of a text. 

Whether this trend will last may be less important than the fact that certain basic human needs are quickly activated in times of stress. JL

Katherine Bindley reports in the Wall Street Journal:

In the era of social distancing, people are using the phone again to call friends and relatives. (And) the people they’re calling are picking up. We’re feeling more isolated and concerned about people we love. Data shows that people all over the U.S. are doing the same. Verizon has seen an average of 800 million wireless calls daily, twice the volume of Mother’s Day. And we’re not just calling people more often, we’re talking on the phone longer: AT&T says wireless voice minutes were up 39% from the average, and Wi-Fi calling minutes were 78% higher.

At some point over the past decade or so, the phone call became the redheaded stepchild of communication. It’s been dubbed inefficient, interruptive, and even rude. But now, in the era of social distancing, people are using the phone again to call friends and relatives. What’s more, the people they’re calling are actually picking up.

“I have always hated talking on the phone,” says Maggie McGowan, a 27-year-old Ph.D. candidate studying English in San Diego.

Ms. McGowan says her aversion to the phone was so strong that friends used to make fun of her for it: Friends would sometimes call her three times in a row and she still wouldn’t answer, sometimes sending them a message in response to ask why they couldn’t just text. But while being isolated these past couple of weeks, she discovered that the phone was a good way to kill time during vast stretches of boredom.

“I think it was kind of like a slow creep,” Ms. McGowan says. She started checking in with her mom, and soon found herself on the phone with others. She estimates she has called five people she is close to between 5 and 20 times each. “Now, whenever anyone calls me I pick up, and then I’m on the phone for anywhere from 45 minutes to 2½ hours. It’s quite a 180,” she says.

I’ve been experiencing some of this firsthand. Ever since shelter-in-place orders started to be adopted in major cities, multiple friends have called me at random. They’re no longer texting me first to ask if it’s a good time. They just call out of the blue. And I’ve started picking up the phone anytime it rings, even if it’s an unknown number: What if someone is trying to reach me from a work cell I don’t have saved in my contacts? Besides, what else is there to do? I’ve unwittingly answered no fewer than four robocalls in the past week.

By the time last week rolled around, I was tired of texting back and forth with a guy I’d met through a dating app. I finally just called him. He answered.

Data shows that people all over the U.S. are doing the same thing. Verizon says it has seen an average of 800 million wireless calls daily on recent weekdays, nearly twice the volume of Mother’s Day.

And we’re not just calling people more often, we’re talking on the phone for longer: AT&T says that wireless voice minutes on Monday were up 39% from the average Monday, and Wi-Fi calling minutes were 78% higher.

Thanks to coronavirus, we’re no longer in transit, unable to answer a call. We’re not physically in the office so, sure, why not jump on the phone to catch up with a friend or colleague between work tasks? There’s no stepping out for lunch, no “Let’s just cover this in person next time we see one another,” because we don’t actually know when that will be.

Pretty much the only reason you can’t reach someone these days is because they’re on another call.

We’re also feeling more isolated and increasingly concerned about the people we love. We want to check in with them more regularly. Texts can be cold and quick; a call is really one of the few ways others can hear the concern in your voice—and you can hear the concern in theirs. And if you haven’t yet changed out of your pajamas or washed your hair in a few days, phone calls beat video chats hands down.

Omari Rush, 39, says he’s even making phone calls for work, in addition to using his regular remote-office tools, such as Slack or Zoom.

“We’ll be typing via Slack and I’m like wait, wait, just pick up the phone,” says Mr. Rush, who lives in Ann Arbor, Mich., and runs an arts nonprofit. “I’m like remembering the phone as a real resource for quick communication, and now really relying on it.”

In his personal life too, Mr. Rush is also back on the phone. The other day he called up a friend he’s known for years.

“I don’t know if I’d had a rough day. I think I just wanted to talk,” he says.

In the middle of the conversation, Mr. Rush says he and his friend both noticed something: They’d never really spoken on the phone before. “It was bananas,” he says. “We’ve been friends for 15 years.”