Telephonophobia is a new term that I recently learned when reading an article in the Wall Street Journal. It means the avoidance of using the phone for a good old phone conversation.
I am going to show my age a bit here but the lack of willingness of our younger generations to pick up the phone and talk to someone drives me crazy. The article says that the younger generations actually experience anxiety with placing a phone call. Likewise, the roadblocks that companies put in place to prevent you from speaking to a human to help resolve an issue drives me over the cliff.
During my professional life working for a major pharma company, I could see this evolving. With the explosion of email, employees communicated primarily via email instead of by phone and that further evolved with text messaging and instant messaging tools. An issue that could be resolved with a five-minute conversation routinely took 10 or more back-and-forth messages with the incidence of misunderstandings increasing.
The phone now fits somewhere between a text message and a Zoom call. I realize that convenience and speed drive us toward electronic communications, but have we lost the ability to simply use a phone? Try it, you might like it.
Randy Freides
P.S. Call your father this weekend to wish him a Happy Father’s Day…with your phone.
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