The Guardian says that phone calls are disappearing, that especially among the very young are less and less frequent and this is demonstrated by the fact that most of the phones are now in “silent” mode with vibration. It seems inevitable to me. Already a couple of years ago I was wondering if phone calls would not one day end the letters. And I answered yes. And I’m not even very young. But I have had a phone without a ringtone for a lifetime and the phone calls I make every day are now less than ten: a couple to parents, a couple to children, a couple of standard services to book a medical visit, any and all. Stop. I don’t get there at ten.
The end of the phone calls, however, does not mean the end of the communication at all. We communicate more and more and for this reason we need less of that instant and live communication that is the essence of a phone call. If we update our social status, friends can respond with a comment, they don’t need to hear from us to know how we are. They know. If in chat we keep a good part of the work relationships, sorting things to do and giving the answers they ask us, the phone call with colleagues becomes superfluous. And if one really feels the need for instant and live communication then a video call is better, at least you can see each other.
All this “communication overload” in which we are immersed almost always makes the classic phone call superfluous, an exaggeration, an unjustified claim. But how, with everything we’ve written to each other and you already know, do you feel the need to call me? Also because the telephone call, compared to other tools, is technically an important form of intrusion into the life of others: it interrupts you from what you were doing; demands an immediate answer, on the second ring you are already late on the third the situation is serious. Better to answer: yes, here, I answered you, was it really that important to deserve a phone call ?, is the tone of many.
And so the phone calls are inevitably reduced, even for a mere question of education, and are often wisely preceded by a message, “Can I tel you? disturbing now? “. Moral: apart from very close relatives, they almost only call call centers or bearers of bad news, urgent problems that cannot wait. Or the train neighbors who are keen to tell the whole compartment about their life.
Then there is another case that makes the phone call necessary: a success, an event so special that a little message is not enough. A good grade at school for the children, a long-awaited promotion, the irresistible desire to say “I love you”. Or gold at the Olympics which then ends up calling you Mattarella or Draghi and then yes, a phone call in those cases is just fine.
.