Gen Yers and Zers are often dubbed ‘generation mute’ for their dislike of answering or making phone calls, and a series of data points are shedding light on this behaviour. According to research by BankMyCell, 75% of 22- to 37-year-olds find phone calls ‘too time-consuming’. As a reflection of the scale of the behaviour change, ringtone downloads in the UK are down by almost a quarter between 2016 and 2020. The ‘small talk’ element of phone calls makes it difficult for younger people to have the kind of fast non-committal interactions they’re used to. “Gen Yers already know the benefits of digital communication better than some of us. They want results, not a lengthy discussion,” writes John Brandon for Inc. Magazine.

The practicality of keeping connected to more people and brands than was possible in the pre-smartphone era has pushed phone calls down to the bottom of the list of preferred communications methods. This, in turn, has made phone calls an unfamiliar and often anxiety-inducing experience for Gen Yers and Zers – 81% of 22- to 37-year-olds report often experiencing anxiety when talking to someone on the phone. Social media platform Facebook, for example, is putting the messenger part of its platform at the center of its business product offering, and the results speak for themselves: Lego boosted sales with ads that featured ‘click-to-message’ integration and experienced a 3.4 times higher return on ad spend.