Data point: I’m millennial (born 1992) and have a pretty strong aversion to phone calls, which is motivated mainly by the fact that I prefer most communication to be non-real-time so that I can take time to think about what to say without creating an awkward silence. And when I do engage in real-time communication, visual cues make it much less unpleasant, so phone calls are particularly bad in that I have to respond to someone in real time without either of us seeing the other’s face/body language.
If I had to take a wild guess at why this seems to be generational, I’d suggest that older generations spent much of their lives with phone calls being the only way to quickly contact people far away, and prefer them due to familiarity. Perhaps if they’d grown up with email/texting being options, they’d be more likely to prefer them instead.
Data point: I’m millennial (born 1992) and have a pretty strong aversion to phone calls, which is motivated mainly by the fact that I prefer most communication to be non-real-time so that I can take time to think about what to say without creating an awkward silence. And when I do engage in real-time communication, visual cues make it much less unpleasant, so phone calls are particularly bad in that I have to respond to someone in real time without either of us seeing the other’s face/body language.
If I had to take a wild guess at why this seems to be generational, I’d suggest that older generations spent much of their lives with phone calls being the only way to quickly contact people far away, and prefer them due to familiarity. Perhaps if they’d grown up with email/texting being options, they’d be more likely to prefer them instead.