I honestly can't remember the last
time I made a phone call.
I don't think I've ever done that in
my life.
Never, never.
I don't think it's ever come up.
Generation mute is the phenomenon
where we actually see young people
prefer to text and use social
media to communicate, rather than
pick up a phone or have a
conversation with each other.
I talk to my friends on WhatsApp,
Twitter, sometimes,
or Facebook Messenger - just
anything that's typing.
Days upon days of messages!
Obviously calling is the
easier thing to do, but I
just I just don't like it.
For me, phone calls are actually the
worst.
My sister lives in Dubai,
she realised how awkward I was on
the phone and she asked me, "I
don't want to put you in a position
where you're uncomfortable instead
of a better way to contact
you?" And I said, "Yes, via email,
please!" I don't know
how to handle that side
of me very well.
My friends, I still feel a bit werid
talking to them and
hearing their voice and hearing
them, you know, give real responses
to things. I don't like it,
but I know that it's an important
part of making a connection with
someone.
Text-based interaction is hard
because you lose everything
that you have when there's somebody
actually talking to you.
So you not only don't have a face,
you don't have a voice, you haven't
got emotion and intonation and all
the other stuff you're hearing in
somebody's voice when they're talking
to you, because you just have words.
It took me five years to answer a
phone call from my boss.
When I answered the phone to her, she was like, "Oh Darren, you
answered!" I'm like, yes.
The problem for employers
is that this "generation
mute" is
very much a generation of
people who are most comfortable
typing and not talking.
What we've noticed is
there is a change. You used to bring
someone in. You would automatically
assume they'd know how to answer a
phone. And now,
those basic skills are skills
that we have to train. In
a place of work, then
voice is king.
How people deal with stressful
situations is
actually marked in how
they use communication skills
in an interaction.
So couples who deal with a stressful
situation with positive affect
and laughter in a conversation
feel better than couples where
one person is laughing and the other
person is not laughing.
So we get more
bang for our buck out
of talking to each other than we do
from anything else.
It probably is like a generation
thing, obviously, our
parents and grandparents did just
have house phones and they never had
mobiles or anything like that.
What you're seeing is a generation
who don't need to pick up the phone
because they're able to use
text-based interactions on their
phones in a much more complex
way.
People are marking the difference
and they're allowed to.
So young people are allowed to say
"We're just not doing you like, this
is how we communicate and we are
not the same as you." And that's a
rolling pattern of change.
You get it across fashion,
you get it across all sorts of
different aspects of music and
cultural ties, and you get it in how
people choose to communicate.
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