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are you afraid to answer the phone?

after hearing this, some of my colleagues will definitely be unable to hold back: why are you afraid of phone calls?

after all, since childhood, parents have chatted with distant relatives by phone; when brothers and sisters go away, family members will also remind them to "call often"; variety shows are very 6+1, and the lucky audience members who are drawn will also call them directly.

at that time, even a 3-year-old child playing house had a toy telephone.

this is such a common operation, why are people still afraid of it in 2024?

but to be honest, "fear of answering the phone" has become a phenomenon among young people today. although this phenomenon cannot spread like a virus, it is secretly affecting countless people.

a while ago, xiao lajiao was having dinner with her colleagues and said that she would only answer unfamiliar calls when ordering takeout and when the courier was being delivered, and she would not answer any other calls.

i thought it was my own "weird behavior", but after discussing the "condition" with my colleagues, we found that our behaviors were exactly the same, including but not limited to the following:

when i hear the phone ring, i feel cramped and anxious;

copy the number to a web page or alipay or wechat to check the identity;

wait for the other party to hang up.

out of curiosity, xiao la jiao did a search and found that this phenomenon is actually very common.

a 2019 uk survey found that 62% of 500 office workers felt anxious when answering the phone, including 76% of millennials.

on xiaohongshu, there are more than 100,000 notes about "fear of answering the phone".

just click on any one of them, and you can feel the netizens’ fear and resistance to phone calls.

for example, someone sent a screenshot of a whole page of missed calls. she said that she felt resistant when she saw the phone calls and felt anxious.

in order to reduce this pain, everyone has tried various methods.

some people note “no need to call” on the takeaway address and set the courier delivery preference to “no need to call”.

some people keep their phones in silent mode all year round, even if they will be criticized by their family members for doing so.

some people only answer the phone the second time it’s called, and some people even wish there was a line after the number:if you have something to say, send a text message instead of calling.

at first, xiao lajiao thought this might be a social phobia behavior of i person, but e people also came forward in the comment section to say that they were also afraid to answer the phone.

so why are people still afraid of telephones even though they have been around for so long?

part of the reason is that times have changed.

in 2010, the average monthly call duration of china mobile users was 521 minutes, or about 17 minutes per day. in 2016, the average monthly call duration dropped to 408 minutes.

by 2020, that number had fallen to 267 minutes, an average of 8.9 minutes per day.

let’s take a look at the “internet development trend report (2017-2018)” released by the china academy of information and communications technology.

the report shows that six or seven years ago, the average time people spent using wechat was as high as 99 minutes per day.

this means that we are in an era where remote communication is mainly based on text.in this environment, we will gradually become unable to adapt to the impact of telephones.

first of all, the phone can make us fear the unknown.

when someone sends you a wechat message, one second after you click on it, you will know what the other person is talking about, whether they are trying to share their happiness or bring you troubles.

but the phone is different.when someone calls you, they usually have something to ask you.

this feels similar to when someone sends you a wechat message asking: are you there?

in today's fast-paced world, there are already enough annoying things and work. once "unknown things" suddenly come to us, we will subconsciously worry, fear, and resist.

from the moment the phone rings to the moment we answer it, we're trying to figure out the other person's intentions every second, eager to know what's going on.

no one likes this situation.

in addition, due to the proliferation of harassing calls, the telephone has fallen into an embarrassing situation.

think about it, apart from takeout, express delivery, and work, most of the calls we receive now are either sales calls or scams.

xiao lajiao also tried to answer one or two numbers, thinking, what if they really need me for something? but every time the other party would say, “i’m calling you to tell you that we’re having an event here.”

i believe you have all had similar experiences.

according to data from imedia research, the number of harassing calls in china exceeded 50 billion in 2018. the "harassment and fraud call situation analysis report" released by telephone union also shows that the number of calls marked as "harassing calls" in 2022 is close to 500 million.

as to why we are receiving more and more harassing calls.

in fact, we have talked about this before. as the number of registered accounts increases, once a data leak occurs on the platform, our information will be obtained by the black and gray industries and then sold at a fixed price.

not only that, all places where you have filled in your number, such as sales offices, properties, gyms, etc., are at risk of leakage.

in addition to these external environmental factors, there is another key reason why young people don’t like to answer the phone:

the pressure of the phone was too great.

this sense of oppression comes from the form of communication over the phone, which always makes people nervous.

just imagine, no matter you are resting your eyes or busy, as long as the phone rings, you will be interrupted forcibly -

answer or not, you have to make a decision within ten seconds.

compared to the text chat mode we are used to, telephones also have various disadvantages.

for example, when you are speaking, you don’t have enough time to think, and you can’t polish your words, and you are burning your cpu and making mistakes every moment.

that's not all. when you're talking, you can't send emoticons or show body language to the other person. when facing strangers, this inability to accurately convey your meaning can make people feel uneasy.

this is why many people are afraid to make phone calls.

if you are afraid of making or receiving phone calls, after reading this, you will find that most of the reasons actually come from the phone, not yourself.

the urgency, pressure and unclear meaning of the phone call make you afraid to answer the phone and unwilling to communicate with people on the phone.

seeing that many netizens are anxious about this matter, xiao lajiao thinks that we can keep a calm mind and it’s nothing to be afraid of answering the phone.

because it is a way of communication, but it is a way of communication that we are not used to, do not like, and cannot accept.

besides, many people in this world have similar situations. even qi wei never answers the phone. we are all the same.

however, the current situation of the phone made xiao lajiao feel a little sad.

there was a time when i was looking forward to phone calls. every time i changed my cell phone ringtone and ringback tone, i was eager for someone to call me. i was called more than ten times a day.

at that time, i would deliberately not answer the call, so that the other party could hear the cool ringtone i specially set for a while.

more than ten years have passed, and i still happen to deliberately not answer the phone.

but now, i will silently look at the screen and then put the phone away.