2012.05.09
Is there an actual fear known as telephobia? We're texting more than we're talking, and there've been many articles about the death of the phone since the first smartphone came about. Nielsen said in a December report that voice calls have dropped by 12 percent since 2009, while text messaging has absolutely blown up.
With this in mind, have we developed a fear of talking on the phone? Salon's Sarah Hepola argues that this so-called Telephobia is a very real thing.
It's just plain scary to talk to other people. We avoid it not because people don't matter—but because they do. And each of us brings emotional baggage to to these interactions. when my phone rings, and I don't recognize that number—forget it. I'm too scarred by the years I spent dodging credit card companies to take that kind of dare. I also don't jump off cliffs, or do cartwheels on the highway. In fact, it's amazing to me that there was a time when the phone rang, and someone just answered it. Who could it be? Could it be the guy who was currently making your heart pound? Oooh, let's pick it up and find out! Now, when I see an unfamiliar number, I feel nothing but outrage.
That's a pretty good argument. I can sometimes attest to rather messaging than calling, perhaps not because I was consciously thinking it would be more polite to send one instead of giving a person a call instead.
It could be because we're constantly inundated with too much information, of other people. We see status updates, tweets, pictures from all over on Instagram, Facebook, have a flow of emails to reply every other day, it could seem we just want to flip off the noise because of all of that. But should we be afraid of talking on the telephone? We should not be.
Perhaps its not so much a phobia than it is actually being lazy to talk over the phone.
[via Slate]
