As an old fogey, I have precisely the opposite reaction, which is why are so many people talking on the phone all the time? Walking down the street. On the subway. On the bus. In their cars. In coffee shops. The guy next door yelling into his speakerphone all day every day. Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. Much more of that than when I was a boy, I can assure you.

I'm glad to hear you say that. Texting and twittering have their place, but that place isn't maintaining relationships with people I don't see face-to-face very often. Conversations are a good thing! I like hearing my friends' voices! I like jokes that don't require bold face or ellipses for emphasis! I am now accepting calls.

You're probably an outgoing, extroverted type. I think there's a continuum of social aptitude. On the one end you have Asperger's syndrome, or whatever, people who really can't pick up unspoken social cues and have a lot of trouble with interpersonal interaction. On the other you have people who are extremely well-attuned to unspoken cues. These people can get all the information they need from the inflection of another person's voice, and do well on the phone. But a lot of us in the middle need to see facial expression, gestures, and so on, and have trouble with talking on the phone. That's my theory anyway. I'm a little shy in person, but I do fine at parties, whereas on the phone I become awkward.

Thanks for the post, Ezra. I've been thinking about this issue this morning following MY's post on same, and you put my thoughts into words better than I could.

People seem to want to use ALL one form or another with which to communicate, when it seems to me that technology has provided us the wonderful choice of fitting the FORM of our interaction to the CONTENT, ie. email to pay bills, phone to say hi to mom.

Personally, I've always hated phone calls. They have all the demands on my attention that an in-person conversation has but far less stimulus. When I'm chatting online I can multitask because it's acceptable to have intermitent pauses. In person I don't need to multitask because having a person in front of me is engaging. Talking on the phone I feel like I want to be doing other things at the same time but I can't without sacrificing the quality of the conversation.

Now, with some people phone calls are easier (parents, significant others, etc.), but nine times out of ten if a phone call lasts longer than a couple minutes I start hoping it can get wrapped up so I can move on to something else.

Sounds like you have a book there Ezra. May I suggest a title?

Talking Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community

They have all the demands on my attention that an in-person conversation has but far less stimulus. When I'm chatting online I can multitask because it's acceptable to have intermitent pauses. In person I don't need to multitask because having a person in front of me is engaging. Talking on the phone I feel like I want to be doing other things at the same time but I can't without sacrificing the quality of the conversation.

In Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace actually wrote about how most people do tend to multi-task while on the phone. He claimed that the phone provides to your co-conversationalist the illusion of total concentration on their every word, meanwhile you're performing a little self-grooming like checking your cuticles and fingernails.

I hate phone calls because they're a unilateral imposition of will on whoever receives the phone call. The caller makes a demand for time and it's considered impolite to reject that demand by screening calls. We don't really set up phone calls by first sending a text or email telling the recipient to initiate a phone-based voice dialog. No, we just call and expect the other party to pick up.

Cell phones have only worsened this dynamic because unless you turn it off, the presumption is that you. are. constantly. available.

I'm one of the people who mostly hates using the phone, and occasionally calls friends to chat. The trick is to have one thing I genuinely need to ask them. Almost always, they're glad to hear me, and we talk for a while.

The phone aversion (except for idle, "wassup?" queries or "meet ya there at 8" topics) is part of the more general thing called the death of conversation - where conversation is those rambling, gossipy, many-topic'ed things that language makes possible and was for a long time the basis for relationships.

There does seem to be an exception, however, in net sex chat rooms based on text and video cams the pressing demand is to use the phone (and yahoo/msn have graciously provided VOIP-based facilties to do the oral hookup).

Andrew, I was mostly refering to things which take more focus than cutting fingernails. I mean, 90% of the time my nails don't need to be cut. I don't really fold cloths, so that's out, and I only need to do laundry once a week anyway, so it's not very often available as a distraction during a call.

During a phone call at home I usually find myself wanting to read something, check teh web, turn on the tv; any of the things that I do on a regular basis if chatting online.

MosBen, Foster Wallace was mostly just getting at the presumption that we assume we have the other person's undivided attention, we don't. But in fact, I know people who actually will let their phone partner ramble on, while they turn their responses to auto-pilot, so that they can watch YouTube, write email, conduct 3 different IM conversations, or read a blog.

The point is that we just don't know what your co-conversationalist is doing, but the normative assumption is that they aren't distracted.

I have found that I rarely even answer my phone. I screen most of my calls. If they leave a voicemail, its likely that it'll be days before I bother to listen to it, and when I do, I usually delete it as soon as I figure out who is leaving it without listening to what they have to say at all.

This is mainly true for people I see in person quite frequently. For long distance friends, I typically answer and chat away with no real purpose. I do have one friend I email constantly, and in EVERY email, he says, "this is a great conversation, how about we have it on the PHONE."

I think I hate that there are no do-overs on a phone. On an email, I am constantly erasing and rewriting something to get the phrasing just right. On the phone, I stumble over words, ramble, and get sidetracked.

That being said, I think I need to practice such communication to improve as a person, but now I can avoid it. I fear this will have consequences when I try to communicate with my children later in life, or should I ever get a job that requires more verbal communication than my present one.

I am always amazed by older people when I meet them at parties. They, on average, are more articulate, quicker with the wit, and more composed than the younger types who live in a world of SMS.

the obvious follow-up is to determine whether this phone anxiety is restricted to the computer-addicted blogosphere geeky types, or is a general phenomenon of the up and coming generation.

The fact that unplanned social interactions, and phone calls, are now easier to avoid makes the threat of their intrusion all the more worrisome for the anxious. There is also the persona aspect -- which is much easier to develop in online and email forums than in real life.

Why get upset over the many and varied forms of communication we have today. They ALL have their uses and, speaking as an old fogey whose childhood was in a time when not everyone had a telephone, today's varied communications are nothing short of wonderful.

Avoiding the phone it seems to me is another form of isolation and another symptom of the decline of our communities.

Living in a community does involve occasional unsolicited interruptions, but without community there is no civilization.

I think you don't have longer conversations with people other than old friends and family because you're growing up. In high school, I'm sure they still can blab for a half hour or three about nothing...

But I do think this phone aversion is funny considering I'm almost the only one I know without a cell phone. I guess that most of the time adults are using them to "touch base" with people quickly, like saying I'll be 15 minutes late meeting so-and-so for a drink or dinner.