In the dark ages of the 1980s and '90s telephone calls were like treats - rare, planned, hard-won and savoured.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
You probably had to fight family members for time on the landline handset, stretching the cord around the corner to get some privacy.
Once mobile phones took over, precision and strategy were still needed. A single call during peak time for a long overdue catch-up could set you back $20.
Text too often and your 15-page bill would horrify you with an itemised list of every message sent over a month and the time you sent it.
Has Gen Z killed the phone star?
But the humble exchange of spoken words over telephone is dying.
And Gen Z is landing the death blow.
This generation of teenagers and 20-somethings, born roughly between the late '90s and 2010, doesn't answer phone calls.
Even text messages are losing favour, though they're more reliable than a voicemail - and sometimes email - to get attention.
I've been hiring young journalists for jobs around regional Australia over the past few months.
Of the dozens of phone calls I've made - to speak to people who voluntarily applied, for paid employment, in the communications industry - just a couple answered their phones.
I've followed up each phone call with a text message and that does the trick.
But I miss the simple elegance of a formal phone call.
Avoiding scam phone calls
I don't blame Gen Z. (In fact many Millennials and Gen X-ers - even some Baby Boomers - have told me on Twitter they don't answer unknown numbers as a rule.)
Data calls and messages changed everything, compounded by messaging apps and video calls.
Phone conversations were cheapened to five-second exchanges to confirm your precise location on the commute home or what, exactly, you were doing at that moment.
Do-not-call registers became obsolete; private numbers were a thing of the past.
And then scammers moved in.
Like most Australians, the "missed call" list on my phone grows every day with scam/spam/unwanted callers I've avoided.
READ MORE:
Life lived through apps
People moving into their first full-time jobs now have never known a world without digital technology.
They've grown up with smartphones and 95 per cent of them own one, according to McCrindle Research.
Their lives are spent increasingly online through apps and social media platforms - and experienced through video, digital photos, graphics and emojis.
Communication, even with potential employers, has become so informal a "thumbs up" is enough to accept a life-changing job offer.
So I'm grateful to my Baby Boomer mum. She'll still get on the blower for a chinwag.
- Saffron Howden is a Gen X-Millennial cusper, as well as a journalist, author and ACM's national editorial trainer. She loves Gen Z and always answers her phone.
